[1.12.x] [BG] HabTech2 | Stockalike ISS Parts | 1.0.0 - The Final Update

[StevieC]

@TheReadPanda, @benjee10, you might both like to know that @Angel-125 is in the process of implementing this exact concept (wet-workshop) in their MOLE pack, which is designed to be a kerbalized version of the USAF's cancelled Gemini-derived MOL project.

[TheReadPanda]

  On 5/2/2016 at 3:56 AM, StevieC said:

@TheReadPanda, @benjee10, you might both like to know that @Angel-125 is in the process of implementing this exact concept (wet-workshop) in their MOLE pack, which is designed to be a kerbalized version of the USAF's cancelled Gemini-derived MOL project.

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@StevieC I am thrilled to hear that as I already have MOLE on my RSS career build plans. Love that mod!  Gotta love the gap parts for 1.85 etc... 

[Angelo Kerman]

  On 5/2/2016 at 3:56 AM, StevieC said:

@TheReadPanda, @benjee10, you might both like to know that @Angel-125 is in the process of implementing this exact concept (wet-workshop) in their MOLE pack, which is designed to be a kerbalized version of the USAF's cancelled Gemini-derived MOL project.

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Yup it's definitely possible, but it takes some code to do it. MOLE uses custom templates and the WildBlueTools plugin to make it work.

[benjee10]

  On 4/28/2016 at 8:28 PM, TheReadPanda said:

This mod rocks and I use it extensively in my KSPTV stream in recreating the ISS launch for launch each Thursday Morning.

I just wanted to thank the wonderful mod author for all his hard work! And also for visiting the stream today. Very much appreciated!!!

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  On 4/29/2016 at 3:04 AM, TheReadPanda said:

I have a problem. The Big solar part, it rotates even when 'off' so that when in the stock mk3 shuttle bay it rotates and clips and dies horribly.... I need it to fit in the shuttle bay. So either I need a way to turn off the tracking function or it needs to be a wee bit smaller or both.  Any chance of this? Cause right now in the bay, I launch (go to the launch pad) and it rotates in the bay and suddenly all I have are parts in my poor bay!

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Cheers man, will try to watch again when I can! 

The rotation issue was actually something I thought was unsolvable until your comment made me look into it again. The problem is that the sun tracking capability is toggled by the animation which deploys the solar panels, and since this part uses two solar panel modules in the .cfg file (one for each tracking axis) that means you need two animations, one for each module. The way I tried to solve it originally was to have a very simple hidden object with a short animation, so that when you clicked extend panels it would run this hidden animation and engage the sun tracking in the root of the part. Unfortunately whenever I tried this, KSP would only recognise one animation, so you'd either be able to deploy the solar panels or toggle their sun tracking, never both. I figured that KSP only check for the first object with  animation it finds when loading the models, so it was loading one or the other but not both. I couldn't find a fix for that at the time. When looking into it today, however, I found an option in the animation component in Unity which actually allows you to attach multiple animations to one object (even if that object doesn't itself animate, the command to run the animation will propagate from there it seems) which means that you can now toggle both axes of rotation. It shows up as two options for 'Extend Panels' and unfortunately there's no way of changing that, but the top 'Extend Panels' will unlock the sun tracking while the bottom one will deploy the solar arrays themselves. 

  On 4/29/2016 at 3:39 AM, Carrot said:

Does it have a 2.5 docking port? Station with 1.25m seems to be not so stable..

Just asking & not trying to push anything. Thanks for answering

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The ISS uses 1.25m-scale docking ports between modules but I will consider adding larger ones in future!

  On 4/30/2016 at 4:37 PM, Teslamax said:

Dittos on this!

"Eyes Turned Skyward" & Skylab B

"Eyes Turned Skyward" features a second Skylab (Skylab B, later Spacelab) that was created to be more expandable and upgrade-able.

 

NASA's Skylab Reuse plans

NASA did have plans to re-purpose the RealLife^® Skylab for use with the Shuttle program:

•  Wired's post on Marshall Space Flight Center's 1977 Skylab Reuse Study
• DSFP's Spaceflight History blog post "A Bridge from Skylab to Station/Shuttle: Interim Space Station Program (1971)" (by David S.F. Portree)

 

ISS-based station with reused Skylab

 I decided on making an ISS-based station layout using a "legacy" Skylab as a replacement for the Russian components. I realize that more realistic models for this exist for use with RSS, but I'm thinking of a stock scale, stock-a-like solution that will fit in with the HabTech parts.

(I have messed with Blender briefly, but have no experience or luck so far with textures or UV-mapping, otherwise I'd start working on this myself. If anyone would like to help, I might give it a whirl though.)

(@benjee10 if you keep my ideas in mind while working on your DIRECT 3.75 parts, I'd be grateful!)

