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Pteron Micro Shuttle and rescue vehicle Beta download available(9/9/2014)

Sage Sagan

By Sage Sagan
in KSP1 Mod Development

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sp1989

sp1989

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I said it earlier, and it was my first comment about this wonderful little craft, since we are discussing it now count me in for, a dedicated docking port as well, I feel it is essential. Now one that generate fairings would be even better. Isn't there an adapter in KSO so you can mount the shuttle on top of a rocket I am pretty sure I strapped a KSO on top of FASA Saturn V. Yup here its KSO on top of Saturn V. So maybe an adapter atleast like that could work? I am not a modder so I wont dare say something is simple, however I imagine making something like that could be simple? Anyway I can't emphasize enough how much I love this little craft. I have been waiting for something like this for a long time.

sPMuLqH.png

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sirkut

sirkut

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You are being helpful firstly. So I checked out the KSO wing FAR configs they are identical to each other and, in fact they are identical to the Pteron wing configs. Now I am really confused as to where FAR finds the lift direction.

The custom docking collar is a nice idea but to be honest one of the prime drivers of this project was simplicity and light RAM usage so any extra parts pain me slightly.

I'm only thinking randomly but could it be calculating it to the actual mesh location from within unity? I know when I dealt with moving parts in Infernal Robotics, no matter that it was at "origin" and its locations/rotations were set to zeroit still had the 90degree rotation stored in the transform due to the imoort from blender causing me huge issues. Were the wings modeled together with the body hence having them off from origin?

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artwhaley

artwhaley

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Posted
heavy parts are more stable the SDHI dock it made to stick a heavy pod and fuel tank to something that could be equally heavy if not more. if you used normal ports you would wobble a lot more than it may already do. Perhaps the Pteron should incorporate a built in docking port like the whimchaser? that would you give it the full weight of the pod for stability yet it will still let you decouple the attached parts for reentry

The problem with adding an integrated docking port is that it makes the 'control from here' stuff a little tricky if the docking port isn't at the very front center of the command module... which these shuttles don't lend themselves to. I added the integrated docking port to my service module parts... not the command pod itself. Now... I don't know why you couldn't animate a controltransform to move around the ship... so you would have an extra context menu button to change the axis of control? I'll try to test that later.

In the end - the docking port is important enough that I do think it's worth another part to most users and they can always delete it and use the stock one if they're really concerned about their ram usage!

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Sage Sagan

Sage Sagan

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What is that Shuttle-ish looking commandpod? (first row leftmost one?) Oh, and what are those command pods next to the pteron? (ya know, to the left of the central part :))

I believe that is the Whimchaser shuttle, I think Artwahley is it's Daddy

JqJVkDx.jpg

A white docking collar definitely looks better,the lights are awesome too.The chutes are a bit of a waste of time and the overall weight of the SDHI

collar throws the flight controls all out of whack. I think a white collar may be required.

Edited by Sage Sagan
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BrianMcNett

BrianMcNett

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That thing? Inspired by Pteron, it's Whim Chaser. It's an all-in-one single-kerbal space plane. Not quite as awesome as Pteron, but still fun.

[Defunct link removed by a moderator]

The ones next to the Pteron are Sam Hall's Kerbonov KN-2 (and accessories)

http://www.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal...nov-parts-pack

I like the KN-2. It has an awesome-fun IVA, and comes with a bitchin' hood ornament! It also has a heavy-duty external command seat, which you can see in the screenshot.

Edited by James Kerman
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Sage Sagan

Sage Sagan

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I'm only thinking randomly but could it be calculating it to the actual mesh location from within unity? I know when I dealt with moving parts in Infernal Robotics, no matter that it was at "origin" and its locations/rotations were set to zeroit still had the 90degree rotation stored in the transform due to the imoort from blender causing me huge issues. Were the wings modeled together with the body hence having them off from origin?

Thanks for the visit Sirkut, you honour us. I have no idea about the blender/unity set-up, Nazari/Daemoria kindly did that. Nazari is very busy so any FAR solutions will have to wait until he can shed some light on the subject.

