(0.23) Wayland Corp. Development and released download Thread (new parts)

[Devo]

Glad to hear you are enjoying them, plenty more things to come.. I've only just started really

Been playing with 3D modeling programs since 3D modeling programs existed.. (or lets say since at least 1990.. wasn't a lot available or home pc's were not that powerful before that)

But truth be told, I never had a purpose for any of it, and never really got anywhere. Either making stupid star wars movies with lightsabers and animations with friends, or just random 3D animation of a ship flying through space.. . but never had any purpose to really do anything and stick with it, so I'm really glad that I found modding for KSP. I've made mods for other programs, but the interest did not hold for me, or the games ended up going out of date. Now, i'm creating mods for a game that isn't even released yet, which I think is a cool and rare opportunity.

[Logan.Darklighter]

I came up with a new pod combo that looks great and flies stable (mostly - see end of post).

I kept trying to use the LLL parts and kept having problems with attaching them via the stock docking port attached to the truss.

Well - turns out I was going about this all wrong. I should have been using LLL's own attachment method. I took a closer look at the Airlock door and Corridor Berthing port parts. The latter of which I discovered works exactly as a docking port. When I saw that, the lightbulb went on over my head.

So I took off the stock docking port under the truss, and placed mated pairs of the LLL Corridor docking ports on each end of the truss bay.

Then built a pod out of LLL hull sections, put the LLL Airlock doors on either side, and some windows (which match damn near perfectly to the way the Eagle Pod windows are supposed to look). And voila!

Completely stable in VTOL flight. No nose-diving.

The LLL Airlock ports also designate an interior space carrying 8 Kerbals apiece no matter what they are attached to.

So this pod can carry a total of 16 Kerbals total!

Two drawbacks:

1) I tried to attach extra engines underneath. They don't work. It just sticks the Eagle to the ground for some reason and you can't lift-off no matter how much engine power you apply.

2) Do NOT try and undock this pod. Stuff will break and explode if you do! The overlapping LLL hull sections are under some form of "tension" and when you undock the port ends, the Kraken will eat your ship!

HOWEVER - the bit with the Corridor Docking Ports is PROMISING.

Devo - if/when you get your pods nearly finished - please look into the possibility of either -

a) doing a triple dock with a clamp at the top and with something like the LLL corridor docking ports at either end, or -

just use corridor docking port segments alone.

Something about being docked front and back is more flight stable than just hooking up under the truss alone.

And yet - even with all of that - this Eagle STILL WANTS TO NOSE DIVE at anything over 1/3 throttle if you don't have the VTOL engines on! This has remained a consistent issue no matter WHAT the load is. If you're in space carrying a load then you are limited to using 1/3 thrust or less.

This completely confuses hell out of MechJeb. MJ wants to use full throttle for so many different things. And every time it tries, it goes off-course and spends more time correcting attitude than burning. Or goes completely nuts and gives up. Considering how essential MechJeb is to flying this ship, that's turned into a problem several times.

[Ohm Machre]

Looks awesome, Logan. ;D

If the LLL Hull sections were shorter, then it would be able to dock and undock easily...... right?

[Logan.Darklighter]

Pretty much, yeah. Which is why I think that if we get the right length on the pods and then just use either the LLL docking ports or something similar, it'll work perfectly.

[Ohm Machre]

Yeah.

Probably, to match the height of the Eagle's landing legs, we'd have to put some of the smaller - or possibly the larger - legs on the pod itself to get it right up there perfectly.

I can imagine that, actually!

Eagle lands over a pod with its legs retracted - pod's legs extend - and it links up front to back! ;D

[Black Wyvern]

The Pegasus parts are quite awesome, however, I've noticed one bug with them. The left stock wing segment, once attached, cannot be unattached without discarding the parent connecting part. Atleast for me, I cannot select it in any way shape or form. The right wing selects just fine though. =S

[Logan.Darklighter]

Yeah.

Probably, to match the height of the Eagle's landing legs, we'd have to put some of the smaller - or possibly the larger - legs on the pod itself to get it right up there perfectly.

I can imagine that, actually!

Eagle lands over a pod with its legs retracted - pod's legs extend - and it links up front to back! ;D

Heh. That is a LOT more difficult than you'd imagine. I suspect a lot of computer controlled auto-maneuvering would theoretically be involved in doing that in the source material. Just trust me - doing it manually - even WITH Mechjeb handling auto-hover is damn near impossible or something for only the most steely-eyed missile men!

Before the Kraken ate the board back to October I had a post detailing (with pics) what I had managed to figure out as a compromise. In a nutshell - it involves landing right NEXT to the pod. Then ramp the throttle up on the VTOL ever so slowly... until you hit that sweet spot where the ship is still resting on it's gear, but most of the weight is off of it, then use RCS to "scoot-slide" over the top of the pod and into position. Then power down the engines when you're in place, and lower the gear for docking up.

I'll likely show you how to do that in tonights twitch stream at some point. Probably with either a test pod or a DEMV Mk 4.

[will67]

are you still making the USS Sulaco

[Devo]

Ok I have 6 mods that are pretty much at release point, and thought I would ask you guys for an opinion, what would you like to see first?

