[WIP] Jade's Dev Thread

[chaos113]

4 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

That's how that config works. All parts whose names start with "bluedog" and contain anything else after, represented by "*" 

none of Bluedog Design Bureaus parts have that in their name

[JadeOfMaar]

Recovering from a burnout on making Sterling Engines, I decided to make my own greenhouse (cylinder shape) for use with any of the life support mods. Apart from just a greenhouse, there will also be...what is possibly a very useful algae farm/ bioreactor.

I am not inclined to provide many compatibility or feature configs for this. Expect to have to provide that yourself if you want it.

Edited July 14, 2022 by JadeOfMaar

[JadeOfMaar]

The current state of affairs: [cover pic]

2 models, 3 roles, 6 parts. The 3 roles are derived from @linuxgurugamer's IFI life support mod but this project aims at providing a modern and very functional alternative to the popular but aged ZZZ greenhouse, and solidly filling the gameplay gap that TAC life support leaves wide open (there's no greenhouse mechanic within the mod, and the Mineral Siphon thing is surely awkward to everyone, not just me).

Outside of IFI life support, I now envision the Algae Farm as not contributing to food production (because no life support mod provides for multiple snack types and one being more or less filling than another, why bother having  two very different parts do the same thing? One will just become redundant and obsolete). I envision the Algae Farm as being particularly able to produce Hydrogen (for cryofuel) and Oxygen (for breathing); and the Bio-reactor providing some degree of waste processing and producing useful complex chemicals like alcohols and long hydrocarbons (Ethanol in RealFuels, Methane and LiquidFuel otherwise...).

Spoiler

Some SSPXr parts for comparison. Things turned out very different from the screenshot of someone's SSPXr build that I referenced to create the overall style.

This is quite a case of Expectation vs Reality.

With Simple Repaint and lights on.

 

[linuxgurugamer]

2 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

The current state of affairs: [cover pic]

2 models, 3 roles, 6 parts. The 3 roles are derived from @linuxgurugamer's IFI life support mod but this project aims at providing a modern and very functional alternative to the popular but aged ZZZ greenhouse, and solidly filling the gameplay gap that TAC life support leaves wide open (there's no greenhouse mechanic within the mod, and the Mineral Siphon thing is surely awkward to everyone, not just me).

Outside of IFI life support, I now envision the Algae Farm as not contributing to food production (because no life support mod provides for multiple snack types and one being more or less filling than another, why bother having  two very different parts do the same thing? One will just become redundant and obsolete). I envision the Algae Farm as being particularly able to produce Hydrogen (for cryofuel) and Oxygen (for breathing); and the Bio-reactor providing some degree of waste processing and producing useful complex chemicals like alcohols and long hydrocarbons (Ethanol in RealFuels, Methane and LiquidFuel otherwise...).

Wow! and cool!

I'm honored that my work inspired you.  What's your ETA for completion?

[JadeOfMaar]

1 hour ago, linuxgurugamer said:

What's your ETA for completion?

I'm glad you like. ETA is early afternoon today [Friday]. The basic function configs (for without any LS mods present) can wait.

[JadeOfMaar]

On 7/9/2022 at 2:44 PM, chaos113 said:

none of Bluedog Design Bureaus parts have that in their name

They do have that. It's not in their titles (display names, what you read in-game), but their functional name (at the tops of their part configs) which doesn't have spaces but dashes or underscores, and is some kind of cryptic/shorthand.

 

I forgot to mention but the greenhouse parts are released now. Enjoy.

 

[planeticegaming]

On 3/27/2022 at 4:09 PM, JadeOfMaar said:

Last set of parts (I hope) for Sea Quest Science: 2.5m probe core, 1.875m probe core (both 0.6m tall, with generous battery and reaction wheel) and a 2.5m tank (1.2m tall, complements the equivalent 1.875m tank). The probe cores will have a computer screen vibe in their little black screen panels like in the box racks.

I've slowed because I'm developing other parts packs in parallel:

• GU Parts (overhaul in progress, and due to be renamed and absorbed under Sterling Systems).
• Rational Resources Parts (overhaul in progress: phasing out all the borrowed harvester and refinery models).

what ended up happening to sea quest

was it scrapped or just pushed to the side, same with the rover and others

[JadeOfMaar]

@planeticegaming Sea Quest got shoved far down as I'm still quite scatter-brained about the parts and there's too much scope creep with mandatory "shared parts" that I want to accompany it. Rover stuff is cancelled since wheel modules are fussy and I'm still missing vital knowledge which might just be mindblowing or is complicated and even black magic.

[JadeOfMaar]

Powering through with making Sterling engines (doing work in large chunks), or cleaning up (and learning as I go) the textures after getting them in game, I gave myself another burnout.

Except for Waterfall configs, I'm finally pretty close to being finished making the engines so my attention is turning towards parts in other categories, especially the radiator (or less specifically, the thermal bulk) suite.

These [drafts] are inline heat sinks (left) and thermal batteries (right). 2.5m and 1.25m shown. 3.75m and possibly 5m will happen.

• Heat sinks
  These are basically radiators but they're poor at actually radiating, but they purposely hold far more heat without melting and are a buffer to the radiators. They will serve very nicely as a visually and functionally fitting mount for that nuclear rocket that you really like, except when it wants to melt off the nearest girder or tank during a long burn.
• Thermal Batteries
  These are the same as the heat sinks but are not meant to radiate at all, and will convert waste heat from an engine into usable ThermalPower resource, useful for conversion to ElectricCharge or to feed into thermal nozzle engines.

