Flat-Bottom Shuttle Systems

[DStaal]

My understanding is that for Unity games - like KSP - .dds is *always* the smallest in use... because everything else will be converted to .dds internally.  So for anything else, you're just making the game engine store two versions.

[NiL]

9 hours ago, Starlord Kerman said:

If I were to change it, would .tga be the smallest? I like the png because it's so easy to edit, someone could easily add a different color option or something. I guess if enough people feel the sizes are too big I could change that in the next update.

>tga is smaller

It's not all about size. .dds, as i understand, is a sort of a native video card format so video card is converting all images in .dds to use them. Of course, it increases RAM usage, so if images are in .dds already - video card don't need to convert them and it, obviously, reduses RAM usage, so not only mod with textures in .dds is lighter, it also runs much faster. 

>.pngs are easy to edit

Well, there are a lot of online image converters that support .png-.dds (and .dds-.png) convertation. If i personally want to change the texture of the part that is currently in .dds, i convert .dds to .png, edit texture and convert back (although I personally do not often need to change the textures, but it's not important). Also i believe that for majority of people enough to have a stockalike main texture and a couple extra kind-of-stockalike textures to match other color schemes - for Squad parts it's "stock", "black-and-white" and "soviet" textures, for a spaceplane it could be something like "stock", "dark" and "gray" textures maybe? I mean i believe not many people would use something like green, red or blue textures. Also if you really need easy changing of color schemes, you can use something like Textures Unlimited mod, but it's unstable and a lot of people have troubles with it.

[JadeOfMaar]

@Starlord Kerman DDS means "DirectDraw Surface" and is a raw format from the perspective of the GPU. DDS files contain "mipmaps" which are alternate sizes of the same texture, sampled from the actual texture and rendered when an object is different distances away (increasingly further = increasingly smaller) probably to optimize texture use for things that are far away and still in loading range. DDS files can be bigger than any other format due to the mipmaps but it's easier for the GPU to handle so it's preferred regardless of file size vs TGA or PNG (which a few of us have just said) which are converted to DDS on load, anyway. And in KSP's case, maybe the case for all Unity games, the non-DDS imagery are not unloaded after being converted.

PNGs are easier to edit up to a point. When you have a transparency gradient (any bits fading or with any opacity percentage other than 0% or 100%) or a lot of transparent bits around, it becomes miserable to edit for anyone who doesn't have the source PSD (and this is granted the given mod allows people to edit and retexture. Assuming this mod has a restrictive license that wouldn't be a problem as then nobody can or will try to retexture your parts).

I'm also gonna quote myself here, just in case you didn't notice. Please pardon me if you did.

On 3/30/2019 at 6:05 PM, JadeOfMaar said:

In addition to there being too many files in PNG format, too many of the textures are needlessly high resolution. Except for the wings, it is possible to get away with reducing all the textures to1024x1024 without noticeably losing quality (otherwise 2048x2048 for parts that are both rather big and rather detailed). Too many textures are 4096x4096 right now. Shrinking them down can shrink the download to 1/2, maybe 1/4 its current size.

Edited April 2, 2019 by JadeOfMaar

[Sabor]

I can't actually get these parts to fly. Just a few fuselage parts, command module, regular engines, and the wings, and it just doesn't fly.  It'll pull up but instead of taking off it just acts as its own speed brake, going down the runway with its nose pitched up but unable to lift off.  With brute force and overspeed it'll fly, but the roll is WAY too sensitive. Much more so than pitch.  You can get this thing to do 160rpm

Edited April 5, 2019 by Sabor

[mostlydave]

12 hours ago, Sabor said:

I can't actually get these parts to fly. Just a few fuselage parts, command module, regular engines, and the wings, and it just doesn't fly.  It'll pull up but instead of taking off it just acts as its own speed brake, going down the runway with its nose pitched up but unable to lift off.  With brute force and overspeed it'll fly, but the roll is WAY too sensitive. Much more so than pitch.  You can get this thing to do 160rpm

I’m having the same issue, the wings are really difficult to attach and my craft just tries to plow into the ground. My center of gravity was really far back, but I didn’t have much luck even after trying to move it.

 

does anyone have functional craft files to share?

[JadeOfMaar]

@mostlydave @Sabor These points are likely the root of your problem:

1. Your main (rear) gear causing the back of your shuttle to be elevated vs the front. This leads to negative lift or downforce and will unavoidably pin you to the runway as you gain speed. The immense lift ratings of this mod's wings cause the pinning to be far more intense.
2. Your main gear are too far back from the CoM. They should be as close as possible because the aircraft pivots on them when nosing up. Too many airplane designers are not aware of this and suffer this like cattle walking into a slaughter machine.
3. Sometimes your shuttle just needs canards near the nose or tail fins far behind the CoM to create the proper required deflection force to help nose up. This is if by whatever reason, this mod's elevons fail to produce enough deflection force on their own.
4. Check thrust torque in KER, RCS Build Aid or whatever similar mod you use. If you use very powerful engines to push your shuttle, you might be thrusting over your CoM much more than under or through it. Your thrust and thrust torque together may be overpowering the elevons.