I've made a placeholder stock-a-like Skylab using the following:

• Procedural Parts (structural parts)
• SpaceY (some RCS, the Saturn's Instrumentation Unit)
• HabTech (docking ports)
• Infernal Robotics (to deploy the Apollo Telescope Mount)
• stock parts

 

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The Skylab-derived station is a very nice idea and something I'll look into for DIRECT in future, although that mod is more concerned with Shuttle-era or Shuttle-derived craft, which Skylab predates somewhat. In fact, the argument could be made that since Skylab is a reconditioned Saturn V stage I'd have to include all the Saturn rocket parts in DIRECT, which isn't something I'm wanting to do. Also I believe @CobaltWolf is planning Saturn parts for BDB which I suspect will include a Skylab! 

However, a Shuttle tank derived Skylab could be an interesting concept (especially if used with the wet workshop system @Angel-125 uses). 

  On 4/30/2016 at 6:57 PM, EatVacuum said:

Is there any chance you could gives us a button to disable that rotation axis? But if not, I love these panels so much I'll live with it. Thanks for a really great mod!!

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Done  

  On 5/1/2016 at 3:57 PM, trooperMNG said:

you are right and very clear. It was my typo, I wrote z1 instead of s0. It's late and I'm studying economics, my fault Anyway, yeah for now KAS is the only solution, but I would strongly suggest some kind of mount. This was accomplished by @Mike-NZ for his now defunct ISS resurrection:

here is a nice picture of the mount

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My issue with a part like this is how specific its use is, but there does seem to be a fairly large demand for it. Perhaps if I made it a generic radial attachment point which you could embed a docking port into? 

 

The new release is up on SpaceDock. It's an interim release and lacks some of the features which have been discussed previously but is basically a stop-gap until I have time to do anything more than a bit of .cfg editing and Unity stuff. 

This release includes:

• Ability to toggle dual-axis sun tracking on the solar arrays
• Fixed shaders for 1.1.0 and above (specular for almost all parts and no more 'scorched' look
• Tweaked solar array textures
• Docking ports now only dock at certain angles (90˚ for CBMs, 60˚ for truss connectors)
• Began implementation of resource converters into science labs (early days yet)

As always please report any bugs/issues etc. etc. and I'll do my best to get them fixed!

 

[trooperMNG]

  On 5/2/2016 at 10:49 AM, benjee10 said:

My issue with a part like this is how specific its use is, but there does seem to be a fairly large demand for it. Perhaps if I made it a generic radial attachment point which you could embed a docking port into?

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That could also work nicely

[Omega482]

  On 5/2/2016 at 10:49 AM, benjee10 said:

Docking ports now only dock at certain angles (90˚ for CBMs, 60˚ for truss connectors)

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Now this is really interesting! If it works how i think it works? It should make station building a dream! No more fuss docking and having to undock due to alignment.

Sad to see that there are no .dds textures in this release. Its not too hard for me to convert them on my side though.

Edited May 2, 2016 by Omega482

[ndiver]

Does it really make sense to include a part with such limited use in the pack ?

As far as i understood, the Habtech mod was never intended to be a perfect reconstruction of the ISS. For that, you have the ISS mod. The Z1 and S0 are some elements of the ISS that are what they are as consequence of the construction of the ISS, but I think that the part that is currently available is doing perfectly its job.

[dlrk]

I created an MM config for use with TACLS. Each part contains the same kerbal-hours of supplies as the USILS config. It does not hold waste products,  howoever

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1ur3wnjlhctvqbo/TACLS.cfg?dl=0

[CobaltWolf]

  On 5/2/2016 at 10:49 AM, benjee10 said:

The Skylab-derived station is a very nice idea and something I'll look into for DIRECT in future, although that mod is more concerned with Shuttle-era or Shuttle-derived craft, which Skylab predates somewhat. In fact, the argument could be made that since Skylab is a reconditioned Saturn V stage I'd have to include all the Saturn rocket parts in DIRECT, which isn't something I'm wanting to do. Also I believe @CobaltWolf is planning Saturn parts for BDB which I suspect will include a Skylab!

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'Planning'.

[TheReadPanda]

  On 5/2/2016 at 10:49 AM, benjee10 said:

The rotation issue was actually something I thought was unsolvable until your comment made me look into it again. The problem is that the sun tracking capability is toggled by the animation which deploys the solar panels, and since this part uses two solar panel modules in the .cfg file (one for each tracking axis) that means you need two animations, one for each module. The way I tried to solve it originally was to have a very simple hidden object with a short animation, so that when you clicked extend panels it would run this hidden animation and engage the sun tracking in the root of the part. Unfortunately whenever I tried this, KSP would only recognise one animation, so you'd either be able to deploy the solar panels or toggle their sun tracking, never both. I figured that KSP only check for the first object with  animation it finds when loading the models, so it was loading one or the other but not both. I couldn't find a fix for that at the time. When looking into it today, however, I found an option in the animation component in Unity which actually allows you to attach multiple animations to one object (even if that object doesn't itself animate, the command to run the animation will propagate from there it seems) which means that you can now toggle both axes of rotation. It shows up as two options for 'Extend Panels' and unfortunately there's no way of changing that, but the top 'Extend Panels' will unlock the sun tracking while the bottom one will deploy the solar arrays themselves. 

