[1.12.X] Feline Utility Rovers v1.3.4 (28. April 2022)

[Skywalket]

On 7/16/2018 at 10:27 PM, r1chardj0n3s said:

Malemute is a good step up from the Lynx - have you seen it?

Yes I have, but I still want to see some more rover parts in a circular-ish form factor. Don't get me wrong, the Malemute is amazing, but I like the VTOL properties of the Lynx. And if the wheels and engines were interchangeable with the Bobcat, that would be even better!

[Nils277]

On 7/15/2018 at 10:30 AM, r1chardj0n3s said:

Awesome, thanks!!

I don't know whether you're interested in wish items, but an adaptor for Lynx to 1.25 and/or Lynx to Planetary Base System form factor would be super awesome :-)

Edit: OMG I didn't even realise you're responsible for KPBS too - another of my favourite mods! Do you have a Patreon or even just some way for me to shout you a beer?

Hmm, i remember that i did have plans for an adapter between KPBS and FUR that i wanted to add to KPBS. I did not get the time yet though to do that. Not sure about the adapter to 1.25...will have to think about that.

I do not have Patreon or similar to get money for my mods as they are as much a hobby for me as playing them is for you.  If you really want to spend some money, donating for a good cause is always a good way: e.g. for the Huntington's Disease Foundation 

On 7/17/2018 at 2:39 AM, Skywalket said:

Speaking of wish items, how about a new rover series? Like the Bobcat? In other words, a Lynx parts in a 1.875 form factor. I'd really like to see this. Thanks Nils!

Sorry, but i'm afraid that FUR and KPBS are and will be my only two mods for KSP. Being more aware than ever how limited time can be i don't think i can afford the time to create a new full scale mod. That'll be a task for another modder.

Edited July 19, 2018 by Nils277

[Skywalket]

On 7/19/2018 at 5:36 AM, Nils277 said:

Hmm, i remember that i did have plans for an adapter between KPBS and FUR that i wanted to add to KPBS. I did not get the time yet though to do that. Not sure about the adapter to 1.25...will have to think about that.

I do not have Patreon or similar to get money for my mods as they are as much a hobby for me as playing them is for you.  If you really want to spend some money, donating for a good cause is always a good way: e.g. for the Huntington's Disease Foundation 

Sorry, but i'm afraid that FUR and KPBS are and will be my only two mods for KSP. Being more aware than ever how limited time can be i don't think i can afford the time to create a new full scale mod. That'll be a task for another modder.

It's nice to that someone would rather donate to charity than make a profit. Thank you for considering, and I understand the time restrictions. I will ask other modders, but I doubt they will be able to surpass what you have done with the Lynx.

[Jammer-TD]

In version 1.2.6 for1.4.x ksp the file "KerbetrotterLtd\FelineUtilityRover\FelineUtilityRover.version"  --

the 3rd line doesn't respond to that link.

 and the url link [line=4] points to ::https://github.com/Nils277/FelineUtilityRover/releases

and the correct link appears to be plural on "rovers" >>"https://github.com/Nils277/FelineUtilityRovers/releases

FYI

Thanks for your hard work 

We Love This MOD.

Jammer-TD

 

[Gr@y]

Great parts pack, except one little thing: 2 meters isnt' enough for safe hover flight. Rotors can't manage to compensate terain curvature.

Edited July 22, 2018 by Gr@y

[Nils277]

18 hours ago, Jammer-TD said:

In version 1.2.6 for1.4.x ksp the file "KerbetrotterLtd\FelineUtilityRover\FelineUtilityRover.version"  --

the 3rd line doesn't respond to that link.

 and the url link [line=4] points to ::https://github.com/Nils277/FelineUtilityRover/releases

and the correct link appears to be plural on "rovers" >>"https://github.com/Nils277/FelineUtilityRovers/releases

FYI

Thanks for your hard work 

We Love This MOD.

Jammer-TD

 

You are right, thanks for the report. Will be corrected in the next version.

15 hours ago, Gr@y said:

Great parts pack, except one little thing: 2 meters isnt' enough for safe hover flight. Rotors can't manage to compensate terain curvature.

The hover engines are not meant to be able to be usable in full speed over difficult terrain. Just like a wheeled rover will likely flip over or worse when passing the same terrain with an equal speed. The maximal hover hight is also acutally 4m

The limit for 4m is also due to technical restrictions. All KSC buildings are considered terrain in KSP. So when to rover hovers high enough so that one or more hover engines can get on top of a building in hover mode the rover would immediately flip over. If you really want to hover higher, go into the "GameData/KerbetrotterLtd/FelineUtilityRover/Parts/Engine" folder and open the files "HoverEngine.cfg" and "HoverEngine_rear.cfg" search in both files for the line "maxHoverHeight = 4" and change it to whatever height you want. 

