[WIP] An Idiot A-Mod

[Warbird]

Ask yourself, "What if

played KSP and decided to make a mod?" If you found that amusing or only slightly repulsing, then boy do I have a thread for you! The name's Warbird and I've been playing KSP since around version .11 or so. My proficiency with KSP is lacking and I have no experience with modding or modeling to speak of. So naturally I've decided to develop a mod that needs good amounts of both and lord knows what else! I thought that someone might find the process of me making every possible mistake in existence amusing or possibly educational in a "that's why you don't put a fork in an electrical socket" sort of way, so I've decided to document this comedy of errors for future generations. Knowing my luck, this is going to end up being the Boatmurdered of KSP.

Let's get started shall we? I may as well be trying to pilot real rockets into space, but you have to learn sometime. No time like the present I suppose.

Chapter 1: "Oh God What Have I Gotten Myself Into"

So here's the plan. I'm a bit of an aviation fanatic and the idea of subsystems and unnecessary and overcomplicated dodads excites me. I've decided that the game needs something similar to the LAPES system. Seen here:

(Notice the military precision and professionalism? We'll be having none of that!) Why? I have no idea, but I figure it'll look cool. Why start with a static fuel tank when I could make something completely outside my ability and overly complicated? Let's get started shall we?

According to some wiki pages and posts I sorta half read I'm going to need something to make 3D models and Unity or something like that. As I'm cheap, we'll be forgoing 3DS Max for something called Blender. I've gone ahead and installed both and some part tools loader that I have utterly no idea how to use. Strike that, I have utterly no idea how to use any of those things.

Chapter 2: "Google All The Things!"

This is blender, what I can only assume is this year's hottest gray cube simulator. As cubes are not known for their agility or aerodynamic properties, we'll need to do something about that. After 30 minutes of trying to figure out how to move around and about 12 Google searches later, I've got an idea of how to manipulate the object into something more appropriate.

This isn't going to be easy. I'd say I was about as good at this as Jeb is at piloting, but that would be insulting ol'Jeb. Thankfully it turns our that Blender has the ability to automatically import premade shapes, "meshes" they claim, into the editor for usage. After a good hour's work I now have something vaguely phallic more aerodynamically feasible. However, it appears to be solid, and that's not terribly conducive to storing payloads for dropping off. We'll have to look into that.

After an hour and a half of searching, looking for buttons, and multiple attempts to write Python scripts to hollow out the shape (without knowing Python of course), it seems that you can get what I'm aiming for by simply deleting a face of the cylinder. The stupid thing wasn't hollow to begin with. I want to cry. No time for that though, we have to purdy this thing up a bit. Namely by altering the shape and adding a "door" to the back of the "plane".

After 45 minutes of meticulously planting and plotting each face and point on both the body and door of the plane juuuuuust right, I find something called a Snap Tool. Which does a better job of what I spent the last 3/4ths of an hour doing in less than 5 minutes. My life is pain.

That's if for now, I'll update in a little bit when I have more to show. If you have any tips or suggestions feel free to leave them, but you might as well be bailing out the Titanic with a bucket. (Mods, if this is in the wrong place I apologise, but I didn't see anywhere else that this would fit.)

[rowns]

HI,

you have a great idea, I cant make mods, but i would like to learn so i will keep a eye on this topic, i hope that you succeed in making your own mod, and that we will see it later in game.

[entaran]

Your writing style amuses me good sir.

[angusmcbeth]

Having started my own project with as much knowledge, I will be watching this unfold. Excellent thread

[loppnessmonsta]

For the parts themselves, I would suggest focusing on the mechanism you're going to be using to pull this off. There are already a lot of good cargo bays out there, and it would be more flexible if your system were compatible with those. Of course, you can always make your own cargo bays as well, but I guess I'm saying I think it would be a good idea to keep the two separate, distinct entities.

[Warbird]

That is my aim for now. I may be an idiot but I'm not (completely) insane. Think of this as [WIP European Extreme Mode] or something more akin to watching a nutshot compilation set to classical music. You know exactly what's going to happen and that it's going to involved lots of pain and crying, but you watch anyway. A modding train wreck in slow motion if you will. Long term we're going to be making drag chutes, thingamajiggers to hold payloads in place, animating the whole mess, some god awful textures, and who knows what else. Assuming we even get past me modeling this thing and importing it into the game without putting a fist through my screen or or sobbing in a corner. Anyway, back to the updates, which are going to be sporadic and varying in length, so fair warning.

Chapter 3: "I Reject Your Reality And Substitute My Own"

Now you're likely thinking, "Warbird, now that you have a rough model worked out, surely you will make a very rough proof of concept animation or something like that?" And the answer to that would be a resounding "But doing that would make sense!" We're adding hinges to this sucker and animating the entire mess at once. I play Dwarf Fortress for fun, I am not the sort of person that responds well to rational thought processes.

So we're adding some protohinges for the door. How will they work? Don't know. Am I likely wasting my time? Probably. Am I going to have to throw this out and start over anyway? Most likely. However I need to do something semiproductive.

Turns our that Blender doesn't seem to have half spheres as something you can spawn by default, so we've taken full spheres and flattened them out on top of extended bits from the bottom of the bay and a duplicated bit of the same parts on the door. I threw some cylinders in there to connect the hinges for now. The plan was to have something similar to the lander legs that were first put in the game doing the moving. Heck, it seems pretty Kerbal to me to have them welded on there in typical jury rigging fashion. So we may see them show up if I figure out how to do that.

Shorter update today, I got caught up watching a movie and got distracted. Audience participation is welcome in this. If I can avoid having to texture these things I think this may not end up being a monstrosity. In the meantime I'm going to be watching Youtube tutorials on how not to suck so much.

EDIT: Just because I can, here's one of those nifty embedded 3D models. Looks like it didn't take in the spheres, but whatever.

Edited June 18, 2013 by Warbird