Breaking Ground Walker speed challenge

[Kergarin]

6 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Damn.   Half my contraptions were ruled out. I need to be really inventive to take some awesomely stupid from my hat now.  

I'm sorry, but that means the other half fits? 

[klond]

14 hours ago, Klapaucius said:

@klond  Perhaps you can enter your pogo stick 

 

 Just how loosely are we defining walker?

Sure!  Thanks for asking.

 You can get some crazy air with the telescoping cylinders.

 10:40 to get to the grass.  It took a couple re-designs and bunch of quickloads to get down the runway.  Not sure I'd wanna do that again.  I wonder if one cylinder thrust could get you from Minmus to Kerbin?

 If this craft don't count as a walker I'm ok with that.  

Edited June 2, 2019 by klond

[Klapaucius]

After much testing, exploding, disintegrating and running out of power, we now have a functional prototype. Meet K.R.A.S.S.H. Industries' (Klapaucius Reliable Air, Space, Sea & Hardware) newest creation. Once again living up to our motto: Practicality is for the unenlightened. It is named Forrest, after Forrest Gump.  Because it is SLOWWWW. It is rather amazing that most of the video is speeded up 1000% and it still seems slow.

 

Sporting 84 Z-4K batteries and using nearly all that power to reach the finish line in a blistering 13:10, Forrest proves that good things come to those who wait.   Well things anyway. Good is a rather subjective term.We are hoping the rules are loose enough to allow for the fact we DID in fact cross the finish line, just several metres to the left off the runway.

We are happy to report the 8 kerbal crew are recovering nicely having suffered only minor internal injuries after their ride.

 

Not sure if this breaks the "no simple rotation" rule or not,  but it was fun to try anyway.

 

 

PS. I'm a little confused as to why it just sits there when the torque is 100%, but if I increase the RPM, it starts moving. That does not make any sense.  If it is going to move, it should move with 100% torque and the RPM limit should act as a speed limiter.

 

Edited June 3, 2019 by Klapaucius

[Frozen_Heart]

Hmm worried i'm going to fall foul of the rotation rule as well.

 

Here is a leg test:

 

 

 

[neistridlar]

44 seconds! Much the same design as before, but rebuilt the hip joints with servos in stead, as I found them to be much more rigid, which allowed for a faster pace. Also the ride is much smoother now.

@Klapaucius That is truly hilarious! I wonder if you replaced the motors with servos in stead and animated them to move in pairs, offset the the same way I have with my walker, it might actually move at a reasonable pace?

@Frozen_Heart I think that should be allowed. As long as it doesn't mimic the rolling motion of a wheel to closely I think it should be allowed.

 

edit: I think the way the RMP limit works is by tapering off the torque as you approach the limit. That is why you get lower torque when you turn down the RPM limit

Edited June 3, 2019 by neistridlar

[Klapaucius]

6 hours ago, neistridlar said:

 

@Klapaucius That is truly hilarious! I wonder if you replaced the motors with servos in stead and animated them to move in pairs, offset the the same way I have with my walker, it might actually move at a reasonable pace?

Thanks for the idea.  I have not played with the servos yet, and it was only after I built it that I figured out the controller.  It is pretty neat that it works with keyframes, exactly like a video editing program.

The biggest problem with the above idea is you cannot lock the paired rotors together; the two sides can get out of sync with each other. With the low speed, I managed to pull it off, but any faster and the thing gets out of whack and the impacts are too much. Explosions occur.

 

Out of curiosity, I decided to see how the idea works on the water, so I added some fins and Mission Buildered it offshore.  Just about the same performance. And WHAT is the water made out of in KSP that this thing could even float?

Spoiler

 

 

Edited June 3, 2019 by Klapaucius

[klond]

 Ok, tried again with the correct start and finish so my times will line up with everyones.  Well, 6 tries cuz of explosions I got to the finish at 2:17, minus 24 seconds to get from spawn to the start.  So 1:53, but I forgot to screenshot before reverting, so I tried 8 more times, couldn't make it and gave up.  Since my time isn't competitive I hope that's ok.

[Kergarin]

@klond thats a really funny thing! would love to see that in action  

@Klapaucius seeing this made my day  therotical it is powered by rotation, on the other hand it has several joints per leg. I guess we could make an exception due to its speed and great style
The no rotation rule stays for entrys which are aiming for the highest speed 

@Frozen_Heart I would say this qualifies too. Looks interesting 
Might create a separate category for Rotation powered entrys, if the stand out too much.

@neistridlar crazy! when will you breake 10 seconds? 

 

I don't want to annoy you with more rule changens, but i think the big variation in walker speeds makes a fixed distance a pain for some.
What if we don't specify a distance but a time instead?
For example walk the longest distance in 1 Minute.
We would then use alt-F12 "Flight Info" to measure the distance by Looking at the longtitude.
Time starts when the ingame clock starts and ends when it's at 1 Minute. (yes this would cover acceleration too)

What do you all think?

9 minutes ago, klond said:

 Ok, tried again with the correct start and finish so my times will line up with everyones.  Well, 6 tries cuz of explosions I got to the finish at 2:17, minus 24 seconds to get from spawn to the start.  So 1:53, but I forgot to screenshot before reverting, so I tried 8 more times, couldn't make it and gave up.  Since my time isn't competitive I hope that's ok.

Also a verry good time! Have added it to the leaderboard 
can we see this thing in action somewhere? Must be funny  to watch 
 

[klond]

9 minutes ago, Kergarin said:

can we see this thing in action somewhere? Must be funny  to watch 

  Ya but it's really terrible trying to go anywhere.  Made it up the VAB tho!