If somehow none of these apply to you, screenshots in the SPH with markers (CoM etc) and KER visible would be welcome. Then I can possibly tell you that you're just building your shuttles very wrong. (That said I only briefly used this mod so I can't give you a 100% answer.)

[Sabor]

With me it's none of those issues.  It basically acts exactly like an aircraft that's overweight trying to take off, if you've ever seen that. Rotating is no problem, but it'll just charge down the runway on its main gear with its nose in the air unable to lift off unless you're going a ridiculous take-off speed (140m/s+). And at that speed the roll is so sensitive you can't control it or stay level to save your life, and I use a controller with analog sticks.  Using stock MK2 parts and wings with the same engines and sort of design and overall weight, everything works as it should

I've been making shuttles/space planes forever, it's what I like most. And these parts are gorgeous and remind me a lot of the Delta Glider from Orbiter, so I'd really like to get them working correctly

Edited April 6, 2019 by Sabor

[kremonia]

Looks great. But something tells me that it will be bad to fly when FAR installed.

 

Actually It does not look very bad. You definitely need autopilot and precise speed control in FAR and Stock but it gonna make it to orbit.
 

Spoiler

 

Edited April 6, 2019 by kremonia
Field Test Performed.

[Starlord Kerman]

On 4/5/2019 at 1:50 PM, mostlydave said:

functional craft files to share

Here, I have put a craft file on github. Let me know if this helps.

https://github.com/StarlordKerman/ExampleCrafts

On 4/5/2019 at 1:43 AM, Sabor said:

unable to lift off

This example craft should lift off fine, if you want to take a look.

[kremonia]

Found problem on docking port that opens at the bottom. No control from here. Very hard to dock. Would be nice to use custom containers instead of interstellar fuel switch.

[Starlord Kerman]

It looks like the module manager is needed for 1.7, otherwise there are B9 part switch errors.

[Starlord Kerman]

updated for ksp 1.7

[Stone Blue]

well, I can see why the textures shouldnt be converted to.dds...
I thought 129MB for this parts pack was high, with .pngs.
Converted them all to dds, and it comes out at 0.97 GIGAbytes :face_palm:

Looking at the textures, having the majority of them at 2K, and even some 4K textures, that seems a little excessive... vOv

[JadeOfMaar]

33 minutes ago, Stone Blue said:

well, I can see why the textures shouldnt be converted to.dds...
I thought 129MB for this parts pack was high, with .pngs.
Converted them all to dds, and it comes out at 0.97 GIGAbytes :face_palm:

Looking at the textures, having the majority of them at 2K, and even some 4K textures, that seems a little excessive... vOv

The majority of these textures were 4096x4096 when I looked the other day. They need to be kept by Starlord as part of a source package, and the release versions be down-scaled and still converted to DDS. KSP will process them into DDS anyway and likely keep the PNG version in memory. Better to pay the price in hard drive space than in RAM space.

Edited April 23, 2019 by JadeOfMaar

[Stone Blue]

1 hour ago, JadeOfMaar said:

The majority of these textures were 4096x4096 when I looked the other day. They need to be kept by Starlord as part of a source package, and the release versions be down-scaled and still converted to DDS. KSP will process them into DDS anyway and likely keep the PNG version in memory. Better to pay the price in hard drive space than in RAM space.

yeah... resizing the textures to 1k and 2k for the release package should at least about quarter the size of the mod, down to ~230MB ... still kinda "fat", but definately moar manageable for people on mid-line to potato computers, that dont have 8GB or moar of RAM, or high-end GPUs.

Edited April 23, 2019 by Stone Blue

[Kilo60]

Having trouble with the attachment Nodes for the included wings to get them lined up.  Also the "Move/Tool" doesn't seem to work when trying to grab them to adjust manually.

 

Any ideas here?

 

Thanks!

[Starlord Kerman]

On 4/24/2019 at 9:50 AM, Kilo60 said:

Having trouble with the attachment Nodes for the included wings to get them lined up.  Also the "Move/Tool" doesn't seem to work when trying to grab them to adjust manually.

 

Any ideas here? 

If you're building in the VAB with the front of the shuttle facing up, then it's best for the bottom of the shuttle to face one of the two side walls, rather than the front or back of the building. This is due to how KSP mirriors stuff.

