[0.23]Baha. Parts for Extraplanetary Launchpads v1.2 (3/2/14)

[BahamutoD]

Care to explain the issue you're having in more detail? Kethane's animator simply plays Unity animations, so if you build your animations correctly, you shouldn't have problems.

Sure. The problem is that rotations in the loop of the deployed state animation are being cut off. Its strange because translations in that loop are working fine so its not like the whole animation is being cut off.

Demonstration: (you can see from the top part that the translations up and down are looping fine)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf_WrLwzaFM

It looks fine with the screw rotation smoothly looping in the preview in unity. This only happens in game.

I also noticed it happening on your rotating drill heads in your kethane drills.

Edited February 23, 2014 by BahamutoD

[Mekan1k]

These are not working for me at all- I don't have kethane.

Can you post CFG files that are geared to not require kethane to produce the material?

[BahamutoD]

Sorry, but mining in EL requires Kethane.

The surface sample drill doesn't require it though.

[Virtualgenius]

Thanks for the surface drill its awesome but you cant retract the drill after you keep a sample is this a bug or am i doing something wrong

[DMagic]

Sure. The problem is that rotations in the loop of the deployed state animation are being cut off.

Are you using enough keyframes for the rotation animation? I think the conversion from Euler angles to quaternions can screw with rotations that make too much of a change between frames.

[BahamutoD]

Thanks for the surface drill its awesome but you cant retract the drill after you keep a sample is this a bug or am i doing something wrong

I guess you could call it a bug, but its because of the functionality of the stock science parts. The stock materials bay and goo container remain open when you keep science data, and the drill is using the same module. The only other way I know of is having the animation separate from the science, but that would mean that you could collect a surface sample without deploying the drill at all..

Are you using enough keyframes for the rotation animation? I think the conversion from Euler angles to quaternions can screw with rotations that make too much of a change between frames.

I'm only using 2 keyframes (from 0 to 360) over several frames. Do you think splitting it up would help?

Edited February 23, 2014 by BahamutoD

[tygoo7]

I'm only using 2 keyframes (from 0 to 360) over several frames. Do you think splitting it up would help?

Do you have it at the same rotation from start to finish, for example: start at 0 and end at 0?

[Virtualgenius]

You created the Mark 1-2 propulsion system is there any plans to intergrate that into a lander / drilling platform

[JeffreyCor]

Thank you for these drills! Great improvement!

[BahamutoD]

Do you have it at the same rotation from start to finish, for example: start at 0 and end at 0?

Well yes, but I adjusted the start/end frames in unity so that they line up properly to have smooth continuous rotation in the preview. Its just that in-game the rotation only goes half way or so before restarting.

[tygoo7]

Well yes, but I adjusted the start/end frames in unity so that they line up properly to have smooth continuous rotation in the preview. Its just that in-game the rotation only goes half way or so before restarting.

Hmm... I do not have much experience with modding in KSP so I don't know why its doing that. Is it doing that in flight too or just in the VAB?

[DMagic]

I'm only using 2 keyframes (from 0 to 360) over several frames. Do you think splitting it up would help?

Did you make the animation in Unity or import it from something else? If you import it from something else I think Unity will interpolate a bunch more frames between the ones you set. But if you made it in Unity I think you need to have less than 180^o between keyframes. The Euler angle values that you set get converted internally into Quaternions, which won't necessarily rotate the way you expect them too if the difference is more than 180^o between keyframes. I would try three frames set 120^o apart and see what happens.

The stock materials bay and goo container remain open when you keep science data, and the drill is using the same module. The only other way I know of is having the animation separate from the science, but that would mean that you could collect a surface sample without deploying the drill at all..

The stock science module doesn't interact very well with animations at all. It works ok for the stock parts, but anything more complicated just doesn't come out right. That's why I replaced it on all of my parts. It's not that difficult to do, but it's a lot more complicated than setting a few values in the .cfg file.

Edited February 23, 2014 by DMagic

[Virindi]

These drills look amazing.

I want to agree that the current launchpads desperately need to be reworked; the fact that they are huge and unwieldy is a nice challenge, but the real issue is that there is no good way to mount them so they lay flush with the ground (for launching spaceplanes and rovers). The best that can be achieved is to land the 'runway' with nothing attached, then hook a cable to it and unfold it on the ground. Sometimes it slides around magically, and I've had it flip itself over and cause the whole base to spontaneously explode.

I think a good idea would be to have a 'sideways' pad, that attaches to the side of a lander and then folds out horizontally so it can be as close to the ground as possible. That way we could get around the problem of not being able to attach anything to the bottom of a pad without raising it off the ground too much.

BTW...yes the existing ones are usable, just challenging (that's a good thing). It helps to build the smelter into a truck

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[Virtualgenius]

I found EPL to cumbersome needs to be smaller component based more parts to make the whole thing easier to lift into place

[taniwha]

To everyone complaining about EL parts being too cumbersome to lift into place: you're doing it wrong. There is no need to launch a smelter, or even an auger. In fact, there is generally no need for either to have a surface velocity greater than 1m/s (orbital velocity depends on the radius and rotation speed of the body, and the latitude of the part). There is a reason I put orbital construction in EL and made it so pads work in orbit and the orbital dock works on the surface (actually, as far as EL is concerned, there's no difference between the dock and any pads).

That said, sometimes it is necessary to move augers about, so they being not too cumbersome is reasonable. In fact, I carted one by truck 500km across Kerbin to the nearest ore deposit, and then back again. I then smelted the ore into metal at KSC and flew the metal to Minmus. There I converted into parts to build storage for more parts to build more storage for parts to build a smelter+auger assembly. Though I did use a modified HOME hab module for the workshop, and the Hooligan Labs launchpad.

