[0.23.5] Hollow Structures & Hulls (Updated: 2014-04-09)

[ahappydude]

Those are beatiful! Also " So now you can makeshift an area into a command center" Makeshift is the best way to achive things, macgyver Concept and modell both well done

[not-a-cylon]

I'm out travelling right now so I haven't been getting my HSH fix so I figured I'd just hang out on the thread. While building my carrier, I noticed a few things. You already know I love your work with this mod, so I'll jump right into the bug reports/suggestions.

The Advanced Animator plugin lags the VAB. Downgrading to the older animated parts and vanguard plugin in the previous pack fixed the lag.

The nav ball on the station window command pod is upside down.

Lag with the cockpit and workstation. Removing the hsi internal module (I think that was it. Whatever you used to replace the sfr) in the workstation and the command pod cockpit removed the lag and the inertia tensor debug spam that I posted earlier.

The lights in the command stations are not toggleable.

After building and playtesting my carrier, I still think the parts are still too heavy. Without the engines, reactors, basically non structural parts, the hull had a mass of over 200 tons. By real world standards, I think that's actually quite light. But with kerbal world sized engines, reaction wheesl, and rcs power, it's too massive. I'd be willing to contribute to doing the grunt work of manually editing cfgs to rebalance provided you can give me a consistent multiplier for reducing the mass.

Things to consider- how do the part maseses scale? Should 8 meter parts be 64 times more massive than 1 meter parts? Or should they be getting progressively less massive (but still more than the previous tier) to account for stretching materials thinner?

A possible solution to your IVA orientation bug. I remembered this thread in which someone's ksp bugged out and rendered kerbals inside the command pod.. In the thread someone mentioned that the spaceX dragon rider capsule had windows that allowed kerbals to be rendered. I haven't poked around myself with the pack, but if I'm reading this correctly maybe you could do away with the internal plugin altogether with this solution.

I think there were a few other things I wanted to report while extensively testing your awesome mod, but I can't remember. I'll post more as I think of them. If you ever need more pictures of your mod I action, pease feel free to pimp out my pictures! The least I can do to help you is make others excited about your mod.

As always, thanks for the work and the new parts look awesome! Can't wait to try them!

[not-a-cylon]

Ah I remembered another thing I wanted to tell you as you gained more momentum in working on your mod!

I really enjoy the fact that you've designed your mod with an open ended play style in mind. Think like playing with lego- sometimes you would use flat pieces as wings, plating, bulkeads. The short cubic or rectangular ones would sometimes be structural building blocks and support beams. Sometimes you would use them as makeshift laser cannons. Sometimes you would even switch the flat piece's function with the blockier pieces and vice versa. The magic in this paradigm is the parts are interchangeable to fit your imagination.

The other side of this . You're given a flat piece that is shaped like a specific wing. The blockier parts. They're shaped like a really cool cockpit and have intricate shapes on them. While the new lego parts look cool, you've constrained the player's imagination with your own. This isn't necessarily evil- sometimes you need to cut down part and polygon count. You could makeshift the new similar wing shape with the original flat pieces but it would take more parts and thus reducing cpu ability. I however still think that it should be up to the player to make these decisions. You provide the framework for the user's imagination to take off and do its thing. While the various crafts submitted are all built from the same parts from your mod, they all look unique reflecting the ascetic of the creator.

Either way, whatever you decide on, stick to your guns and a consistent game play design and your mod will continue to work its magic as you add more parts!

[The Destroyer]

So, turns out, cycling the animation DOES fix the problem. I have a feeling Advanced animator causes this for some reason. I mean, it's not a big deal, just a minor inconveniance.

[Dr. Death]

Perhaps something has been lost in translation, but if you don't like the appearance of the parts I can't help you. In a situation like this, if you don't like what is offered you need to create it yourself. Otherwise check back in 3-6 months and see if the mod is more to your liking.

Lag is an unfortunate side effect of so many collision meshes. Until KSP goes 64 bit I don't think there is a solution, except maybe part welding.

you dont get it. i DO LOVE your parts, but i cant see both KSP stock parts and this ones going together in a ship looking nice, after all, one of them are more square-based while the stock ones are cylinder-based

[The Destroyer]

So, turns out, cycling the animation DOES fix the problem. I have a feeling Advanced animator causes this for some reason. I mean, it's not a big deal, just a minor inconveniance.

Unfortenatley, when you return to VAB you have to do it all again or death lag rains from above.

[Alskari]

The Advanced Animator plugin lags the VAB. Downgrading to the older animated parts and vanguard plugin in the previous pack fixed the lag.

I'm wondering if the lag seen is just representative of what you'd see on launch because animations are now available in the VAB. I need to check this out.

The nav ball on the station window command pod is upside down.

I apparently didn't drag over the new 'Spaces' folder before zipping things up because that has been fixed for a long time in my local copy. (Need to get more organized)

Lag with the cockpit and workstation. Removing the hsi internal module (I think that was it. Whatever you used to replace the sfr) in the workstation and the command pod cockpit removed the lag and the inertia tensor debug spam that I posted earlier.

