[1.1] TOP SECRET! (1.0.11) Top Secret Bases for Kerbal Konstructs

[Eskandare]

4 hours ago, colmo said:

Finally got to play with it and I love both The Block and the animated hangars.

Suggestion - The Block needs access tunnels, perhaps three of them in the centre of the three walls not adjacent to the lift - fit their entrances with the hangar doors, and if they're buried, they're just service tunnels anyway; if they're high above ground, there are other static mods to built roadways and ramps, or build a simple hairpin roadway to the base of the model for each.

There's so much space down there, the mind boggles with the potential uses. Perhaps a personnel elevator which only has room for Kerbals and so can move a lot faster than the main lift would also add to the accessibility. The old <REDACTED> base had a staircase, which I presume would add many more colliders than a simple lift.

Another variant of The Block would be one with an animated sliding door instead of the lift, splitting open to allow craft below to take to the sky.

I noticed the helipads on The Block which weren't launch points - I presume it's not possible to have multiple launch sites on the same part? Perhaps they could be split off as launch sites in their own right?

Actually, that is a great idea. Although the camera would have to be very close to the Kerbal due to how the colliders behave. I'll look at the model and see if i can add a gantry stair way back up to the surface. Out comes the knife tool again. I'll be sure to add it to Bulwark Air Station (Details of Bulwark air station are classified and require Clearance Level One).

Also, I was looking into getting permission to add the old <REDACTED> base to the list.

Edited April 25, 2016 by Eskandare

[colmo]

Camera issues gave me another idea - put fixed cameras in elevators, stairs and hangars, and some sort of surveillance room static or pod (there are pros and cons to each, not sure on current state of camera mods or ability to tie them to statics) with screens showing their feed in glorious 60s grainy monochrome.

[Jeb-head-mug kerman]

On 23 April 2016 at 6:41 PM, Eskandare said:

In the OP it says click the <REDACTED>!

 

 

 

 

Just kidding, the door stripe on the far right is the button for the hanger doors. In future I just may make this an actual switch so it is more obvious.

Ok thanks!

[colmo]

I was thinking how useful it would be if we could actually dig out a crater to drop The Block and similar statics into...and had an idea. @Thomas P.'s Kerbal Terrain System is able to remove terrain all the way to sea level. I don't see any recent progress, but it might be the ticket. Also, 1.1.1 patch has "Added optional PQS shader using all mappings (for modders)." which sounds relevant.

 

[theonegalen]

I love everything about it except how much it stands out from the terrain. :-/

[Eskandare]

21 minutes ago, theonegalen said:

I love everything about it except how much it stands out from the terrain. :-/

I'm looking into that.

[ValCab33]

Quote

Suggestion - The Block needs access tunnels, perhaps three of them in the centre of the three walls not adjacent to the lift - fit their entrances with the hangar doors, and if they're buried, they're just service tunnels anyway; if they're high above ground, there are other static mods to built roadways and ramps, or build a simple hairpin roadway to the base of the model for each.

Yes. And I suggest a tunnel just large enough for a fighter jet, flying in it Ace Combat style.
It would be awesome.

[Eskandare]

5 hours ago, ValCab33 said:

Yes. And I suggest a tunnel just large enough for a fighter jet, flying in it Ace Combat style.
It would be awesome.

That's the fourth unannounced base. I have a few sketches down, but nothing concrete yet.

I'm somewhat trying to figure out how the terrain shader works, and how certain elements in the terrain are put together. This helps all 3 of my large structure Konstructs mods. That, and more buildings.

The tunnel access ways are something that will take time since I have to cut holes in my already UV'd meshes.

[MightyDarkStar]

To be honest I'd really like this base but actually on land .

[Eskandare]

2 hours ago, MightyDarkStar said:

To be honest I'd really like this base but actually on land .

On land? Do you mean near sea level or just not a massive concrete block in the mountains?

[MightyDarkStar]

3 hours ago, Eskandare said:

On land? Do you mean near sea level or just not a massive concrete block in the mountains?

Near sea level, perhaps on an island near the large crater?

[Eskandare]

2 hours ago, MightyDarkStar said:

Near sea level, perhaps on an island near the large crater?

You see, the problem is that the underground hanger and dimensions of the base won't well in that area, but that is my personal preference. You can play around with it if you want. 

[CraftedDoge20PlaysKSP1.0.5]

this mod keep crashing my ksp i need low res version

[Enceos]

1 hour ago, CraftedDoge20PlaysKSP1.0.5 said:

this mod keep crashing my ksp i need low res version

All the textures are very tiny. The models themselves are as big as 60Mb, you can't compress them.

@Eskandare Do you think you can compress TheBlock a bit? Particularly the floodlights, each super floodlight takes 13 thousands triangles and there are 36 of them, thats 468 thousands of triangles only for floodlights.

Also each separate object in the hierarchy of the model makes a texture draw call to the video card, the more calls a model makes the more heavy it is on video performance. There's a reason why stock models are so light on performance, most of them are welded. Merging objects won't affect your UVs, but obviously will require some rework in the Unity.

The anomaly4 also could use optimizing.

