[1.0+] CORE Solutions [19JAN16]

[tenkendojo]

awesome huge rockets! thanks for the effort!

[Enorats]

Maybe I'm just a complete idiot, but for some reason I can't get the Anvil IX to fly straight. Empty, full, with boosters, without, with fins, without, with a stupid amount of fins.. It hits around 20-25 km and just starts flipping all over the place like crazy. Even tried covering the top half in Vernors to make it stable.

Wait - totally got it to work. Locked the gimble and no issues at all anymore. She went from flipping over repeatedly to instantly flying straight. Something wrong with the gimble? That "-2 degrees" looks a little odd.

[likke_A_boss]

As a loyal Anvil user dating back to .22, when I started, I can say that I'm overjoyed to see these updated and rebalanced. Couldn't even fathom ding a career without them. Eagerly awaiting the Dune Raider and Fire Hawk!

Edit: Also, is the First Light coming to 1.0? It's an epic build, and once it gets some proper texturing it will be a real treat.

Edited May 7, 2015 by likke_A_boss

[Absolution]

Maybe I'm just a complete idiot, but for some reason I can't get the Anvil IX to fly straight. Empty, full, with boosters, without, with fins, without, with a stupid amount of fins.. It hits around 20-25 km and just starts flipping all over the place like crazy. Even tried covering the top half in Vernors to make it stable.

Wait - totally got it to work. Locked the gimble and no issues at all anymore. She went from flipping over repeatedly to instantly flying straight. Something wrong with the gimble? That "-2 degrees" looks a little odd.

You're certainly no idiot. The Anvil IX is just a real pain in the rear to fly. It's a very unconventional rocket design and the weight distribution is quite... goofy. The gimbal is negative 2 degrees due to some quirk in its flight characteristics I discovered during testing. When the gimbal was set to a positive number all command inputs during flight were reversed or backwards; I would steer left but the nose would go right and so forth. Fortunately I was allowed to set the gimbal to a negative number and it fixed the steering issue. Relatively speaking the Anvil IX has a very high gimbal range compared to its two smaller cousins. I found that no matter now many wings/fins I put onto the body that I couldn't develop enough aerodynamic counter force to fight the inevitable tip-over during flight. I'm not sure where that came from considering all of my rockets flew like a bloody dream before KSP 1.0. As a result I needed to overdo the gimbal to allow the Anvil IX to use it's engines to keep it pointed in a straight line. The side effect (which I am sure you experienced) is that about half way through the launch the Anvil IX becomes very, very sensitive to steering input. That is caused by a combination of the massive thrust to weight ratio coming from burning all of that fuel and the high gimbal range. I was able to solve that issue myself by progressively backing off the throttle little by little during the launch and keeping the T/W manageable.

I'm actually surprised you were able to fix your launch challenges by simply locking the gimbal. Did you also add other control methods (wings/fins) to offset the loss of engine steering? I'd love to see your variation of the Anvil IX and to understand how you managed to make it work for you.

---

The First Light will be coming back for sure. However, it's towards the end of my current to-do list. I've been neglecting the Dune Raider and Fire Hawk too long and I want to bring those up to my current standards. It also makes sense from a development standpoint because the Dune Raider fits inside of the Fire Hawk and the Fire Hawk fits inside of the First Light. I need to design all of them before I can design any of them if that makes sense. Might as well start at the little guy and work my way up.

[Nothalogh]

I've had some success by reducing thrust as it gets close to that magical moment.

That's exactly what they do in the real world

[Enorats]

Reducing thrust makes sense. I think the gimble thing worked for me because I've given up on performing gravity turns in atmosphere with any rocket in the new stock aero. If overresposiveness is the issue, then it was fixed by locking the gimble and letting the SAS only use torque wheels for any stabilization needed... and I just let it fly straight up until it reached 30,000 m and was all but out of the atmosphere. I think I had four of the solid boosters on it, and four of those new stock giant wings that are all but useless for anything as they're meant for a 747 and would never be used on a space plane. Put em right on the bottom in an attempt to increase drag down there and keep the bottom where it's supposed to be.