Edited July 23, 2018 by Nils277

[se5a]

This mod has surprising attention to detail, I like how things are easy to attach to the inside surface of the service modules. even stock parts are poor in that regard.

one problem I keep running into though is it's a little hard to get inside a rover, it seems you've got to be at exactly the right hight, and having to maneuver a kerbal to get to just the right spot for the "Board" option to show up gets tedious really fast.

anyway to make this a bit easier?

 

In this particular case, grabbing made it come up but in other cases this often does not work. I had this sitting on the ground without wheels or ladder, and found it impossible to board.

[se5a]

Your hitches are perfect for docking tiny ships into cargo bays of motherships:

 

Unfortunately this little shuttle didn't go far yet, it had a mission to the surface of the Mun, but after undocking, and clearing the motherhsip, Trimon Kerbal realised that he'd not have enough Dv to get it back to the ship from the surface, even if he added in the Dv of the RCS! I guess those surface samples for C7 Aerospace will have to wait.   

It was a good test of the shuttle and docking system though, it'll be perfect on Minmus.

Edited August 9, 2018 by se5a

[Catbus]

I've been using Feline Utility Rovers for a while and loving it, including in 1.4.5. However, I just started using CKAN to manage my mods, and it shows FUR as being compatible only up through 1.4.4. Is that something that's within your power to fix?

[se5a]

So this is happening on one of my ships:

to

unfortunatly I suspect it's causing my ship to explode if I switch away and back again.

if I had an engineer on the ship I could detach the hitch completely to check if this is the case,  my theory is that the cargo bay is trying to orentate itself to the hitch which is seperating it(the cargo bay) from the rest of the ship when I switch to it. explosions result.

I've tried undocking it, but when I undock it separates between the ball and the hitch on the shuttle, rather than between the ball and the hitch on the ship (which is kind of strange, since the active hitch is the bit with the cup)

and it's the ball which appears to be rotationally off. so undocking leaves the ball (which is rotationally kinked) on the ship.

I've also tried unlocking the hitch but it doesn't help at all.

[Nils277]

On 8/24/2018 at 8:09 PM, Catbus said:

I've been using Feline Utility Rovers for a while and loving it, including in 1.4.5. However, I just started using CKAN to manage my mods, and it shows FUR as being compatible only up through 1.4.4. Is that something that's within your power to fix?

From the version file it should be usable for all versions of KSP 1.4.+ will take a look and try to fix that in the next update.

8 hours ago, se5a said:

So this is happening on one of my ships:

to

unfortunatly I suspect it's causing my ship to explode if I switch away and back again.

if I had an engineer on the ship I could detach the hitch completely to check if this is the case,  my theory is that the cargo bay is trying to orentate itself to the hitch which is seperating it(the cargo bay) from the rest of the ship when I switch to it. explosions result.

I've tried undocking it, but when I undock it separates between the ball and the hitch on the shuttle, rather than between the ball and the hitch on the ship (which is kind of strange, since the active hitch is the bit with the cup)

and it's the ball which appears to be rotationally off. so undocking leaves the ball (which is rotationally kinked) on the ship.

I've also tried unlocking the hitch but it doesn't help at all.

I'm not really sure what how it can be fixed. Since the hitches, and the docking port are using the smallest type of attachnode i suspect that the forces from launching the ship were so high that the attach nodes bend too much. I think some struts might have mitigated that problem. Since the docking hitch saves its original orientation it might be that it tries to bend back against the bend cause by the external forces. I'm sorry to say, but i doubt that your craft can be saved without an engineer.

[se5a]

Launching was fine, I've been to the mun and back since then.

Though possibly during the last atmobreak something happened... except that doesn't make sense either, since I've raised the periapsis since then.

I'll have a look at the save file and see if I can figure out how the rotation of parts are saved.

The bit that's getting to me is that it seems to be exerting force when the ship loads into the scene when it shouldn't be.

Edit:

I changed rotation1 and rotation2 in the ModuleKerbetrotterHitch on this save from an even earlier save, it still looks funky, but it appears to have stopped affecting the cargobay and so far it doesn't appear to blow up if I switch away and back again.

what are these two rotations and what do they do?

Edited August 29, 2018 by se5a

[se5a]

I've had this happen again, on a different ship. it too had something funky with the hitches going on. fortunately I caught it before it got bad enough that the ship started falling to bits, and I had an engineer on board.

