SM Chute NOW OBSOLETE USE THE NEW VNG

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

 

SM CHUTE

Eva Parachutes for Kerbals

NEEDS Kerbal Inventory System

 UPDATE v0.2.3 RealChute Compatible

NOT FAR compatible

Adds two styles of EVA parachute, a traditional circular canopy and a more modern wing style canopy

 

                               Notes these [parachutes are fitted using the magic that is the KIS plugin. as such there are some differences between the function of these parachutes and those fitted to craft and or supplied by other mods. The parachute has to be manually fitted at present, selected from your Kerbals KIS inventory and equipped using the button. The parachutes currently attach to the jet pack position

MOST IMPORTANT The parachutes will not auto deploy, (I've no idea why ) So in use you must deploy the chute yourself, once triggered it will go through the semi and fully deployed states just like a normal chute     

Notes on FAR and RealChute and why these are not compatible

As some of you have have taken the time to delve into KSP modding EVA is a tricky thing to play with, KIS does it very well but still has it's limitations.   I'm going to have to relate this awkwardly to KIS as it's the only plugin currently that allows manipulation of EVA equipment and functions. While testing and working on BD FPS we'd already come across some issues, if only half the things we dreamed up were possible, but we did try, ah well ne'er mind.  

Anyway, back to the real issue,  why these chutes will not work in FAR when every other mod chute does? Well i tried everything imaginable, every test, every tweak, anything however vague i could think of, and on the way learned some interesting stuff,  and then it dawned that I'd missed a 1 vitally important test, that test being, DO these damnable things work if attached to a craft and not a kerbal?  With a good deal of ambivalence I have to say that they do! and very well at that. After all I've tried and messed up in process this leaves me only able to draw one conclusion, that being that while these chutes will server very well as probe chutes they will never in their current form be suitable for use by Kerbals

Known issues.

Parachutes do not self deploy to initial state

Parachute boxes can be tricky to select, I have fitted them with a large collider, but the issue remains. I believe it is  related to how KIS activates colliders .

Happy floating

Get it from SpaceDock

Or should SpaceDock be suffering a gremlin attack It'sHere

I placed this mod here but I really don't know how I could develop it more, it's so simple, and so easy to diy, I don't know why it wasn't done before, forgive me if it was of course. Anyway I'll leave it here for now and see how it goes.

HOW TO USE YOUR EVA PARACHUTE FOR BEST RESULTS

 

Hi all yes the button is new, i don't ever expect anyone to bother, you are certainly not obliged in any way, I was asked by several people this week, if there was a donation button in order to show their appreciation, the wife saw the requests, and after a some discussion i have given in and added a donation facility

and of course as always it's an ARR license                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Edited October 1, 2016 by SpannerMonkey(smce)
typo

[Gerbwerz]

Been waiting for this! Great work. 

Only issue is the chute never fully deploys. It comes out but then never fully opens. I have RealChute installed. I can hit space bar to deploy once attached, or by right clicking on chute (very hard to do) and clicking deploy chute. Neither works and the poor Kerbal bounces. 

[leopardted]

Very impressive mod! I am downloading it right now, very good substitute for Vanguard Chutes. May I ask what kind of balloon are you using in your screenshot? Want to do some parachute testing.

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

1 hour ago, Gerbwerz said:

Been waiting for this! Great work. 

Only issue is the chute never fully deploys. It comes out but then never fully opens. I have RealChute installed. I can hit space bar to deploy once attached, or by right clicking on chute (very hard to do) and clicking deploy chute. Neither works and the poor Kerbal bounces. 

That.s very odd as I performed dozens of jump tests and all chutes did fully open at the set altitude. As you can see from the shots taken minutes before uploading, those chutes are fully deployed. Clicking did work in tests. As mentioned in the OP the chutes do not work in eva in the same way as those provided by vangaurd and real chutes, both use a dedicated plugin to achieve the results.

I've just re tested them both, and both are fully deploying, are you expecting massive parachutes? because they are not huge. Admittedly the touch down speed is still a little high, but my Kerbs are a tough bunch. preferring a rough landing to taking forever to land. I'll slow them down a tad and maybe make them larger?

1 hour ago, leopardted said:

Very impressive mod! I am downloading it right now, very good substitute for Vanguard Chutes. May I ask what kind of balloon are you using in your screenshot? Want to do some parachute testing.

Thanks(hope it works for you) The balloon is part of some stuff I've Been doing for the HL Airships rebirth and still in testing, although I love it already

[Z3R0_0NL1N3]

Hey, something this game hasn't had in a while! Thanks for bringing it back!

[BT Industries]

Good job!!!

Cant wait to test this.

Wont be to good for saving my Kerbals during a plane crash as I'll have to equip and active it really quickly.