My only thought was that the issue was arising from the fuel being contained all in a single component (which is quite convenient for building purposes and part count), and that as it was used up (reaching ~ half a tank or so, as that was when issues started) the center of mass wasn't really moving like it does in "normal" rockets. In a regular rocket as the tanks empty they drain from the top down, and you lose weight up top and your center of mass shifts.. which can make your rocket flip over as the aero forces (drag) on the top end gets more leverage as your center of mass drops. With these, the tanks are all a single component so they won't behave in exactly the same manner. Not quite sure exactly what effects that would have though.

[Smurfalot]

I downloaded Core solutions, but noticed it no longer has Fire Hawk and Dune Raider are they available separately now or what?

[Absolution]

I downloaded Core solutions, but noticed it no longer has Fire Hawk and Dune Raider are they available separately now or what?

For the moment they have been removed from my pack due to KSP 1.0. They will be making a return soon.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

[Absolution]

Below is a WIP clay render of the new tire (bottom right) and the old tire (top left). Several things should leap off the page at you:

1: Less track-day-bro. More Sci-Fi.

There are a couple of reason why I went this way on the new design. First, the new design takes up fewer polygons (~1100 vs ~2400) despite the fact I have 3D tread included. Second, the tire is now bi-directional so it wont matter which side of the chassis you put it on; it will still work. That means no more awkward mirrored tire parts and confusing assembly. I also want to make this tire fit on future body parts I make for the Dune line of rovers.

2: Less suspension?

The suspension arms, which were never animated anyway, will become an integrated part of the main chassis. I would love to make the suspension arms travel up and down like the real thing (which I think is possible is KSP) but I only have a very basic understanding where to begin. I choose not to spend my time investigating that particular feature at this time. Hopefully I can do it in a future update but for now it is what it is. Also, by putting the suspension arms on the chassis it helps me make one tire mount to all four corners easily.

3: Real tread!

My old tire model/texture was very, very rudimentary. It had no normal, a very crummy texture and no smoothing. It worked okay but was, generally, very indicative of where my skills were at when I first did it (ie no skill). I've learned a lot about normal maps since then and they just wont cut it for what I want to do for my tires. I am forced to use a 3D tread but I think I've settled on a very low-poly but still very neat looking design. It's one of those subtle features that make the tire convincing.

Simultaneously with the Tire I have also begun working on optimizing the design for the chassis. The original concept behind the Dune Rovers was to make a series of common parts and the player would only need to swap out key parts to make several different designs. This is how real car manufacturers do things; their similarly sized vehicles tend to be based on one common chassis. I never followed through with the original plan but since I am revising the whole Dune Raider variant it makes sense for me to follow through with it now. Once I am done you will only need to pull off the "Raider" body and then drop on the "Crawler" body to switch between the "Dune Raider" and the "Dune Crawler". Everything else, or as much as I can, will be common between them. Easy.

A general note with my work so far is that there should be a significant optimization occurring. I wasted so many polygons on pointless and inefficient design features it's embarrassing! All told the Dune Raider was about 13,000 polygons when fully assembled. I'm not sure just how far I can go with the optimizing but I think I can reduce the poly count by at least 25%. No promises. However, I've never known the Dune Raider to be unstable or cause undue lag for players so maybe I will take the opportunity to add in some more detail and keep the poly count about the same. I am not sure where I want to go with that yet but I have some ideas on some details I would like to add.

More teasers as I progress in the re-design!

Good luck and have fun!

Edited May 13, 2015 by Absolution

[Neutrinovore]

Well, that's a lot more 'extraplanetary rover wheel' looking than the previous version, Abso... Me Likey! Although, a quick first impression: It's a bit 'Aliens APC' looking. Which isn't a bad thing, in my opinion. Keep on keepin' on, Absolution my friend.

Later!

[Absolution]

Well, that's a lot more 'extraplanetary rover wheel' looking than the previous version, Abso... Me Likey! Although, a quick first impression: It's a bit 'Aliens APC' looking. Which isn't a bad thing, in my opinion. Keep on keepin' on, Absolution my friend.

Later!

That's very observant of you. In fact, the APC from Aliens was a major inspiration for the new tire. On further reflection I think I may have been overly inspired which compromised my creativity.

Better? It certainly still has the Aliens look to it but I think it's at least a little more distinct. I raised the tread a little and removed the smaller center tread. Removing that small strip saves quite a few polygons and, honestly, it didn't really add anything to the overall tire anyway. Another thing that will set my tire apart from its inspiration wont be clear until the "rubber meets the road".