Taking the crooked adapter off and putting it back on again resulted in a still crooked adapter, until I took the active hitch off and put that back on again, then attached the adapter to to hitch, then the shuttle back onto the adapter. doing that seems to have 'fixed' it. for now.

I also noticed that one of the active hitches had moved sideways from the node it was attached to, however it was the other active hitch that had the crooked adapter

(this ship had two attached shuttles).

I suspect there's something odd with how the adapter attempts to align the attached ship when it gets bumped. there's some sort of error that is increasing over time and getting saved, and it's applying force to parts it shouldn't be.

It's hard to reproduce without having a long lived ship with a hitch, I'm unsure what is causing the problem to start happening. though this ship also did an atmo brake, so maybe there's something in that.

Edited September 6, 2018 by se5a

[Starwaster]

2 hours ago, se5a said:

I've had this happen again, on a different ship. it too had something funky with the hitches going on. fortunately I caught it before it got bad enough that the ship started falling to bits, and I had an engineer on board.

Taking the crooked adapter off and putting it back on again resulted in a still crooked adapter, until I took the active hitch off and put that back on again, then attached the adapter to to hitch, then the shuttle back onto the adapter. doing that seems to have 'fixed' it. for now.

I also noticed that one of the active hitches had moved sideways from the node it was attached to, however it was the other active hitch that had the crooked adapter

(this ship had two attached shuttles).

I suspect there's something odd with how the adapter attempts to align the attached ship when it gets bumped. there's some sort of error that is increasing over time and getting saved, and it's applying force to parts it shouldn't be.

It's hard to reproduce without having a long lived ship with a hitch, I'm unsure what is causing the problem to start happening. though this ship also did an atmo brake, so maybe there's something in that.

Sounds like you might have autostruts enabled on those parts or their parents. I like autostruts and I use that feature alot but some parts don't play well with it, notably wheels and I would suspect that hitches would be even worse.

On 7/23/2018 at 4:44 AM, Nils277 said:

You are right, thanks for the report. Will be corrected in the next version.

The hover engines are not meant to be able to be usable in full speed over difficult terrain. Just like a wheeled rover will likely flip over or worse when passing the same terrain with an equal speed. The maximal hover hight is also acutally 4m

The limit for 4m is also due to technical restrictions. All KSC buildings are considered terrain in KSP. So when to rover hovers high enough so that one or more hover engines can get on top of a building in hover mode the rover would immediately flip over. If you really want to hover higher, go into the "GameData/KerbetrotterLtd/FelineUtilityRover/Parts/Engine" folder and open the files "HoverEngine.cfg" and "HoverEngine_rear.cfg" search in both files for the line "maxHoverHeight = 4" and change it to whatever height you want. 

You know what hover engines are REALLY good for? "Hold my beer and watch this" moments.  

[se5a]

pretty sure there's no autostruts on those parts, but I'll double check next time I load it up.

[Nils277]

On 8/29/2018 at 9:36 PM, se5a said:

Launching was fine, I've been to the mun and back since then.

Though possibly during the last atmobreak something happened... except that doesn't make sense either, since I've raised the periapsis since then.

I'll have a look at the save file and see if I can figure out how the rotation of parts are saved.

The bit that's getting to me is that it seems to be exerting force when the ship loads into the scene when it shouldn't be.

Edit:

I changed rotation1 and rotation2 in the ModuleKerbetrotterHitch on this save from an even earlier save, it still looks funky, but it appears to have stopped affecting the cargobay and so far it doesn't appear to blow up if I switch away and back again.

what are these two rotations and what do they do?

rotation1 and rotation2 depict the relative rotation change of the movable part of the hitch in regard to the part before and after the hitch. Depending on the direction of the hitch, either rotation1 or rotation2 changes when the hitch rotates. When the hitches are in default state, they should be (0,0,0,1)

What are they in your case?
Is the hitch locked or unlocked? (Was it unlocked at some time before?)

21 hours ago, se5a said:

I've had this happen again, on a different ship. it too had something funky with the hitches going on. fortunately I caught it before it got bad enough that the ship started falling to bits, and I had an engineer on board.

Taking the crooked adapter off and putting it back on again resulted in a still crooked adapter, until I took the active hitch off and put that back on again, then attached the adapter to to hitch, then the shuttle back onto the adapter. doing that seems to have 'fixed' it. for now.

I also noticed that one of the active hitches had moved sideways from the node it was attached to, however it was the other active hitch that had the crooked adapter

(this ship had two attached shuttles).