1. Biodomes with animated door and delivery system

2. Star Wars ships, I have a few done but to be honest didnt think enough people would want to fly them, but it seems im wrong, so..

YT-1300 milennium falcon (low poly, with animated cargo bay and landing ramp (not like the crap in the other thread)

B-Wing

Xwing

Slave-1

whats your favourite out of those?

3. Aliens APC without custom wheels (still working on suspension) but can use it with stock wheels if desired

4. Aliens Dropship (w/APC)

5. The Sulaco (at least by itself, dropship/APC scale are still too small, I didnt realise how big the dropship actually is

and i totally farted the wrong size folding wings, which suck to re-do, but ill do it eventually)

[hoojiwana]

Biodomes gets my vote. How big are they?

[Logan.Darklighter]

Ok I have 6 mods that are pretty much at release point, and thought I would ask you guys for an opinion, what would you like to see first?

1. Biodomes with animated door and delivery system

Would these be anything like the biodomes from Silent Running? Geodesic?

2. Star Wars ships, I have a few done but to be honest didnt think enough people would want to fly them, but it seems im wrong, so..

YT-1300 milennium falcon (low poly, with animated cargo bay and landing ramp (not like the crap in the other thread)

B-Wing

Xwing

Slave-1

whats your favourite out of those?

My favorite is the X-Wing or the Falcon. But I'm going to be the weird one out most likely and say - if you do Star Wars ships, my vote is for Slave-1. Just to be different. Every flight sim out there has somebody eventually do an X-Wing or Millennium Falcon mod. Who the heck ever does Slave-1? It's an interesting mod with cool animations. And as a bonus for KSP it used the same engines for landing and take-off that it does for its forward flight. Would likely make for easy take offs and landings if balanced right.

Though I gotta say - I'd also love to see how you'd do a B-Wing. How the heck does that even land anyway? Where's the landing gear??

3. Aliens APC without custom wheels (still working on suspension) but can use it with stock wheels if desired

4. Aliens Dropship (w/APC)

5. The Sulaco (at least by itself, dropship/APC scale are still too small, I didnt realise how big the dropship actually is

and i totally farted the wrong size folding wings, which suck to re-do, but ill do it eventually)

I'd love all of those of course, but I think I'll still stick with my vote for Slave-1/B-Wing. Just because.

[Devo]

Biodomes gets my vote. How big are they?

Any size you want, largest in this picture is 64m diameter, I just havent put anything inside yet

[hoojiwana]

How easy are they to build inside of? Is there attachment nodes inside to connect a little colony to?

[Devo]

Would these be anything like the biodomes from Silent Running? Geodesic?

My favorite is the X-Wing or the Falcon. But I'm going to be the weird one out most likely and say - if you do Star Wars ships, my vote is for Slave-1. Just to be different. Every flight sim out there has somebody eventually do an X-Wing or Millennium Falcon mod. Who the heck ever does Slave-1? It's an interesting mod with cool animations. And as a bonus for KSP it used the same engines for landing and take-off that it does for its forward flight. Would likely make for easy take offs and landings if balanced right.

Though I gotta say - I'd also love to see how you'd do a B-Wing. How the heck does that even land anyway? Where's the landing gear??

I'd love all of those of course, but I think I'll still stick with my vote for Slave-1/B-Wing. Just because.

B-Wings have small landers, I only know from a plastic model i built as a kid

Slave 1 is one of my favourites. Its one of those ships that looks like its just not meant to fly. I made it before I knew how to animate properly in KSP, and that is sure one ship that needs an animated cockpit. If I could get my chair/command module working it would have been out yesterday. I want to get in the pod and fly from there, none of this switching between IVA and EVA garbage.

@Hooji

so far not modular, the nodes are for the base attachment, and a command pod in the middle so it can be flown. As logan mentioned, Silent running was in my head for these, so really I am trying to do a decent habitat with nature biodomes.

I can get the small one into orbit, but have no way of getting the 64m into orbit without hyperedit, the dome is so big its even hard to skycrane it to the mun.

Edited April 23, 2013 by Devo

[dex7491]

Sulaco gets my vote!

[Devo]

Ok, we have 1 vote each for Biodomes, Slave1 and the Sulaco...

hmm might add a poll

[Fredonia]

Millennium Falcon and Slave-1! PLEASE!

[Devo]

Millennium Falcon and Slave-1! PLEASE!

The Poll is now up, feel free to vote, whatever wins gets released first, shortly after the poll ends which is in about 5 days. The leading item on the poll will be showcased here during the week over the next few days,

[blackout11c]

The B-Wing is VTOL (something you have plenty of experince with). The cockpit stays horizontal, in relation to whatever it is landing on, the s foils (the wings) fold in, flush with the main body, and then the body rotates to be horizontal in relation to the cockpit.

[Xerberim]

Dropship please. I would like to have a ship staying in orbit!

[Devo]

Dropship please. I would like to have a ship staying in orbit!

Dropship needs some love, I didn't create the model at the right scale, and I need to re-do all the animation after I rescale it, so yeah its a bit of a doozy, many many moving parts on it, alot of colliders.