---

Below is a teaser for the chassis. As before the upper left is the old one and the lower right is the new one. I smoothed out the rounded features and made some significant improvements to the poly count. The old chassis combined with the old suspension arms (for an apples to apples comparison) was approximately 4600 polygons. The new chassis, as you see here, is approximately 2600 polygons. Yay!

---

Lastly we have the new chassis with the new tires mounted. It's coming together quite nicely!

*I apologize if the renders are hard to look at. I'm new to making renders and I'm still learning all those little lighting tricks that allow a relatively simple object appear to be very real. One must always start somewhere.

Good luck and have fun!

[Absolution]

I've got the renewed Dune Raider all modeled up. Now I just need to redo the textures. These shouldn't take too long considering they are very rudimentary. The first time I did these I just highlighted the edges and added some slight color variations. It turned out so well, IMO, that I see no reason to deviate from that. More updates soon!

[Absolution]

Update time:

I am almost finished with the Dune Raider. All I need to do is complete the animations for the lights and tweak some values in-game. Unfortunately the animations are very temperamental and getting them to work right is an exercise in frustration. I can follow the same set of instructions, to the letter, three times and get three different results. That means I can't promise when I will release but I hope to do it in the next couple of days. Heck, if I am lucky the animations will go smooth and I will be able to get this out the door before the weekend. Everything else is ready to go.

I could use some input on a future direction I am considering for the rovers. At the moment I rely on stock solar panels to provide the necessary electricity. This works okay but I'd like to avoid this work-around. Any time I try to design my own solar panels I have found them to be unreasonably fragile and, in fact, that's a big concern even when using stock panels. I am considering employing some form of fuel cell technology to generate electricity from other sources. There are a number of reasons why this makes sense from a game-play perspective. One, a player will have to pay attention to their fuel levels when adventuring. Two, it would be possible for the rover and its mother ship to share the same fuel type which drastically reduces the logistics.

It's a direction I am strongly leaning towards. Thoughts?

[Mecripp]

Can't wait to see the update and IMO the fuel cell would be the way to go

[Absolution]

It turns out that Lady Luck was with me today.

WELCOME BACK DUNE RAIDER!

https://kerbalstuff.com/mod/378/CORE%20-%20SOLUTIONS

[zvergk]

Please fix RAIDER wheels

[Absolution]

Please fix RAIDER wheels

Hello and thank you for downloading Raider. I apologize that the wheels are confusing to use. In the VAB or SPH you can rotate the wheels (or any other object) yourself using WASDQE. Unfortunately, the way I oriented the node axis allows a player to install the wheels backwards. I will indeed fix that in the near future but in the short term you can rotate the wheel yourself so that it mounts facing the right way. Try pressing "A" twice.

Furthermore, even after I point the node axis a different way you will still need to rotate the part to get it to hook up right. I will simply make it impossible to install the wheel backwards.

[Absolution]

It's been a whopping 5 months since my last post and I am sure that anyone who has bothered to check in has probably assumed this thing is dead. It's not and I apologize for making it appear so. The reason for my absence is in large part due to the Unity 5 transition that Squad has been working tirelessly on for several months. In short: I am terrified of what this means for my mods. Will they be utterly destroyed forcing me to start from scratch? Probably not but its a concern that's in the back of my mind.

Therefor, I've been very hesitant to commit serious hours into further development until KSP 1.1 is released and I determine what the damage is. I hadn't anticipated Squad taking so long on the update and the weeks very quickly turned into months. I fully understand the giant workload that Squad is dealing with and appreciate their hard work. This is simply the reality of early game development.

What's been going on with CORE? I've almost completely remodeled the First Light and put a small amount of effort into redesigning the Fire Hawk. Unfortunately my development cycle has been plagued with iteration as I haven't been able to nail down a good design for the Fire Hawk. Every time I finished drafting a good design I scrapped it the next day because it no longer pleased me. Wash, rinse, and repeat a dozen times and I've gotten quite burned out by my efforts. I hope to start sharing in-progress renders in a few weeks.

Finally, I like to offer a big, giant thank you to anyone out there still flying my mods. Even if there's just one person I'd consider my time well spent. Thank you and good luck in all of your adventures!