I suspect there's something odd with how the adapter attempts to align the attached ship when it gets bumped. there's some sort of error that is increasing over time and getting saved, and it's applying force to parts it shouldn't be.

It's hard to reproduce without having a long lived ship with a hitch, I'm unsure what is causing the problem to start happening. though this ship also did an atmo brake, so maybe there's something in that.

This is indeed a very hard to find bug. It is the first time this problem is mentionend since this mod was released. Have you secured the payload with extra struts to secure it during atmo break? This might at least mitigate the problem .
It should prevent the node itself from bending which might cause a difference between the saved relative orientation and the actual relative orientation. I have nearly no time at the moment to find and solve the cause of this problem...especially as it seems to only rarely occure.  

Edited September 7, 2018 by Nils277

[STT1]

My game keeps crashing during the loading phase when it reaches the "wheels" file of this mod. How should I send you the KSP.log file?

EDIT: Never mind, found the mod conflict. Had nothing to do with FAR, I just misread the version for one of my mods.

Edited September 7, 2018 by STT1

[se5a]

No autostrut on these parts.

rotations on the original ship which is broken again:

                    rotation1 = (-3.59844012E-06, 8.57389296E-07, -8.4508963E-07, 1.00000012)
                    rotation2 = (0.0833686069, -0.251122355, -0.0833751857, 0.960747659)

Hitches were locked and never unlocked.

I've not used struts since the whole idea was a small redockable part. I could use the eva struts but that'd be a bit of a pain.

I guess most people are not using the hitches for long periods of time, ie trip to destination then unloading it onto the ground. maybe being on the ground helps stop it from happening.

I'll keep an eye on it and see if I can figure out what causes it.

[eberkain]

my rover seems to rock side to side uncontrollably sometimes.   Are there any general building tips that would help with something like that?  

[Starwaster]

3 hours ago, eberkain said:

my rover seems to rock side to side uncontrollably sometimes.   Are there any general building tips that would help with something like that?  

Sounds like autostruts again....

Or not....

[eberkain]

7 hours ago, Starwaster said:

Sounds like autostruts again....

Or not....

There may have been some autostruts on there, I will check next time I send one out. 

[Starwaster]

On 9/11/2018 at 6:28 AM, eberkain said:

There may have been some autostruts on there, I will check next time I send one out. 

When they act up, it's usually when you reload the craft

[Dep_Opt]

Small issue, not even a bug per se: the nodes on the Lynx Canine Adaptor aren't actually lined up right. On the Malemute side, it's too high. This has made progress on my double-ended CatDog rover stall somewhat...

EDIT: So I've realised WHY they're set that way. Currently it makes the attachment nodes for the wheels all the same height. WHich is useful. And editing the model shape for the adaptor as opposed to just a quick moving the nodes takes a bit more work. Fair enough. Would be nice, but hardly a priority. 

Edited September 18, 2018 by Dep_Opt

[Nils277]

On 9/7/2018 at 9:58 PM, se5a said:

No autostrut on these parts.

rotations on the original ship which is broken again:

                    rotation1 = (-3.59844012E-06, 8.57389296E-07, -8.4508963E-07, 1.00000012)
                    rotation2 = (0.0833686069, -0.251122355, -0.0833751857, 0.960747659)

Hitches were locked and never unlocked.

I've not used struts since the whole idea was a small redockable part. I could use the eva struts but that'd be a bit of a pain.

I guess most people are not using the hitches for long periods of time, ie trip to destination then unloading it onto the ground. maybe being on the ground helps stop it from happening.

I'll keep an eye on it and see if I can figure out what causes it.

Thanks! If you happen to have a save file before the error occures and the problem can be reproduced reliably, i would be happy to see it to find and hopefully fix the problem.

On 9/18/2018 at 6:33 PM, Dep_Opt said:

Small issue, not even a bug per se: the nodes on the Lynx Canine Adaptor aren't actually lined up right. On the Malemute side, it's too high. This has made progress on my double-ended CatDog rover stall somewhat...

EDIT: So I've realised WHY they're set that way. Currently it makes the attachment nodes for the wheels all the same height. WHich is useful. And editing the model shape for the adaptor as opposed to just a quick moving the nodes takes a bit more work. Fair enough. Would be nice, but hardly a priority. 

Hmm, changing the adapter to not have the wheels on the same height seems a bit weird to me. What height would you expect? In a way tha the top of the rovers is the same?

[Coolinee Kerman]

On 1/21/2017 at 2:54 AM, JPLRepo said:

where is the best site to download i tryed it and it did not work