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I'll be sure to test this! The issue I was having was it was tracking on the second axis (the base core part) even when the panels were retracted, so if this fixes that I'll be thrilled and so will my Kerbals on their ISS so that they can get bigger solar cells! I hear Jeb is annoyed that his latest graphics card won't run on the limited power they have right now.  

[Kerenatus]

Really beautiful IVA and models! Keep up the good work!

[CobaltWolf]

@benjee10 do you have plans for the Kibo's exposure platform? I have something along those lines but I'm struggling a little to figure out how it would work in-game.

[KerBlammo]

What a fantastic looking set of parts! Amazing.

I have been trying to build a station with these parts but keep on running into a serious issue.  no idea if its anything to do with this mod or not, but since there presumably are a lot of station builders reading this thread it seems like a good place to ask if anyone else has this problem:

sometimes while docking two sections together (or docking a crew vehicle to the station) the docking ports touch but instead of locking together they bounce off and at the same time the camera view goes crazy and I cannot reacquire the station.  If I switch back to the tracking station and then to the station I can see it ok but it is now on a suborbital trajectory.

 

I have so far lost three station and a crew vehicle this way.  The last time it happened was in 1.1.2 and the game crashed entirely.

 

[benjee10]

  On 5/2/2016 at 2:32 PM, TheReadPanda said:

I'll be sure to test this! The issue I was having was it was tracking on the second axis (the base core part) even when the panels were retracted, so if this fixes that I'll be thrilled and so will my Kerbals on their ISS so that they can get bigger solar cells! I hear Jeb is annoyed that his latest graphics card won't run on the limited power they have right now.  

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Yeah, it should do what you want it to!

  On 5/2/2016 at 4:56 PM, CobaltWolf said:

@benjee10 do you have plans for the Kibo's exposure platform? I have something along those lines but I'm struggling a little to figure out how it would work in-game.

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Yeah, that'll come with the full science integration update, I'm not sure how to do it either really. Perhaps with some unfolding parts so that it has a smaller form factor for launch. 

  On 5/2/2016 at 5:16 PM, KerBlammo said:

What a fantastic looking set of parts! Amazing.

I have been trying to build a station with these parts but keep on running into a serious issue.  no idea if its anything to do with this mod or not, but since there presumably are a lot of station builders reading this thread it seems like a good place to ask if anyone else has this problem:

sometimes while docking two sections together (or docking a crew vehicle to the station) the docking ports touch but instead of locking together they bounce off and at the same time the camera view goes crazy and I cannot reacquire the station.  If I switch back to the tracking station and then to the station I can see it ok but it is now on a suborbital trajectory.

 

I have so far lost three station and a crew vehicle this way.  The last time it happened was in 1.1.2 and the game crashed entirely.

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That's a stock bug unfortunately, the workaround is to quick save and reload when two craft come within 2.5km of each other. Then it all works okay. 

  On 5/2/2016 at 12:07 PM, Omega482 said:

Now this is really interesting! If it works how i think it works? It should make station building a dream! No more fuss docking and having to undock due to alignment.

Sad to see that there are no .dds textures in this release. Its not too hard for me to convert them on my side though.

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The ports won't automatically align themselves but they will refuse to dock unless they're lined up properly, so you can rotate the module around a little until it docks at the right angle. 

.dds textures are still in the pipeline and will happen eventually, but since I'm still working with the textures (adding and tweaking specular maps etc.) I don't really want to convert them all over just yet. Probably next update I would say. 

[CobaltWolf]

  On 5/2/2016 at 5:55 PM, benjee10 said:

Yeah, that'll come with the full science integration update, I'm not sure how to do it either really. Perhaps with some unfolding parts so that it has a smaller form factor for launch.

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My thought is to perhaps have the main module then have racks with different experiments that the players mount on, similar to Kerbal Planetary Base System's wedges in terms of profile. But then you're just left with the players sending up a module full of single use experiments. I think trying to keep it as a single part wouldn't be very good. But past that, I am not really sure. We'll have to talk on my stream some time when I'm working on it, figure it out.

[benjee10]

  On 5/2/2016 at 5:58 PM, CobaltWolf said:

My thought is to perhaps have the main module then have racks with different experiments that the players mount on, similar to Kerbal Planetary Base System's wedges in terms of profile. But then you're just left with the players sending up a module full of single use experiments. I think trying to keep it as a single part wouldn't be very good. But past that, I am not really sure. We'll have to talk on my stream some time when I'm working on it, figure it out.