Vanguard Chutes had a feature where you pressed "space" and "F" and it activated the chute and chutes on all nearby kerbals.

It also had a ejection system which was great for crafts with lots of kerbals as a quick click of the abort button and all your kerbals jump out.

Just some ideas...

Your canopy's look much better though.

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

33 minutes ago, BT Industries said:

Stuff

Thanks, and I know all about vanguard, I've been using them for years, if it had still been working this would have stayed for personal use only(like so many things do) if it had even been done at all.

.This just piggy backs an existing plugin and that I feel is as far as it goes. I know there are at least two people working on fixing vanguard right now, perhaps when it's done i could just convert these over to use that system which was undoubtedly better.

[justsomenoodles]

I am having similar issues to Gerbwerz. First off, great mod, eva parachutes are central to my aircraft testing. Many kerbals will be lost without them  Anyhoo, the parachutes aren't fully deploying for me either. I have KIS, RealChute, and FAR installed, among several parts mods. Perhaps one of them is causing the issue? Don't really have time to test this theory right now, but perhaps it will lend a clue. Can't wait to get this fully working for my install, thanks again for making such a needed mod.

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

9 hours ago, justsomenoodles said:

I am having similar issues to Gerbwerz. First off, great mod, eva parachutes are central to my aircraft testing. Many kerbals will be lost without them  Anyhoo, the parachutes aren't fully deploying for me either. I have KIS, RealChute, and FAR installed, among several parts mods. Perhaps one of them is causing the issue? Don't really have time to test this theory right now, but perhaps it will lend a clue. Can't wait to get this fully working for my install, thanks again for making such a needed mod.

Hi, sorry to hear it's not working for you either, I've pinged the FAR guys to ask the relevant questions, as  I don't use FAR or RC it's a bit tricky. Thanks for trying it all the same and rest assured I am working to get it sorted for everybody

[k0spwn]

Thanks a lot for this man ! I've been waiting for so long for a mod like this !!! 

 

The only problem is that I'm not a big fan of KIS and if it could be a way to have it on kerbals anytime that'd be perfect but I assume that you put it with KIS for realism questions ?

 

 

Anyway great mod, great modder ! thx !

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

4 minutes ago, k0spwn said:

Thanks a lot for this man ! I've been waiting for so long for a mod like this !!! 

 

The only problem is that I'm not a big fan of KIS and if it could be a way to have it on kerbals anytime that'd be perfect but I assume that you put it with KIS for realism questions ?

 

 

Anyway great mod, great modder ! thx !

Hi and thanks,  as for using KIS, realism didn't come into it, not something i worry about too much, it was set up with KIS because I am familiar with how it all works and how to position items on Kerbals'

I'm now looking to see if could be converted to work with RealChute and if it's reworked Vanguard. Though that still leaves the issue of how to attach the chute, Vanguard would be preferred as you can auto assign and make an MM patch to fit everything automatically,  something that still wouldn't be possible with RealChute without KIS

[MMG]

I've follow the steps, but the parachutes still didn't deploy normally. Maybe you'd like have a test in FAR or with RealChute.

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

1 hour ago, MMG said:

I've follow the steps, but the parachutes still didn't deploy normally. Maybe you'd like have a test in FAR or with RealChute.

Doing that right now

edit

A short while later

Well yes, with FAR they are about as much use as a jello sun hat, digging into real chute now to see if can get an MM patch to do a fix

Edited May 16, 2016 by SpannerMonkey(smce)
tested

[Gerbwerz]

23 hours ago, SpannerMonkey(smce) said:

That.s very odd as I performed dozens of jump tests and all chutes did fully open at the set altitude. As you can see from the shots taken minutes before uploading, those chutes are fully deployed. Clicking did work in tests. As mentioned in the OP the chutes do not work in eva in the same way as those provided by vangaurd and real chutes, both use a dedicated plugin to achieve the results.

I've just re tested them both, and both are fully deploying, are you expecting massive parachutes? because they are not huge. Admittedly the touch down speed is still a little high, but my Kerbs are a tough bunch. preferring a rough landing to taking forever to land. I'll slow them down a tad and maybe make them larger?

Thanks(hope it works for you) The balloon is part of some stuff I've Been doing for the HL Airships rebirth and still in testing, although I love it already

I have FAR installed as well, so thats the issue then. 

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

Hi all, It's transpired after thorough investigations that the chutes are not at this point compatible with RealChutes, FAR and FAR's RealChuteLight. Both mods use module manager to remove the stock parachute model and replace it with one of their own.

This could be a real nightmare because as you may know modules do not behave on EVA as they would in a flight scene, and many modules will refuse to work completely. I'm hoping that this isn't the case with the RealChuteLight parachute module.