Edited by Sage Sagan
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montyben101

montyben101

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I dont really see how the whimchaser is inspired by the dreamchaser...

anyway after landing pteron for the first time its kind of hard to do... if you go to fast the front wheel goes mental and flips you over :( i think it would help if it were built into the fuselage like the wheels in the wings

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Sage Sagan

Sage Sagan

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I slapped a hood ornament on it. Perfect.

http://i.imgur.com/ZzeAtxj.png

That is cool, but surely a radio antenna on the tip of the nose

- - - Updated - - -

I dont really see how the whimchaser is inspired by the dreamchaser...

anyway after landing pteron for the first time its kind of hard to do... if you go to fast the front wheel goes mental and flips you over :( i think it would help if it were built into the fuselage like the wheels in the wings

Be more careful:D

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artwhaley

artwhaley

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I did a quick test for an integrated docking port and it works!

I added an extra cube to a model in blender and animated it to move and rotate from pointing straight up at the front of the model to pointing straight back at the bottom of the model.

Took it into Unity, created two empty game objects - dockingNode and controlNode. Placed dockingNode at the docking port location with blue axis pointing out towards space. Placed controlNode at the location of the animated cube with green axis pointing towards space(parallel to the ship's axis of travel). Parented controlNode to the cube and took the MeshRenderer off the cube to make it invisible. Exported to KSP.

Added to .cfg file

MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleDockingNode
        deployAnimationController = 1
        nodeType = size1
        nodeTransformName = dockingNode
    controlTransformName = controlNode


    }


    MODULE
    {
        name = FSanimateGeneric
        animationName = change
        startEventGUIName = control from docking port
        endEventGUIName = normal axis control
        toggleActionName = toggle control axis

    }

Tossed the thing on the launchpad. I had to click 'control from here' once to make control start following the pod's controlNode, but after that running the animation smoothly moved the control axis around exactly as expected! The only little annoyance was that both the command pod and the docking module add a 'control from here' button to the context menu of the pod... so there are two of those... but they seem to function identically - doesn't matter which one you click.

So an integrated docking port with no additional part should be perfectly possible. Maybe someone else knows a trick to remove one of the 'control from here' buttons... or to make it automatically 'control from here' so you don't have to click one of those buttons to make it start following the transform?

I made a quick video that walks through what I did in blender, unity, and ksp to demonstrate the steps if someone wants to add it to the Pteron model. (edit - in the video I added the mesh rendered BACK to the cube so that you could see it move in KSP.)

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Odyssey

Odyssey

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I did a quick test for an integrated docking port and it works!

I've come late to the party on this. I've been away from KSP for about 6 months (good to be back). I'm loving this design.

So I understand what you're saying here, you've got it configured so you can do a nose-first docking with the Pteron? Attach its nose to a docking port on another spacecraft? If so, is there any alteration to how the nose looks when in that mode?

Just not sure that I'm reading this right. The video was cool, but what I know about modding you can put in a thimble.

In the mean time, love all the work I've seen from everyone on this thread.

Thanks!

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SiliconPyro

SiliconPyro

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I did a quick test for an integrated docking port and it works!

I added an extra cube to a model in blender and animated it to move and rotate from pointing straight up at the front of the model to pointing straight back at the bottom of the model.

Took it into Unity, created two empty game objects - dockingNode and controlNode. Placed dockingNode at the docking port location with blue axis pointing out towards space. Placed controlNode at the location of the animated cube with green axis pointing towards space(parallel to the ship's axis of travel). Parented controlNode to the cube and took the MeshRenderer off the cube to make it invisible. Exported to KSP.

Added to .cfg file

MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleDockingNode
        deployAnimationController = 1
        nodeType = size1
        nodeTransformName = dockingNode
    controlTransformName = controlNode


    }


    MODULE
    {
        name = FSanimateGeneric
        animationName = change
        startEventGUIName = control from docking port
        endEventGUIName = normal axis control
        toggleActionName = toggle control axis

    }

Tossed the thing on the launchpad. I had to click 'control from here' once to make control start following the pod's controlNode, but after that running the animation smoothly moved the control axis around exactly as expected! The only little annoyance was that both the command pod and the docking module add a 'control from here' button to the context menu of the pod... so there are two of those... but they seem to function identically - doesn't matter which one you click.