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That seems like a pretty good idea actually, would work with KIS compatibility to allow you to change out the experiments if you wanted to. The issue then is why attach them to the station at all instead of just bringing the science parts up on their own?

 

Did a small update because I realised I uploaded the wrong file previously. I still had experimental docking port configs included from when I was testing the angle snaps in which I'd put the code in the wrong bit of the config! My bad. 

[CobaltWolf]

  On 5/2/2016 at 6:48 PM, benjee10 said:

That seems like a pretty good idea actually, would work with KIS compatibility to allow you to change out the experiments if you wanted to. The issue then is why attach them to the station at all instead of just bringing the science parts up on their own?

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Well for me that question is significantly easier to answer. DMagic's science plugin lets me set hard requirements for what parts or types of parts are needed on a vessel in order to run an experiment.

[legoclone09]

  On 5/2/2016 at 6:50 PM, CobaltWolf said:

Well for me that question is significantly easier to answer. DMagic's science plugin lets me set hard requirements for what parts or types of parts are needed on a vessel in order to run an experiment.

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Yeah, the main lab and the experiment package. Maybe a mounting point for the experiment? An indent in the frame allowing for the experiment to be placed in there and then taken out.

[KerBlammo]

  On 5/2/2016 at 5:55 PM, benjee10 said:

That's a stock bug unfortunately, the workaround is to quick save and reload when two craft come within 2.5km of each other. Then it all works okay. 

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Ahh.  Thank you!  I can go back to building the most awesome KSS ever now

[Mokmo]

Just saw the post on having two solar panel trackers, and surprisingly it's not an new idea: 
The Kosmos Space Station Parts Pack, now mostly defunct (was already maintained by third parties in late 2013) was using two modules like you do now. Your panels remind me much of his Balkan "solar sails" and work pretty much the same way as back then. But they were heavy!

#getoffmylawn

[trooperMNG]

The solar panels are working flawlessy. I have just completed a full step-by-step assembly of the ISS, third time is the good one! Once I forgot to add the multiple docking ports hub on Zvezda (and it affected all of the screenshot I had taken), the second time I forgot to add an adapter between Destiny and Unity. That was very tiring!

[benjee10]

  On 5/2/2016 at 6:50 PM, CobaltWolf said:

Well for me that question is significantly easier to answer. DMagic's science plugin lets me set hard requirements for what parts or types of parts are needed on a vessel in order to run an experiment.

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Interesting, I haven't used DMagic's plugin before, wasn't aware it could do that sort of thing. That could certainly work pretty well!

  On 5/2/2016 at 8:20 PM, trooperMNG said:

The solar panels are working flawlessy. I have just completed a full step-by-step assembly of the ISS, third time is the good one! Once I forgot to add the multiple docking ports hub on Zvezda (and it affected all of the screenshot I had taken), the second time I forgot to add an adapter between Destiny and Unity. That was very tiring!

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Brilliant! Glad they're working. 

How do people feel about the angle snap? It seems to work with varying success in testing. Initially it seemed to be working fine but then I've hit some instances where the ports won't connect at certain intervals. Is it a feature worth keeping? I can see some people not reading the fine print and sending a deluge of messages about docking ports being bugged. 

[CobaltWolf]

  On 5/2/2016 at 8:48 PM, benjee10 said:

Interesting, I haven't used DMagic's plugin before, wasn't aware it could do that sort of thing. That could certainly work pretty well!

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He's been steadily adding new features to it. I can't tell if he prototypes them in his mod, and pushes them to the generic version, or if they just get added to the generic version after he decides he wants them.

[Z3R0_0NL1N3]

  On 5/2/2016 at 10:49 AM, benjee10 said:

My issue with a part like this is how specific its use is, but there does seem to be a fairly large demand for it. Perhaps if I made it a generic radial attachment point which you could embed a docking port into? 

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That sounds alright to me. I suggested something like that a few pages back. The only thing is, I don't want it to use CBMs, both because it makes no sense for the truss to attach by pressurised docking ports, and second because it does make it stick up a bit higher. If you could do something like the 1.875m hex port, but instead make it a square 1.25m port, then it would match with the truss and be perfect. A final suggestion would be for the radial attachment part to have "decorative" struts. I'm sure that part can find all kinds of use as a generic radial attachment node, as well as for the ISS. It's a distinct alternative to the stock one.

Though I don't have any ideas for how to make Kibō Exposed Facility, I would like to add my support! The DMagic plugin sounds like a good idea, as does KIS compatibility.

[Z3R0_0NL1N3]

  On 5/2/2016 at 8:48 PM, benjee10 said:

How do people feel about the angle snap?

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Personally, I really like the idea of this feature. But why would you be placing them together in any other ways? Haven't tested it myself, but I vote keep.