[1.3 - 1.8.1] Decoupler Shroud

[Electr0ninja]

@MilkSage
In order:
Maybe, No, I think so, and yes they make rockets look way cooler.

Edited April 15, 2019 by Electr0ninja

[Electr0ninja]

Does anyone know of additional compatible texture packs for this mod. Basic Procedural Textures is awesome for sure, but are there others that will work as well?
I have tried searching, but a lot of the old texture packs have fallen into disrepair or are not available. I am probably just not looking in the right places.

And if there are no others, is there a tutorial or specification page so that I can make one?

Edited April 17, 2019 by Electr0ninja

[navot]

On 4/13/2019 at 4:56 PM, MilkSage said:

Does this mod give any improvements to:

- a rocket's aerodynamics?

- a rocket's rigidity

- stock shrouds are massless? and these are massless as well?

To elaborate on what @Electr0ninja  said:

The mod does affect aerodynamics, but it's not working as well as I would like it to.

No changes are made to the rigidity or the mass of the rocket

[navot]

On 4/17/2019 at 9:00 AM, Electr0ninja said:

Does anyone know of additional compatible texture packs for this mod. Basic Procedural Textures is awesome for sure, but are there others that will work as well?
I have tried searching, but a lot of the old texture packs have fallen into disrepair or are not available. I am probably just not looking in the right places.

And if there are no others, is there a tutorial or specification page so that I can make one?

I'm not aware of any other texture packs. What do you mean by old texture packs? If you mean texture packs for procedural parts of fairings or similar, they don't work because the texture configs structured differently.

A while back, I worked on an improving the way the texture configs work, but I didn't quite finish. The current version of this can be found on this branch: https://github.com/nav0t/DecouplerShroud/tree/update. It makes creating config files a bit easier and supports different shaders (can be used with Textures Unlimited for example). I don't know of any big issues with this Decoupler Shroud version right now, so feel free to try it out.

Here is the short version of how to create a texture pack:

•  Create a new folder in your GameData folder with the name of your texture pack
• Put any texture you want to use in the folder
• Create a .cfg file for every texture in the folder
  1. Copy one of the standard configs from DecouplerShroud/Textures/TextureConfigs (I'd recommend TexDark.cfg for the simple version, if you want to see some variables TexDefault.cfg)
  2. Change the name to something unique
  3. Change any parameters you want.
  4. This step really should be elaborated more, but that'll be it for now. If you have questions or feature requests feel free to ask
• Here are some pointers for creating cfg files for the github version
  • If you just want to switch the texture, "texture = _MainTex" is the color texture and "texture = _BumpMap" is for the normal map. Change the path to a file in your texture pack folder
  • The v = 2 tells the program that it is a config using features of the Decoupler Shroud version currently on github.
  • The base = default means you start off with the default texture config file and only the parameters that are given in your config file will be changed. This way you have to copy and paste less.
  • The MaterialVariant regions are only used, if the specified shader is available. This way you can set different parameters if Textures Unlimited is installed, or the KSP version has the new shiny shader
• If you want to make a texture pack for the current version, look at the way Basic Procedural Textures changes the configs

Hope this makes some sense.

Edit: Here is a small example on how to create your own texture pack, and here is some documentation of the config files.

Edited September 28, 2019 by navot

[Electr0ninja]

Thanks a ton dude. Once this is 1.7.0 compatible, I am totally gonna try to roll a small texture pack. Your instructions seem simple enough.

Edited April 18, 2019 by Electr0ninja

[navot]

I've worked some more on the texturing update, and here is the current state of things. The current version can be found on this GitHub branch.

It's now easier to make custom logo textures, so if you want to really customize your rockets by adding a logo to the interstage, you can. Here's a screenshot of this in action.

Texture configs can now change the shader that is used to create the materials. This means, Textures Unlimited shaders, or the shader introduced in KSP 1.5 can now be used. Texture configs can support different shaders, so the materials can be loaded regardless of the KSP version or if Textures Unlimited is installed. Here are some examples of reflective materials.