Edited February 23, 2014 by taniwha

[BahamutoD]

I agree. In fact, the augers I made are no smaller than the original EL augers; they're actually much much larger since the collision mesh of the orig augers are only in the little yellow part. My only complaint about the parts is the aesthetics . It looked silly driving around with an auger dragging 3m under the surface.

To expand on taniwha's comment, currently all you really need to lift into space is a construction dock (which is tiny) and some rocket parts. Then, you can start building the big stuff in orbit.

[Deredere]

It's not impossible to get the EL parts into place.

It's just annoying, dumb, and unfun. Having ridiculous parts strapped to rockets like a bathtub ghetto rigged to an automobile breaks immersion and having your moon base look like someone's demented modern art project is annoying, too.

I'm not saying the parts need to be smaller. But it would not hurt if some enterprising Kerbal engineer actually designed versions made to be launched into space, i.e with a lower, more stable profile.

And they badly, BADLY, BADLY need to receive better models.

[Horus]

@taniwha: No need to feel offensive. Your mod is REALLY great and provides an interesting gameplay. And I personally really enjoy it. But it does really lack more "space" models. Aesthetics is the only issue with them. No more, no less.

Again, you are doing a great job & many thanks to you. But it's time to cooperate with model makers to make the mod more aesthetic.

Edited February 23, 2014 by Horus

[impwarhamer]

It's not impossible to get the EL parts into place.

It's just annoying, dumb, and unfun. Having ridiculous parts strapped to rockets like a bathtub ghetto rigged to an automobile breaks immersion and having your moon base look like someone's demented modern art project is annoying, too.

I'm not saying the parts need to be smaller. But it would not hurt if some enterprising Kerbal engineer actually designed versions made to be launched into space, i.e with a lower, more stable profile.

And they badly, BADLY, BADLY need to receive better models.

I agree that new models are badly needed, but from what i've gathered from the EPL thread taniwha is more concerned at getting the whole system actualy working first, which lets be honest is more important.

Besides, taniwha isn't a modeller so he can't really do anything about what the parts look like besides waiting for other people like Bahamuto and Aeon-phoenix to generously make them.

[Mekan1k]

I always used the EL mod with cheats on in a way, as I would assume that the whole system was integrated into one part...

But I also assumed that if Kerbals were able to achieve that level of orbital construction they would have nano-assemblers capable of doing automated resource retrieval.

EDIT: Could you send me a version of the large drills that responds to the Module: ModuleAnimateGenaric? I would like to adapt them for my AAR, and I would need them to be directly toggle-able without kethane to do so.

Edited February 24, 2014 by Mekan1k

[BahamutoD]

You can just write up the ModuleAnimateGeneric module yourself. The animation is called "idle".

[taniwha]

Yup, EL's auger's are silly, especially on rovers. I very much appreciate BahamutoD's drills.

Deredere: When I get to it, most of EL's parts will be such you won't want to even land them, let alone launch them.

Horus: I acknowledge that the aesthetics are lacking, but really, they're not even on my radar at this stage. Really, who cares how something looks if it does not work?

The augers work very well thanks to Majiir, and and this stage there's not much I'd do to their functionality (though batch operation (think big bucket scoops) would be nice), so BahamutoD doing up some nice augers is very much appreciated.

impwarhamer: While it's true my programming skills leave my modeling skills in the dust, I can model. However, as you said: the code is the priority right now.

Mekan1k: Most of the time, I won't use any cheats even when testing. I have never used hyperedit, though I have occasionally edited rocket parts into my containers. For the most part, the only chance I get to play is while testing, and I get to kill three birds with one stone: I get to play (yay!), I test EL (or MFT, though thankfully it's pretty stable) functionality, and I play-test EL (which using any cheats would defeat). I even drove a truck 1000km, suffering many crashes (both of truck into ground and KSP into command line) along the way, in the name of play-testing ("How small a seed can I use to bootstrap a minmus base?" answer: two large hexcans of ore -> 3 large hexcans of metal (half full), plus one empty hexcan for parts)). I built extra storage and the miner/smelter unit on Minmus.

BahamutoD: I have linked this thread from the front page of the EL thread. Thank you for doing such nice augers. I don't know if I will ever include them in EL, but that is because I want you to keep your glory .

[BahamutoD]

Thanks taniwha! Down the road, when models become your priority, I'll be happy to help.

[BahamutoD]

Did you make the animation in Unity or import it from something else? If you import it from something else I think Unity will interpolate a bunch more frames between the ones you set. But if you made it in Unity I think you need to have less than 180^o between keyframes. The Euler angle values that you set get converted internally into Quaternions, which won't necessarily rotate the way you expect them too if the difference is more than 180^o between keyframes. I would try three frames set 120^o apart and see what happens.

and landeTLS and Majiir

It worked! I threw some more keyframes in there, and now its rotating all the way.

Sorry Majiir for assumin there was something wrong with your animation module. I assumed you knew about it because the kethane drills were behaving the same way.

After I apply this to both drills and smooth things out, I'll post an update.

Edit: So it turns out that it didn't fix it after all. It was still jumping back after 180 degrees, but since the large auger had a double helix screw (which has 180 degree symmetry), it didn't appear like it was jumping back. For now, I made the smaller drill a double helix as well to fix it..

Edited February 24, 2014 by BahamutoD

[landeTLS]

The animation issue looks completly gone now. Sure if you look really close there are some minor jerkyness. But id say the issue is laid to rest.