Edited May 3, 2016 by Enceos

[Eskandare]

57 minutes ago, Enceos said:

All the textures are very tiny. The models themselves are as big as 60Mb, you can't compress them.

@Eskandare Do you think you can compress TheBlock a bit? Particularly the floodlights, each super floodlight takes 13 thousands triangles and there are 36 of them, thats 468 thousands of triangles only for floodlights.

Also each separate object in the hierarchy of the model makes a texture draw call to the video card, the more calls a model makes the more heavy it is on video performance. There's a reason why stock models are so light on performance, most of them are welded. Merging objects won't affect your UVs, but obviously will require some rework in the Unity.

The anomaly4 also could use optimizing.

The flood lights, I'll have a look at, I'll see if I can reduce the number of draws to the card. 

anomaly 4 I'll look at what is hanging that up.

I created everything using a Radeon HD 5770 1GB and I haven't had any problems.

Come to think of it, there is a unity plugin that merges objects with the same material, ill look into that.

Edited May 3, 2016 by Eskandare

[Enceos]

19 hours ago, Eskandare said:

I created everything using a Radeon HD 5770 1GB and I haven't had any problems.

Yeah, I also stopped having FPS drops after I upgraded my video card. But there are lots of guys who play KSP on laptops which are not upgradeable in this area. Parts with such a high number of draw calls can reduce performance to a crawl there.

I found some unnecessary faces in your models, players don't see them as they're hidden inside the mesh, but a video card loads and processes them anyway. This cap face on cyllinders generates triangles when imported to Unity.

 

20 triangles per cap * 2 cyllinder ends * 144 cyllinders in one floodlight * 36 floodlights = 207360 triangles can be trimmed from your model without any pain. That's already 25% optimization for the model.

Edited May 4, 2016 by Enceos

[Eskandare]

39 minutes ago, Enceos said:

Yeah, I also stopped having FPS drops after I upgraded my video card. But there are lots of guys who play KSP on laptops which are not upgradeable in this sense. Parts with such a high number of draw calls can reduce performance to a crawl there.

And here I thought an HD 5770 was low end. My other machine, I use for my actual KSP game play, has an R9 390 8GB to handle complex geometries. Like I said I'll try to optimize the meshes and remove any unnecessary geometry. 

The gantries were old models I had put together ages ago. I may just make newer simpler models to replace the overly complex ones.

Edited May 4, 2016 by Eskandare

[theonegalen]

8 hours ago, Eskandare said:

And here I thought an HD 5770 was low end. My other machine, I use for my actual KSP game play, has an R9 390 8GB to handle complex geometries. Like I said I'll try to optimize the meshes and remove any unnecessary geometry. 

The gantries were old models I had put together ages ago. I may just make newer simpler models to replace the overly complex ones.

This laptop player thanks you.

[Stone Blue]

13 minutes ago, theonegalen said:

This laptop player thanks you.

Ditto...

 

[Ruedii]

Maybe add an Area 48?  (48bits is the maximum virtual address space of current generation desktop x86_64 processors.)

The other option is Area 42 (another geek joke, that for all things geeky you better get.)

BTW, I love the excellent use of minimalist layout based drawing to reduce texture requirement.

If you want to go further, you could look into the old KSP Dev notes about how the current generation KSC's building structure detail is generated using geometry shaders.  It looks like portions of your design could benefit from this instead of being built manually.

Edited May 13, 2016 by Ruedii
Moar detail.

[Eskandare]

9 hours ago, Ruedii said:

Maybe add an Area 48?  (48bits is the maximum virtual address space of current generation desktop x86_64 processors.)

The other option is Area 42 (another geek joke, that for all things geeky you better get.)

BTW, I love the excellent use of minimalist layout based drawing to reduce texture requirement.

If you want to go further, you could look into the old KSP Dev notes about how the current generation KSC's building structure detail is generated using geometry shaders.  It looks like portions of your design could benefit from this instead of being built manually.

There is already an Area 110011 in Kerbin Side, it is 51 in binary.

If I make an area 42, it would need a Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy reference somewhere.

48 would certainly have some x64 reference. 

[ckirky]

2 hours ago, Eskandare said:

There is already an Area 110011 in Kerbin Side, it is 51 in binary.

If I make an area 42, it would need a Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy reference somewhere.

48 would certainly have some x64 reference. 

search up "the meaning of life, the universe and everything" in google.... 

[Ruedii]

If I recall, 51 is the meaning of life in Star Trek.  It's a joke about it being adjusted for inflation or something.

 

[CraftedDoge20PlaysKSP1.0.5]

that thing looks like fort zancudo from grand theft auto 5 i think

i'm just running on kerbin city mod on my computer has core 2 duo 2 GB Ram And 250 GB Hard Drives

it worked fine on me but top secret mod lag about 2 FPS damn i like that base can compress to low res?

[RMAJ_gaming]

hey love the mod it looks amazing, but i can't seem to close or open the underground and above ground hangers. the underground one open most of the way and then stopped and the normal hangers don't seem to be opening at all. i don't know maybe i'm missing some thing like what Far Right Stripe to Open/Close the Doors i have to click on. anyways can anyone help me because i would really like to use the hangers to store my top secret aircraft.