   

There are also some big changes to how the texture config files work (old config files will still be read correctly). I've made a quick example of how to make a custom texture pack here. It also contains a .txt file documenting showning some of the parameters and what they do.

The code for this update should be mostly done. What remains to be done is to create better configs for the textures (the Textures Unlimited version of most textures looks bad at the moment, and most textures don't use the KSP 1.5 shader at the moment).

If anyone has any feedback on the texturing or feature requests / change requests, please let me know.

[lodiped]

Any news on the next update? Is it working with 1.7?

[DStaal]

39 minutes ago, lodiped said:

Any news on the next update? Is it working with 1.7?

Works fine for me.

[Puggonaut]

Is this Mod compatible with Restock ? and Restock + ?  

[DStaal]

33 minutes ago, Puggonaut said:

Is this Mod compatible with Restock ? and Restock + ?  

Seems to work fine for me. 

[Vince_K]

I love this mod but if someone can make a texture pack to match with restock, it would be great. thank you 

[Puggonaut]

23 hours ago, DStaal said:

Seems to work fine for me. 

Thanks 

[JebIsDeadBaby]

Hello, 

it seems that FAR does not see the shroud. If you switch to transsonic design tab in FAR UI and plot rocket's curvature, you'll see it does not follow the shroud (but whatever is behind it). Procedural fairings work OK with FAR, so I guess it's a solvable problem for procedurally generated shrouds as well. Would you kindly take a look at this problem? 

EDIT: just realised I asked this question in March, but I got no answer so anyway... Maybe it's an easy fix. 

Edited June 3, 2019 by JebIsDeadBaby

[adm-frb]

Hey Navot,

I was just wondering if you'd ever considered adding your decoupler shroud function to engine plates?

 

EDIT

Reason I'm asking is that sometimes I use decoupler shroud to override stock shrouds, but I can't do this with engine plates as the decoupler shroud function is not available with the engine plates 

Edited June 5, 2019 by adm-frb

[Daniel Prates]

This mod is wonderful. I often design craft with a 2.5 tank feeding a 1.25 engine, and the stock auto-shroud would always make things look weird....

[Gordon Dry]

On 6/3/2019 at 2:15 PM, JebIsDeadBaby said:

it seems that FAR does not see the shroud

Perhaps it's because of this? @navot

GameData\DecouplerShroud\DecouplerShroud.cfg

		//Does the shroud get colliders by default (Still experimental)
		collisionEnabled = false

 

[navot]

6 hours ago, Gordon Dry said:

Perhaps it's because of this? @navot

GameData\DecouplerShroud\DecouplerShroud.cfg

		//Does the shroud get colliders by default (Still experimental)
		collisionEnabled = false

 

That is a remnant of when I tried to add colliders to the shrouds. This shouldn't really do anything in the released version of the mod (that I'm aware of).

[AVaughan]

12 hours ago, navot said:

That is a remnant of when I tried to add colliders to the shrouds. This shouldn't really do anything in the released version of the mod (that I'm aware of).

But it might mean when FAR creates it's voxel map of the craft, that it doesn't see the shrouds.  (I'm not sure what FAR bases its voxel version of the craft on, but colliders seem like a reasonable choice).

Edited June 6, 2019 by AVaughan

[navot]

On 6/3/2019 at 2:15 PM, JebIsDeadBaby said:

Hello, 

it seems that FAR does not see the shroud. If you switch to transsonic design tab in FAR UI and plot rocket's curvature, you'll see it does not follow the shroud (but whatever is behind it). Procedural fairings work OK with FAR, so I guess it's a solvable problem for procedurally generated shrouds as well. Would you kindly take a look at this problem? 

EDIT: just realised I asked this question in March, but I got no answer so anyway... Maybe it's an easy fix. 

The mod now works with FAR. I already saw your post in March and tried to implement it but gave up a bit too quickly. But hey, it's here now

[JebIsDeadBaby]

Oh, that's great to hear man! Thanks a lot and thanks for the mod!