So an integrated docking port with no additional part should be perfectly possible. Maybe someone else knows a trick to remove one of the 'control from here' buttons... or to make it automatically 'control from here' so you don't have to click one of those buttons to make it start following the transform?

I made a quick video that walks through what I did in blender, unity, and ksp to demonstrate the steps if someone wants to add it to the Pteron model. (edit - in the video I added the mesh rendered BACK to the cube so that you could see it move in KSP.)

One option, to remove the duplicate "control from here" options, is to make the controlNode animate when the docking port's cover opened. A player would then just ignore the one "control from here" that is only available after the controlNode is already oriented with the docking port.

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blackheart612

blackheart612

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Posted
I did a quick test for an integrated docking port and it works!

I added an extra cube to a model in blender and animated it to move and rotate from pointing straight up at the front of the model to pointing straight back at the bottom of the model.

Took it into Unity, created two empty game objects - dockingNode and controlNode. Placed dockingNode at the docking port location with blue axis pointing out towards space. Placed controlNode at the location of the animated cube with green axis pointing towards space(parallel to the ship's axis of travel). Parented controlNode to the cube and took the MeshRenderer off the cube to make it invisible. Exported to KSP.

Added to .cfg file

MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleDockingNode
        deployAnimationController = 1
        nodeType = size1
        nodeTransformName = dockingNode
    controlTransformName = controlNode


    }


    MODULE
    {
        name = FSanimateGeneric
        animationName = change
        startEventGUIName = control from docking port
        endEventGUIName = normal axis control
        toggleActionName = toggle control axis

    }

Tossed the thing on the launchpad. I had to click 'control from here' once to make control start following the pod's controlNode, but after that running the animation smoothly moved the control axis around exactly as expected! The only little annoyance was that both the command pod and the docking module add a 'control from here' button to the context menu of the pod... so there are two of those... but they seem to function identically - doesn't matter which one you click.

So an integrated docking port with no additional part should be perfectly possible. Maybe someone else knows a trick to remove one of the 'control from here' buttons... or to make it automatically 'control from here' so you don't have to click one of those buttons to make it start following the transform?

I made a quick video that walks through what I did in blender, unity, and ksp to demonstrate the steps if someone wants to add it to the Pteron model. (edit - in the video I added the mesh rendered BACK to the cube so that you could see it move in KSP.)

The nose can even be cut it doesn't need to be integral but anyways, I understand what you are saying

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artwhaley

artwhaley

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A built-in nose-on docking would be possible with this method, but what I was testing was the ability to build a docking port on the tail, just where it is in the demo pictures. With a separate docking port attached to the back of the shuttle, it's easy to right click that docking port and select 'control from here' and it flips all of the controls around so you can dock without having to think backwards. I was demonstrating a way to get the controls to flip around WITHOUT having a separate part - so the docking port could be modeled into the shuttle to avoid another part and another texture - and still allow the shuttle to fly normally most of the time, but with reversed controls(and a correctly reading navball, navyfish docking plugin, and mechjeb docking autopilot) when you wanted to dock.

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FishInferno

FishInferno

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Well im a little late to the party but WOW YAY IT IS RELEASED! So, when this version is completed, is it possible that we would see a larger version, maybe 3-6 kerbal crew, in the distant future?

Ps. now that you have a release, make a thread on the add-on showcases.

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blackheart612

blackheart612

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Posted (edited)
Wait why does the docking port need to be in the front? whats wrong with it in the back?

Nothing, I just misunderstood the discussion :P

Edit: Can you sketch your design for the planned additional parts, Sage? (Docking Port, Adapter, Fairing)

Edited by blackheart612
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Beetlecat

Beetlecat

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Not sure if I'm missing something. When I download I only get a single .rar file.

I put that into the gamedata folder but I can't get the Pteron.

What am I doing wrong?

I'm pretty sure you need to extract the files from the .rar --It's a compression type like zip.

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