 

[Ariel Kerman]

Hi! newbie forum user here, old KSP player. Hope you can made out something great with those engines, or just release them standalone(?
Keep up the good stuff!

[JadeOfMaar]

@Ariel Kerman Making something great is the point of the engines. But some of them require complementary parts that haven't been made yet and may span 2 or 3 categories. Such engines are mainly the thermal nozzle engines which require capable nuclear reactors that produce ElectricCharge ThermalPower and are -not- in the KSPI-E mod, and the reactors I make will probably need a Thermo-electric converter (separate part) with them. And at least one of my advisors is explicitly waiting for my thermal control suite to go with the engines before they start playing/playtesting.

This is part of that suite: Inline heatsinks. Some with engine cluster variants (off by default). Textures practically finished, at last.

Sizes: 5m, 3.75m, 2.5m, Mk2, 1.25m.

Edited August 26, 2022 by JadeOfMaar

[Spaceman.Spiff]

34 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Inline heatsinks.

Sweet. I’ve wanted something like that for a while. 
Any chance these will work with SystemHeat?
 

[JadeOfMaar]

17 minutes ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

Any chance these will work with SystemHeat?

They will.

[Ariel Kerman]

That's amazing, im aware about the fact that adding new parts but especially engines, involve a lot of other stuff to be concerned about too, glad to see you work on this like a whole pack...
For some reason i never saw inline radiators before, another point to you. looking forward to this 

Edited August 27, 2022 by Ariel Kerman

[JadeOfMaar]

Wrapper radiators.

• Mid-temp Metal gray
• High-temp Graphene black
• More height options than shown exist for all of them. Cooling capacity scales with height options.

Edited August 27, 2022 by JadeOfMaar

[JadeOfMaar]

The inline heatsinks and all wrapper radiators (so far) are in-game and functioning.

[JadeOfMaar]

I'm entering the Electrical category starting with 0.625m. There is a surprisingly high number of generator types overall.

One of these four is non-nuclear but is as good as as any nuclear reactor and is not a Handwavium at all!

[chaos113]

@JadeOfMaarcould you  make a version of the radiators that can open and close to be used on the cargobays of a craft 

[JadeOfMaar]

On 9/11/2022 at 8:11 PM, chaos113 said:

@JadeOfMaarcould you  make a version of the radiators that can open and close to be used on the cargobays of a craft 

I had been giving plenty thought to that, actually and I'm for doing it but I'm not yet fully set on it due to complications with expected behaviors and the complication of needing to move in time with an animated stock part and avoiding as much as possible, altering and re-releasing Squad's models (because that's just a sad thing to do).

Nonetheless, here is a draft.

Edited September 17, 2022 by JadeOfMaar
Changed my mind. Can't be absolutely sure. This is actually much more complicated than I thought.

[Ariel Kerman]

It may be possible if you could clone the original animation of the stock part directly from Unity, into your radiator model. Im not a Unity user but i pretty sure it could be done in Blender using Thaniwa's importer addon, in that case you can use the animation editor to smooth the key frames of the animated part and adjust them to your needs...

Edited September 24, 2022 by Ariel Kerman

[JadeOfMaar]

6 minutes ago, Ariel Kerman said:

It may be possible if you could clone the original animation of the stock part directly from Unity, into your radiator model. Im not a Unity user but i pretty sure it could be done in Blender using Thaniwa's importer addon, in that case you can use the animation editor to smooth the key frames of the animated part and adjust them to your needs...

I've considered exactly that, however, I've opted to design the parts to not be dependent on matching step when the bay door moves. KSP being KSP, there's a good chance they'll de-sync and it could be very immersion-breaking depending on the player... I also don't have that much skill and involvement with Blender. I'm one who mainly uses another modeling app to make things and Unity editor + Part Tools to make things play-ready.

 

 

[Ariel Kerman]

Oh ok, yeah i guess it would be unnecessary tricky add a new software you are not familiar with, to the workflow just for such an specific need, speaking for myself i didn't with Unity haha

[JadeOfMaar]

Molten Salt Reactor

One of 2 major fission reactor types which will be provided. Unlike nuclear reactor parts in other mods, these and their brothers, the Pebble Beds, run on a pump-able fuel resource and not the usual non-transferable fuel rod type resource.

 Sizes: 3.75m, 2.5m, 1.25m, 0.625m

Spoiler

I'll slide a 1.875m one in later.

 

Edited November 16, 2022 by JadeOfMaar

[panarchist]

On 11/1/2022 at 6:44 PM, JadeOfMaar said:

Molten Salt Reactor

One of 2 major fission reactor types which will be provided. Unlike nuclear reactor parts in other mods, these and their brothers, the Pebble Beds, run on a pump-able fuel resource and not the usual non-transferable fuel rod type resource.

 Sizes: 3.75m, 2.5m, 1.25m, 0.625m

  Reveal hidden contents

I'll slide a 0.9375m in later.

 

"pumping" Pebbles would make me nervous. I get that it's designed for that, just hope that the pyrolytic carbon shell doesn't break off when it collides with other pebbles or the reactor walls - else there goes your moderation, here comes hot spots!

[Rutabaga22]

These are all great! The wrapper radiators made me think of something else. Could you make wrapper heatshields?