Engine

[Deltafee]

Ice been looking to make an engine and is it suppose to be just in the z axis or is it a box in unity?

[joedude69]

Wish i could help you but i don't fully understand what your trying to do

[Deltafee]

Im sorry, i am not sure how to make an rocket engine

[Tiberion]

In their most simple form, you takr a cylinder and sculpt an engine shaped mesh out of it, then create another cylinder that 'fits over' the engine mesh and name it node_collider. Of course you need to UV Map and texture it like any part.

Once you import it into KSP through Unity or just as a DAE file, KSP assumes that the thrust goes straight "down" (down being -Y) from the origin/pivot of the collider, so if you want a simple, non-gimballing or vectored engine, you're pretty much done except for the config work - mostly setting up the attachment nodes and the visual FX (flame and smoke) - which you can work off of one of the stock engines to understand that

Now, there are a lot of advanced things you can do engines, you can make them gimbal (meaning the bell/nozzle moves to allow "steering" - you can make the bell animate if it should, but its not required for the actual vectoring of the thrust.

You can also set a permanent, non-moving vector (IE: the thrust doesnt go straight down, but at a 45 degree angle) by using the "ThrustVector =" parameter.

You can make a surface-attached engine instead of an engine that goes on the bottom of a stack, the only thing that really changes is the design of your mesh and the node config in the part.cfg file; KSP still assumes the thrust goes "down" from the origin

[Deltafee]

Thanks again ill work when i get home, but how do you make it gimbal?

[Deltafee]

Am i doing this right?

http://db.tt/wu1GwZjN i know that the dialog box nod_collider is spelled wrong, ive fixed it afterwards.

[Tiberion]

well, keep in mind the collider is basically the invisible "box" that ineracts with the collider of the next part it connects to In the case of an engine, usually a fuel tank's collider) So you want the collider to be in the place where your part connects, and big enough to 'cover' the part of the mesh you want to be solid. If your engine is ust the triangle-shaped nozzle, then you want the collider to be a box just big enough for that shape to fit in, that fits flush against the bigger part in front of it.

And if you want that engine to gimbal, you'd name that mesh piece obj_gimbal. You also might want to make another piece to act as the "base" or part that doesn't move, even if its just a flat plate.