Quietly waiting/hoping for some input from elsewhere on how to correctly form a MM patch that will either preserve the stock behavior in isolation or make the damnable things compatible

Cheers

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

Notes on FAR and RealChute and why these are not compatible

As some of you who have taken the time to delve into KSP modding, you'll know EVA is a tricky thing to play with, KIS does it very well but still has it's limitations.   I'm going to have to relate this awkwardly to KIS as it's the only plugin currently that allows manipulation of EVA equipment and functions. While testing and working on BD FPS we'd already come across some issues, if only half the things we dreamed up were possible, but we did try, ah well ne'er mind.  

Anyway, back to the real issue,  why these chutes will not work in FAR when every other mod chute does? Well i tried everything imaginable, every test, every tweak, anything however vague i could think of, and on the way learned some interesting stuff,  and then it dawned that I'd missed a 1 vitally important test, that test being, DO these damnable things work if attached to a craft and not a kerbal?  With a good deal of ambivalence I have to say that they do! and very well at that. After all I've tried and messed up in process this leaves me only able to draw one conclusion, that being that while these chutes will server very well as probe chutes they will never in their current form be suitable for use by Kerbals. So it's a game limitation, and the only way around that is to write or find a plugin that provides the ability and function these chutes need, and annoyingly It's not FAR or RealChute, although any plugin will need to function alongside those two due to the way they  do what they do, which is a damn sight more than just changing a module in a cfg.

Disappointing for me and for a lot of you I guess, this is not the end of this story. But in the meantime while I teach a well old dog a new trick or two, here is pictorial evidence that when attached to a craft in a FAR environment  they work just fine

[Nansuchao]

Probably stupid question, but what happen if you put a ship between the Kerbal and the chute? A simple probe core or a structural part aren't a ship for KSP?

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

9 hours ago, Nansuchao said:

Probably stupid question, but what happen if you put a ship between the Kerbal and the chute? A simple probe core or a structural part aren't a ship for KSP?

Not a stupid question if you don't know the answer , I don't know the answer either, but I'm going to find out right now, snag is attaching anything  to the Kerbal seems to change the objects properties, so it may not achieve anything ( too much pessimism here)

[MK3424]

May i ask if you could add a paraglider? 

Parachutes are great but kerbals need something more rigid.

[DasBananenbrot]

I really like this. Thoug I won't use it so far, since FAR and RealChute are indispensable for me. Still I will follow this closely. Keep rocking!

 

 

[Domfluff]

In terms of "where to go from here?", the obvious steps if at all possible would be to have controllable parachutes for gliding, and from there ultimately the Rogallo wing for capsules, which is something which still doesn't exist.

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

3 hours ago, Domfluff said:

In terms of "where to go from here?", the obvious steps if at all possible would be to have controllable parachutes for gliding, and from there ultimately the Rogallo wing for capsules, which is something which still doesn't exist.

Working on controllable parachutes, fiendishly tricky to accomplish, have already tried para glider affair but kerbals have no access to throttle controls in EVA, reaction wheels behave very badly indeed, also tried added RCS to provide motive power but that is non functional in eva also.

Further news I've just pushed  little update, minor tweaks only, realigned attachment position, and removed sm graphic from chute and added user flag option to both instead.

Also working on combining this modlet and a light weight version of VNG, the basic plugin itself works well, all stock features are there, I just want to be able to select different chutes, as counting the standard VNG square chute there could be a choice of 3. The major fly in the ointment  is that the VNG wont play nice with FAR either.

On 19/05/2016 at 6:12 AM, Nansuchao said:

Probably stupid question, but what happen if you put a ship between the Kerbal and the chute? A simple probe core or a structural part aren't a ship for KSP?

And the answer is exactly the same thing, attaching anything to a kerbal changes it's behavior in some way, and sadly other items cannot ac as an insulator against this problem

Edited May 20, 2016 by SpannerMonkey(smce)

[Raptor831]

Hey, @SpannerMonkey(smce) I saw your question in the FAR thread about the configs. Wanted to answer here as opposed to clutter up the FAR thread.

You should try to change the "inner" MODULE nodes to the name of whatever your current chute MODULE is. So, if RealChute is installed:

MODULE
{
    name = ModuleKrEjectPilot
    MODULE
    {
        name = RealChuteFAR
        ...snip...
    }
}

In my Real Fuels engine configs, there's a similar MODULE, and it needed to match the engine module I was using. Don't have any idea about VNG or the chute modules myself, but that's worth a shot.

[Nightside]

So @Angel-125 was able to get something going with the throttle on EVA with the Jetwing. Might be interesting to look into.

 

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

9 hours ago, Raptor831 said:

helpful stuff

I'll definitely give that a try cheers.