[Kergarin]

While this is neither a serious nor a top entry… heres some of my progress so far 

 

5 minutes ago, klond said:

  Ya but it's really terrible trying to go anywhere.  Made it up the VAB tho!

 

crayz! you need a good insurance for that thing I guess 
can you stack enough to reach space? 

[Klapaucius]

On 6/3/2019 at 6:05 AM, klond said:

You can get some crazy air with the telescoping cylinders.

I think you should Mission Builder it to Gilly and see how high you can go.

[Gergorik]

I made something

the only problem is that KAL wont control more than the first 30 parts for some reason, so the hinges with the left landig gears won't move on the runnway, though they move in the VAB.

[Kergarin]

13 hours ago, Gergorik said:

I made something

...

the only problem is that KAL wont control more than the first 30 parts for some reason, so the hinges with the left landig gears won't move on the runnway, though they move in the VAB.

Looks promising 

Is there a limit at 30 parts? I did not get to such a high hinge count by now

[neistridlar]

15 hours ago, Gergorik said:

the only problem is that KAL wont control more than the first 30 parts for some reason, so the hinges with the left landig gears won't move on the runnway, though they move in the VAB.

Have you tried splitting the hinges over two KALs? Also wow, that is just way to many joints.

[Gergorik]

There seems to be a bug that breaks the parts during reload, which causes them to be uncontrollable by any means. You have to delete the part and place a new one that you will have to reprogram. You should also avoid copying any controlled parts as it seems to confuse KAL as well. I'll try to get it working but might just have to wait until it is fixed.

[Kergarin]

7 hours ago, Gergorik said:

There seems to be a bug that breaks the parts during reload, which causes them to be uncontrollable by any means. You have to delete the part and place a new one that you will have to reprogram. You should also avoid copying any controlled parts as it seems to confuse KAL as well. I'll try to get it working but might just have to wait until it is fixed

I also have a crashing craft where two rotors are copied

Edited June 6, 2019 by Kergarin

[Lisias]

On 6/5/2019 at 3:03 AM, Gergorik said:

the only problem is that KAL wont control more than the first 30 parts for some reason, so the hinges with the left landig gears won't move on the runnway, though they move in the VAB.

Use more than one KAL, and attach them to the same Action. It's what I'm doing - I control the left and right legs of a craft on dedicated KALs.

Edited June 7, 2019 by Lisias
Ugh… Late night English can be ugly, uh? =P

[Klapaucius]

I'm here to claim my prize. Despite the fact that, according to my editing software, the total time to the finish line was 15:43, the fact is, that was only the perceived time as experienced by the pilot.  As you can see in the video, the KSP counter has not moved at all.  We are now outside the passing of time. So, really, this craft made it to the finish line instantaneously.  

 

It is named Harry after the Lynne Reid Banks children's book, Harry the Poisonous Centipede.  

 

[Gergorik]

My walker is working now.

It is somewhat slow, as it took 2:18 to reach the finish-line. There is also a slight clipping problem because the legs are bending, but is has fully funktional tank-controlls including turning in the spot (thanks to two KALs as suggested by @Lisias).

I will probably redo it with an additioal hinge istead of the piston to get rid of the clipping, but it won't get much faster as there is no way to increase the craft's speed whilst  moving and starting at a higher speed just causes it to flip over.

[Klapaucius]

6 hours ago, Gergorik said:

It is somewhat slow, as it took 2:18 to reach the finish-line.

Slow? That's blisteringly fast in my book 

[neistridlar]

9 hours ago, Klapaucius said:

-snip- , the total time to the finish line was 15:43 -snip-

I'm confident you could cut that in half, or maybe even more by adding one or more "waves".

7 hours ago, Gergorik said:

It is somewhat slow, as it took 2:18 to reach the finish-line. 

That's about as fast as my first attempts. I'm sure you can eek out some more by tweaking the design. Specifically lightening up the legs might help a lot.

[Klapaucius]

4 minutes ago, neistridlar said:

I'm confident you could cut that in half, or maybe even more by adding one or more "waves".

That's about as fast as my first attempts. I'm sure you can eek out some more by tweaking the design. Specifically lightening up the legs might help a lot.

What do you mean?  I arrived instantaneously 

I'm not going to try and speed that up anymore. It took ages to input all that in to the controller.  As I mentioned in this thread I started, the base controller idea is fantastic, but it needs to adopt more of the workflow that makes those types of editors so versatile for video editing and animation.

I'm just having fun making oddball designs.

Edited June 7, 2019 by Klapaucius

[Torn4dO]

On 6/7/2019 at 12:50 PM, Klapaucius said:

I'm here to claim my prize. Despite the fact that, according to my editing software, the total time to the finish line was 15:43, the fact is, that was only the perceived time as experienced by the pilot.  As you can see in the video, the KSP counter has not moved at all.  We are now outside the passing of time. So, really, this craft made it to the finish line instantaneously.  

 

It is named Harry after the Lynne Reid Banks children's book, Harry the Poisonous Centipede.  

 

I'm getting strange looks from across the room since I suddenly started laughing uncontrollably, very funny build!! HAHAHA

[Klapaucius]

An "improved" version of Forrest is up on KerbalX, complete with a new marketing video:

https://kerbalx.com/Klapaucius/Forrest

I call the design paradigm SL.I.P. (SLow, Infecient, Pointless).

 

[Mathrilord]

Was trying a different appproach, get this:

It would work in real life.