I'm 99% sure this is a result of the IVA prop models not being designed for rendering in the normal game. More on that later.

The lights in the command stations are not toggleable.

I'm lazy. Maybe I should do this tonight since it will take 5 min.

After building and playtesting my carrier, I still think the parts are still too heavy. Without the engines, reactors, basically non structural parts, the hull had a mass of over 200 tons. By real world standards, I think that's actually quite light. But with kerbal world sized engines, reaction wheesl, and rcs power, it's too massive. I'd be willing to contribute to doing the grunt work of manually editing cfgs to rebalance provided you can give me a consistent multiplier for reducing the mass.

If you want to get Notepad++ and go to town I'd be tickled. My mass calcs were originally done using steel, then calculated for a hollow, walled 1m cube. I compared the masses I got at 4m(I think) to a cube made from stock structural panels and they sorta lined up. I then did something weird and redistributed the weight between the frame and the walls so that the frames would be disproportionately heavy as compared to the walls. The goal was to make craft easier to stabilize, and allow for a bit more asymmetry. However, what I haven't really considered previously was that the structural panels in KSP are totally out of balance with any of the other parts in terms of weight.

The point of that rambling story is that I need to go back and look at the whole thing again. Once I figure something out (probably volumetric) then I'll shoot you a message. If you are still interested.

Things to consider- how do the part maseses scale? Should 8 meter parts be 64 times more massive than 1 meter parts? Or should they be getting progressively less massive (but still more than the previous tier) to account for stretching materials thinner?

Originally it was a 4x multiplier because uh... 'honeycombing' and otherwise my parts got too heavy too fast.

A possible solution to your IVA orientation bug. I remembered this thread in which someone's ksp bugged out and rendered kerbals inside the command pod.. In the thread someone mentioned that the spaceX dragon rider capsule had windows that allowed kerbals to be rendered. I haven't poked around myself with the pack, but if I'm reading this correctly maybe you could do away with the internal plugin altogether with this solution.

Right now I'm going back and trying to rewrite the plugin as an extension of the Internal module rather than a completely new module. (This will take time.)

I really enjoy the fact that you've designed your mod with an open ended play style in mind. Think like playing with lego- sometimes you would use flat pieces as wings, plating, bulkeads. The short cubic or rectangular ones would sometimes be structural building blocks and support beams. Sometimes you would use them as makeshift laser cannons. Sometimes you would even switch the flat piece's function with the blockier pieces and vice versa. The magic in this paradigm is the parts are interchangeable to fit your imagination.

Thanks! I'm glad you see my vision!

The other side of this . You're given a flat piece that is shaped like a specific wing. The blockier parts. They're shaped like a really cool cockpit and have intricate shapes on them. While the new lego parts look cool, you've constrained the player's imagination with your own ....You provide the framework for the user's imagination to take off and do its thing. While the various crafts submitted are all built from the same parts from your mod, they all look unique reflecting the ascetic of the creator.

I agree about the double edged sword, and originally I was going to put all of my more 'purpose oriented' parts into the Hulls download, but I haven't been doing that. Perhaps I need to reconsider how I organize things. For example when I was building the ship featured in the Fear & Loathing picture, I decided I didn't like any of the 1x1 adapters and made that one which happened to fit together very neatly, then I made an inset 1x1 as well. Then I haphazardly dumped them all into the main DL and wandered off.

In terms of visually matching I really need a good texture artist if I want to blend with the stock stuff better. Maybe I need to look into skinning Pwings to match....

Anyway thanks a ton for the feedback.

[ahappydude]

Finally got this ship in orbit and on route, the cargobay right click trick did also work for me in vab so (Y) Cargobays you made works real good having extra engines/another vessel/science stuff. I also tried the new cockpithull, wow! Feels like a hoeworld ship building now hehe. I also agree with the above, your parts arent as closeminded as most mod parts are.

ed

Oh boy, time really flies with your parts alskari! Have extended my research and recreation center so two levels, better housing for engines and an decoupable science module. Big thank you, i also continued on your starterrooms but its to early to show of

Plus going iva/eva is much more fun now

Oh dude, just got an idea. You were talking about makeshift commandchairs.

I ha The chair you made for the round commandpod are great, you could use the same chair, remove the glass, keep or dont keep panels infront,. Also, haha, you could make the chair alone part as an externel seat, add an simpel belt and that collider will after played the on animation hold the kerbal Dam something is wrong with my unity version, cant try it atm

Edited April 14, 2014 by ahappydude

[Sinogard]

Hi, it's possible do also texture reduction?

[Alskari]

Oh dude, just got an idea. You were talking about makeshift commandchairs.

I ha The chair you made for the round commandpod are great, you could use the same chair, remove the glass, keep or dont keep panels infront,. Also, haha, you could make the chair alone part as an externel seat, add an simpel belt and that collider will after played the on animation hold the kerbal Dam something is wrong with my unity version, cant try it atm

The command chairs will look a bit different, and the first generation won't have animations, but I'm thinking I may go back and add that functionality, or talk to stupid chris about occupancy dependent animations.

