Making a spaceplane mod. Never modded anything big in ksp.

[TheNarwhalArmy]

I am trying to make a spaceplane mod. It seems I have two options of what I could do. I could make it multiple parts and use connection nodes (that I don't know how to make), or I could make it one part and use no connection nodes.  I am willing to do whatever is easier. All the things I want to have in the craft are, the essentials (fuel, oxidizer, engines, and wings with lift), a small cargo pay, and landing gear. Two of the big things I don't know how to do are how to make animations that actually change the bounding box of the part like landing gear (I use blender to model the parts), and how to make a cargo bay. I know I'm asking for a lot, but answering even one of these questions is very helpful.

[artwhaley]

I USED to know the answers to all of your questions.  I'll do what I can to answer some of them.  But first I'm going to give the answers to ones you didn't ask!   

As the guy who spent months putting the SNC Dreamchaser into the game, I'm going to point out that these sorts of parts that only go together one way to build one ship SORT OF miss the spirit of KSP.  Most of the joy in the game comes from the lego approach - building a custom craft for a new mission.   After I built the dreamchaser...  it was really fun to fly it... for a day or two.  But then what?  And I think most that downloaded it had the same reaction eventually.  Oh cool!   Fun to launch it!   Takes a few tries to land it.   Now...  nyah.  Nothing left to do!   I know there were some people who do more role play in their KSP that used it as a crew service ship... but...  not that many.   None of that is telling you not to build it.  I had so much fun building the Dreamchaser.   But... if you build it, do it for the fun of making it.   Not because you want to churn out a popular mod.  That's good advice for ANYTHING you mod though.  Do it for you.  Don't chase the forum's whims.

Now, to actually answer some questions.   There are advantages to cutting it up into pieces.   Chief among those is the ability to distribute mass, lifting, and control surface numbers to make the thing actually fly in different configurations.  Somewhere I've got a TERRIBLE little hacky one part rescue shuttle I built...  And the only way to make a single part shuttle controllable was to give it an absurdly powerful reaction wheel so I could just ignore silly things like 'aerodynamics.'  It wasn't very fun or realistic to fly. There are also some things that are tough with a single part - making ailerons move in opposition for example.  So I THINK you'll want it to be multiple parts.  Putting attachment nodes between pieces isn't that hard, and you were going to have to learn to do it anyway to attach the plane to stuff or payloads to the cargo bay, right?   

For the landing gear and the cargo bay - you just animate the pieces in blender.  Then in Unity you name the animation.  The collider bounding boxes and wheels are parented to the animated visible pieces, so they move appropriately.   When you get to the cargo bay...  KSP colliders can't be concave.  So instead of making a bowl shaped single collider for the bay, you have to build up the sides and bottoms and doors out of a bunch of simple colliders without hollow areas.  

All that you need to know exists in tutorials...  but...  we do need to do some tutorial curation.   At the moment if you google the wrong thing you could find someone doing a fantastic tutorial on how to import models into KSP 0.19, when things HAD to be an fbx, and there was only one way to configure attach nodes, and dinosaurs roamed the mun practically.   

If you persist at it, feel free to shout with questions.  I don't remember all of the answers but I can try to point you the right ways.  Be prepared-  between the outdated tutorials and the fact that some things you'll just have to learn by trial and error there will be frustrations and things you'll have to do over 4 times.  It'll take a while.  But it's really fun too!  

I definitely advise that you START with a few simpler pieces before you get into a full space plane!  Make sure you can get a fuel tank and an engine into the game... then tack something bigger!

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

 

On 3/21/2018 at 2:31 AM, TheNarwhalArmy said:

I am trying to make a spaceplane mod.

 

 

On 3/28/2018 at 7:22 AM, artwhaley said:

I definitely advise that you START with a few simpler pieces before you get into a full space plane!  Make sure you can get a fuel tank and an engine into the game... then tack something bigger!

I'll second this , and most of the other related comments.  Diving in at the deep end only leads to frustration, dissatisfaction and abandonment ,  and trust me  a space plane mod and all the bits that go with it , and the other bits you'll undoubtedly be asked to add, is not on the easy list of my first mod

There's plenty of us here who've been exactly where you are now and are happy to help out with advice and examples, don't be afraid to ask.

And your threads not in the best place to seek such advice, modelling and texturing discussion seems a better venue, and the place you'll find the answers to a lot of the questions you'll have

Edited April 4, 2018 by SpannerMonkey(smce)