In the SPH, I like to attach the wings mirrored using surface attach and use the move/tool. With C pressed for large increments, it should automatically place the Swept wings in the proper location. You have to use the small increments to align the other wings.

[Laie]

Is this still alive? B9 throws a few scary error messages on start-up.

About wing symmetry,I wonder if the problem is your wing's standard orientation. I notice that when I use WASD in the editor, they rotate differently than stock wings. Or maybe it has to be different than stock wings? Anyway, I made this:

If the "kurvy" tanks can node-attach with proper symmetry, then there must be a way for your wings to do the same. Also, all wings (including yours) surface-attach nicely to the node-attached tanks.The sole exception are your control surfaces, which break symmetry.

Another thing: the cockpit looks as if a hatch was going into the cargo bay (always useful on shuttles), but I cannot make use of it.

[Laie]

More:

Applying some MM patches in order to get it into RealismOverhaul, I stumbled over the "K-1 Classic" having a space in it's name. Totally solveable, but ouch.

More generally, it would be nice if all part names started with the same string, this would keep them together in default sorting. I also wonder how to make them available by sorting by manufacturer (it's set, after all).

For stock balance purposes, the TriCrew module holds too many people. 2t and four seats would be more apt. However, I really love the 8-seater in a rescaled context...

[linuxgurugamer]

1 hour ago, Laie said:

More:

Applying some MM patches in order to get it into RealismOverhaul, I stumbled over the "K-1 Classic" having a space in it's name. Totally solveable, but ouch.

More generally, it would be nice if all part names started with the same string, this would keep them together in default sorting. I also wonder how to make them available by sorting by manufacturer (it's set, after all).

For stock balance purposes, the TriCrew module holds too many people. 2t and four seats would be more apt. However, I really love the 8-seater in a rescaled context...

Filter Extensions can display by manufacturer, Janitor's Closet can filter by size, mod name, resources and part modules

[JadeOfMaar]

19 hours ago, Laie said:

Applying some MM patches in order to get it into RealismOverhaul, I stumbled over the "K-1 Classic" having a space in it's name. Totally solveable, but ouch.

To target all parts by manufacturer, do this. In MM language, the ? represents a single invalid character at that position (like spaces, and math operators):

@PART:HAS[#manufacturer[Brand?Name]] // All branded parts
{
	// stuff
}

@PART:HAS[#manufacturer[Brand?Name],#category[Engine]] // All of this brand's engines
{
	// stuff
}

@PART:HAS[#manufacturer[Brand?Name],#title[*Cockpit]] // All of this brand's cockpits
{
	// stuff
}

Another prominent spaceplane parts mod has the same problem and is horribly plagued by it. This is how I deal with it.

19 hours ago, Laie said:

More generally, it would be nice if all part names started with the same string, this would keep them together in default sorting. I also wonder how to make them available by sorting by manufacturer (it's set, after all).

To apply that name change (and not properly deprecate parts before this change) will break every craft file made with this mod but is wise and should be done ASAP. (That's on Starlord's shoulders, not yours.) Note that I mean the internal name that identifies the part, what KSP and the mod maker care about, not the part title, what the average player cares about. The title can change without any risk at all.

17 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Filter Extensions

Assuming Filter Extensions is not installed or not configured for this mod, an agency config (it's pretty tiny/easy to do) and optionally but ideally, a logo image (in big and tiny sizes) are required for a mod's parts to be sorted by manufacturer. By consequence, the agency config can enable the manufacturer to appear in contracts in career mode.

Edited May 10, 2019 by JadeOfMaar

[linuxgurugamer]

38 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Another prominent spaceplane parts mod has the same problem and is horribly plagued by it. This is how I deal with it.

Which one?!

[JadeOfMaar]

4 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Which one?!

OPT Spaceplane Parts.

[linuxgurugamer]

15 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

OPT Spaceplane Parts.

Ah, ok.

So I've been thinking about this problem, and had an idea:

1. Rename the part
2. Using a MM patch, make a copy of the part with the old name, mark it as deprecated by setting the category to None

Ideally it would be nice to be able to rename parts in a craft file, but that's not really doable for most people

Thoughts?

[JadeOfMaar]

1 minute ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Thoughts?

That two-step idea is just what I intend to use to employ a massive soft-deprecation process, actually.

At the point of editing craft files and maybe even persistence, it would be handy to have a batch file that you can drop documents onto to change all the important strings in one shot, or further than that, a mod that accepts semicolon-delimited pairs of strings per line <part.oldname;part.newname> or <part.newname;part.oldname> can be triggered at the KSC scene and which uses KSP itself to do the operations.

At some point soon™ I'd like to do such a big and save-breaking update for OPT. I know one guy who has epic OCD and would be happy to have a tool like this nearby when such update happens.