[BadRocket]

I just discovered Decoupler Shroud, and I had to post this message to say thanks to @navot! I was having nonstop problems using the stock procedural fairings with custom 10-meter tanks (SaturnV-ish clone on RSS) using 1.7.1, and out of desperation I searched the forum and found this thread. Five minutes later, and all my problems were solved. It instantly became one of my favorite mods.

It works perfectly, every time. I glanced at the code, and I'm seriously wondering how in the world you figured out all those internals. This is an absolutely brilliant add-on.

T H A N K   Y O U ! !  

[Jognt]

On 1/12/2019 at 4:57 PM, DStaal said:

There's a conflict between this mod and ThorTech.  The problem is that ThorTech adds a custom ablator module to all parts, which triggers the exclusion patch in this pack.  I’ve solved it in my game by changing the exclusion to:

@PART[HeatShield*,InflatableHeatShield]:NEEDS[DecouplerShroud]:AFTER[DecouplerShroud]

However that of course doesn't cover third-party heat shields that might have a decoupler.  I'm willing to put up with that.

@navot Note that :AFTER already checks whether that mod exists, so you don’t need the NEEDS there. 

Re: dragcubes, why not set those to 0? What’s wrong with them? Not being generated properly?

You certainly made this mod into a beauty btw!

Edited July 11, 2019 by Jognt

[JebIsDeadBaby]

Hi @navot. I've just noticed that the shroud does not occlude light, so any solar panels hidden beneath it work with no problem. Do you think you could fix it?

Rgds. 

EDIT: so it seems to happen when you unload the ship (in my case, I leave to the Tracking Station). The shroud blocks light when the ship is originally loaded but stops doing it the moment the ship gets unloaded and keeps letting light in even when the ship gets loaded again. So I'm not sure ATM if it's a bug in your mod, maybe it's Kerbalism, which comes with a number of electrics related bugs of it's own. 

Edited July 19, 2019 by JebIsDeadBaby

[navot]

On 7/11/2019 at 6:39 AM, Jognt said:

@navot Note that :AFTER already checks whether that mod exists, so you don’t need the NEEDS there. 

Re: dragcubes, why not set those to 0? What’s wrong with them? Not being generated properly?

You certainly made this mod into a beauty btw!

The thing is, I don't know how well the dragcubes are generated (a dragcube is just a bunch of numbers). Right now, the mod calls a function in the KSP code which generates a dragcube for a part somehow, but how you are supposed to use it is not really documented. I'm also not certain what the correct values for a dracube would look like. For example, some values correspond to the are of your part, but when I calculated the area by hand, it differed from the generated dragcube.

Right now the generated dragcubes mostly seem to reduce the drag on the rocket, but there are apparently some cases where the opposite is the case.

FAR has a completely different aerodynamics system. It actually has a way to debug the aerodynamics (you can look at the voxels), and everything looks fine there. So if you are using FAR, the aerodynamics of the shroud might be better than with the stock dragcubes

[navot]

On 7/19/2019 at 7:00 PM, JebIsDeadBaby said:

Hi @navot. I've just noticed that the shroud does not occlude light, so any solar panels hidden beneath it work with no problem. Do you think you could fix it?

Rgds. 

EDIT: so it seems to happen when you unload the ship (in my case, I leave to the Tracking Station). The shroud blocks light when the ship is originally loaded but stops doing it the moment the ship gets unloaded and keeps letting light in even when the ship gets loaded again. So I'm not sure ATM if it's a bug in your mod, maybe it's Kerbalism, which comes with a number of electrics related bugs of it's own. 

I don't know how KSP determines whether there is a part occluding the solar panel. My guess would be that it's using the colliders, since that would be more performant to calculate. The shrouds don't have colliders at the moment. I experimented with giving the shroud colliders, but it didn't work too well (I think the shroud tended to explode other parts or be indestructible).