More info soon. :)

[Uthgood]

glad to hear that your still in the land of the living at least....glad to see you back posting

[Deltac]

[quote name='Absolution']It's been a whopping 5 months since my last post and I am sure that anyone who has bothered to check in has probably assumed this thing is dead. It's not and I apologize for making it appear so. The reason for my absence is in large part due to the Unity 5 transition that Squad has been working tirelessly on for several months. In short: I am terrified of what this means for my mods. Will they be utterly destroyed forcing me to start from scratch? Probably not but its a concern that's in the back of my mind.

Therefor, I've been very hesitant to commit serious hours into further development until KSP 1.1 is released and I determine what the damage is. I hadn't anticipated Squad taking so long on the update and the weeks very quickly turned into months. I fully understand the giant workload that Squad is dealing with and appreciate their hard work. This is simply the reality of early game development.

What's been going on with CORE? I've almost completely remodeled the First Light and put a small amount of effort into redesigning the Fire Hawk. Unfortunately my development cycle has been plagued with iteration as I haven't been able to nail down a good design for the Fire Hawk. Every time I finished drafting a good design I scrapped it the next day because it no longer pleased me. Wash, rinse, and repeat a dozen times and I've gotten quite burned out by my efforts. I hope to start sharing in-progress renders in a few weeks.

Finally, I like to offer a big, giant thank you to anyone out there still flying my mods. Even if there's just one person I'd consider my time well spent. Thank you and good luck in all of your adventures!

More info soon. :)[/QUOTE]

Well, we can tell you that Unity 5 dropped support of Concave Colliders and KSP 1.0.5 has a converter that converts any concave colliders to convex. Over on the [url=http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/24867-1-0-5-fasa-5-40]FASA[/url] thread, we're having problems with exploding rockets, which is par for the course.

[Absolution]

Getting pretty close now. The First Light is now remodeled, retextured, and is now heading into Unity 4 for the "make it work in KSP" treatment. While I write the configs and wrestle with the ever-a-pain-in-the-rear emissive textures you may enjoy some out of game renders.

...Enjoy!

http://imgur.com/a/cKZfN

[wasmic]

Kinda ironic that the rework is being finished right before the big Unity 5 update, which will probably break it. I've got to say, though, it looks really awesome this time around.

EDIT: Though it would probably look even better with a few colorized bits here and there. Perhaps some KSP-orange markings here and there?

Edited January 8, 2016 by wasmic

[Neutrinovore]

OOOHHhh!  The 'First Light' is looking nice, but I agree with Wasmic that it certainly needs a bit more color somewhere in there. Right now I think K.Yeon is doing some excellent texture work with his OPT mod, you might check that one out, Absolution.    Of course, you don't need to do all of the spaceplane 'leading-edge heat tiles' thing, but since I plan to land this ship on atmospheric planets, some heat resistant looking areas on the front and bottom wouldn't look out of place, IMHO.

Anyway, as always I look forward to trying out a new version of the First Light when it's ready.  Keep up the great work, Absolution!

Later! 

 

 

[Absolution]

I also agree that much more can be done to make the First Light more visually appealing but I decided not to spend the time over-thinking it. One of the problems I have had in the past is the texturing process was so slow and my skills were improving so fast that by the time I got to finishing the last texture the first texture looked like crap in comparison. This time through I did all the textures in a relatively short span of time to make sure that everything matched. As a consequence they are quite boring.

Furthermore, as much as my skills have improved there is still quite a ways to go. I've yet to do any type of strictly artistic flare on any of my textures and I am not confident that they will look as good as I imagine them to be. I envision stripes, vents, and other bits and bobs scattered around the hull but I'll need to practice and run some tests to see what works and what doesn't. I also intend to experiment with more 3D features once I make sure that it runs smoothly in-game. All of this, and more, is hopefully going to happen someday but my priority now is to get it flying.

Also, there is no need to remind me about the impending doom that is: Unity 5. I am terrified enough as it is.

[Neutrinovore]

That's cool, Abs.    It's not really like it looks BAD, I'd take it as it looks now, I usually end up attaching all manner of extra greeblies to my ships anyway, i.e. antennas, science bits, radiators, solar panels, etc.

And about the Unity 5 thing, yeah... I'm pretty sure KSP 1.1 is going to break virtually every mod in existence, not looking forward to it.