I thought I would post a pic of my mesh for the milennium falcon.

While there is someone else making a milennium falcon for ksp, it's ripped directly from a mesh. Now, I'll just quote the response I got when I tried to explain why the high poly count in their model would not work.

"As for the high tris? One, I am new to meshes and stuff, two I think reducing it would take from it too much, and three, this ain't no bottle rocket. Like I said, after it gets finished, download or not, makes no difference to me. I had pondered making this for my use only, but then thought others may enjoy dashing about a primitive system in the Falcon, judging by the general reactions here I think they do, face it, we all like space flight or else we wouldn't be here, and as spacers, we all saw Star Wars, and I bet we all fell for the Falcon. The two most top rated sci if ships ever are the USS Enterprise, and the Falcon, world wide.

If you have nothing helpful to say here, then go light a fuse on yer bottle rockets, and go ohhhhh ahhhhhh, if you can help a guy out, by all means post me. (they know who they are) all the ships here have that in common, they are as common as they get in all Earth Bound scifi. Earth Made technology sucks. "

hmmm...

Now, I agree with releasing it if people want to fly it, but not if it's going to break their system! KSP can be fickle. The last thing people want is a mod that breaks everything.

Lets look at the mesh he's using from scifi3d.com:

Yes, you are reading it right. He is putting a mesh that is this big into KSP...

107,445 verts,

281,277 Edges

183,094 faces and tris.

Now, if we could do this - it would be cool. But we can't.

KSP just does not handle ultra large meshes very well, and to be honest even 3D modelling programs lag a touch with that many verts. To give you an idea, an average 24 sided cylinder

(which is the primitive shape I start with to make pretty much everything I do) is around 92 tris.

Now, I tried to do the same thing he did ages ago, but realised pretty quickly, like with most of my stuff, that using a high poly mesh, even after clean up is hard. You are making cuts in odd places,

textures need to be totally re-done etc (because you are slicing the model up into several pieces..) and really, what fun is it in using someone elses model?

So, some time ago I set about modelling my own YT-1300, and even then I found it hard to keep the poly count low. This is my 3rd revision, so it still needs to be lowered, but I just wanted to show it to you so you can understand the effort that goes into some mods, and why we can't just go and pick random models from free 3d mesh websites and import them into KSP.

This is my mesh, and although still a tad high and needing to be cut down, making it from scratch is easy. This was an easy ship to make. 1 squashed sphere, 2 extruded triangles and lots of little cylinders, I have not applied edge splitting or smoothing to this yet, you want the YT to look a little rough around the edges, it cant be too glossy and shiny. Cutting out the holes in the hull are easy as pie, and are just boolean operations on a difference of a cylinder through a triangle.

29,733 Verts (versus 107,000)

30,295 edges (versus 281,277)

17,592 tris (versus 180,000)

So you sorta get the point. High poly + KSP = bad, low poly + KSP = good I planned ahead and made all the cargo bays and landing legs etc, so there also is no real work

for me when it comes to animating the thing, I've already done 90 percent of the work. Also, you want to be able to control the scale of all the parts, not just the whole model, if you reduce the size of the ship to 64 percent for kerbals, the cockpit still doesnt fit right, so it's not a matter of just throw it in and fly it with some magical engines, it should be done with IONs properly and massive EVA/IVA

Edited April 23, 2013 by Devo

[Logan.Darklighter]

Oh and BTW Devo? During the twitch session, I more or less officially NAMED the WT-51.

It's a big green monster. It's nearly indestructible. It's temperamental. And it breathes fire.

I insist on calling it -

GOJIRA

(Oh no! There goes Tokyo!)

In fact while flying it for the guys in the stream, I played this bit of music.

And hey - you could paint this logo on the side. (The version on the right, of course.)

[Swifty]

180000 tris... That's just funny. Even top pc games use no were near that for a single model. The latest final fantasy used 10000 tris for lightning the main character and I think in gods of war they used 50000 for a boss and were making a big deal out how they managed to get that to run well...

Devoted your falcon is looking really cool, though what's the most tris do you think ksp will run smoothly at?

[Devo]

180000 tris... That's just funny. Even top pc games use no were near that for a single model. The latest final fantasy used 10000 tris for lightning the main character and I think in gods of war they used 50000 for a boss and were making a big deal out how they managed to get that to run well...

Devoted your falcon is looking really cool, though what's the most tris do you think ksp will run smoothly at?

Exactly! We are not rendering animations here, if we were it wouldn't matter lol.. but as you said games call for low poly, even 50,000 is big rendering at realtime, on consoles like the PS3 where graphics are pretty fluid, they rely on texture effects mainly to achieve realism, not intense massive meshes.

I have not released the falcon, and dont really plan to until I can get it down to 5000, 6000 tri's in total. I have made mods at 12,000 tri's and they work ok, and dont lag but they do take some tie to load when you select the part in the assemby building, thats the main downside. But 180,000 tris, thats just rediculous.

@Logan

GOJIRA! lol sounds good man.. if only I had a golden gate bridge to crash it into

Adding logo to ship now...

Edited April 23, 2013 by Devo

[comham]

I vote for Thunderbird 2