Also make sure you have Unity 4.2 or else animations won't work in KSP. I don't know why. (If you want the current chair I use I can send you a Unity asset of it)

Hi, it's possible do also texture reduction?

The texture reduction mod causes problems in some cases. I would look into the 'Load On Demand' texture mod.

[SuperWeegee4000]

This is the laggiest mod I have ever installed. It's cool, but it's virtually broken.

[ahappydude]

This is the laggiest mod I have ever installed. It's cool, but it's virtually broken.

Broken how?

[Alskari]

This is the laggiest mod I have ever installed. It's cool, but it's virtually broken.

Not sure what kind of setup you've got, but 2Gb RAM is probably a must. Other than that I suggest you reduce the number of mods you have installed or try the load on demand texture mod. Honestly my 2008 build ran this just fine. (Updated it last month)

[ahappydude]

Yeah, i also am wondering what other mods you are running. As alskari said the load on demand texture mod will help if you get those problems.

Alskari are you going to continue to use the animator plugin or switch back ? I dont know the author of it but maybe he /she has a clue why it can cause some lagspikes

[Deathsoul097]

This mod is awesome, but one hell of a lagfest.

Interstellar, HSH (And dependencies), Hyperedit, and ATR puts my game on 5 fps. I can run afore mentioned mods (Excluding HSH) with B9, KW, Firespitter, and a bunch of weapon mods without a serious reduction in framerate, but as soon as I add Hollow Structures and Hulls the game becomes unplayable, and nearly unusable, even in the editor. 0.o

I think it may be the poly count over the textures, as most of the parts are pretty detailed.

[ahappydude]

This mod is awesome, but one hell of a lagfest.

Interstellar, HSH (And dependencies), Hyperedit, and ATR puts my game on 5 fps. I can run afore mentioned mods (Excluding HSH) with B9, KW, Firespitter, and a bunch of weapon mods without a serious reduction in framerate, but as soon as I add Hollow Structures and Hulls the game becomes unplayable, and nearly unusable, even in the editor. 0.o

I think it may be the poly count over the textures, as most of the parts are pretty detailed.

For me i only have lag in vab before i do the cycling of the animations not any lag when playing. But my rig has alot of ram so that can be why it runs pretty smooth.

It might be the textures but mostly (esp in vab lag) is beacuse of the animator plugin but it has many advantages so thats why he`s using it =)

You can also try the welding plugin but havnt tried that myself

[Deathsoul097]

Well, my laptop has 8GB of RAM, so that aint the problem, and yeah, things do smooth up a little in the editor after cycling the animations, but no dice in flight.

[ahappydude]

Well, my laptop has 8GB of RAM, so that aint the problem, and yeah, things do smooth up a little in the editor after cycling the animations, but no dice in flight.

Next time you play, lookup the logfile maybe there are some clues there=)

[The Destroyer]

I've also noticed, that I can run a 200 part regular craft just fine in orbit, but a 100 part HSH vessel lags a lot more. Shame that I have to kill this mod

[Phocks]

Well, my laptop has 8GB of RAM, so that aint the problem, and yeah, things do smooth up a little in the editor after cycling the animations, but no dice in flight.

In my experience, even if you have enough memory to run all the mods, KSP can still lag (and crash) because its trying to access too much RAM. My desktop has 16gb, but it was still crashing on load with all the mods I was using.

Installing the included reduced textures for the B9 aerospace pack solved that particular problem.

I hope the eventual transition to 64-bit will will improve the memory situation.

[Alskari]

Guys just so it's clear, it doesn't really matter how much RAM you have over 2Gb (except maybe a bit extra for the OS), since the program can also only use 2Gb. Also KSP is not multithread, so I'm wondering if some people are suffering there. Even my old CPU had about 1GHz per core.

And for reference I play with Kethane, KAS, and this installed and usually get 30-50 FPS in standard flight. My end stage stations/ships usually have ~150 parts and w/lifters are usually ~200 parts. Obviously it drops much lower on vehicle load.

[SuperWeegee4000]

Not sure what kind of setup you've got, but 2Gb RAM is probably a must. Other than that I suggest you reduce the number of mods you have installed or try the load on demand texture mod. Honestly my 2008 build ran this just fine. (Updated it last month)

I only have HSH and its required mods installed. I have a 6G setup, so I shouldn't be lagging much at all.

[Alskari]

I only have HSH and its required mods installed. I have a 6G setup, so I shouldn't be lagging much at all.

How many GHz & cores does your CPU have?

[SuperWeegee4000]

How many GHz & cores does your CPU have?

I forget, but it is a very high-end machine. Also of note: IVA is broken.

[Alskari]

I forget, but it is a very high-end machine. Also of note: IVA is broken.

Ah well some people seem to have gremlins for reasons they can never describe and I can never recreate.

IVA wise: Are you experiencing the error (orientation issues) I have described in the OP? Do you have a fresh (post 4/9/14) install of HSH?

EDIT: I've slowed down a bit on modding as some RL issues are currently demanding more of my time and basically all of my energy. I'll try to get some of the simple stuff knocked out before the weekend, but all new models will be on hold through the weekend.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Alskari