[WIP] Universal Storage

[Daishi]

A door test (with actual doors this time, the left door doesn't open all the way though). Thinking of having two door toggles - with each side marked so you only open the side you need.

Edited July 24, 2015 by Daishi

[rambokai]

What do you mean by rungs for EVA data retrieval? Ladder rungs?

It looks quite nice. I do rather like *white* paint. But this is nice too - cool detailing on the textures.

Is that shroud attached to the ACD?

OOPS! Edit: Your second post makes it much more clear!!! Disregard

I would very much appreciate the ability to open the doors separately, I always found it odd that the service bays opened both sides at once.

[Daishi]

What do you mean by rungs for EVA data retrieval? Ladder rungs?

It looks quite nice. I do rather like *white* paint. But this is nice too - cool detailing on the textures.

Is that shroud attached to the ACD?

OOPS! Edit: Your second post makes it much more clear!!! Disregard

I would very much appreciate the ability to open the doors separately, I always found it odd that the service bays opened both sides at once.

Yep ladder rungs, you can climb down the cores and retrieve stuff without use of the jetpack. I'd love if KSP made that pack unlockable later on down the tech tree, so early game EVA's were forced to be tethered.

And don't worry, i'm doing the shrouds with multiple variants. One silver (Apollo CSM), one white (ISS\space station), one black (Mecury\Gemini) and the familiar stripes of US (Saturn\rocket roll indicators). The way i'm designing this will make it easier to customize later down the track - all the animation is rooted around the inner structure of the shroud, and the different variants are just parented to it (ie: told to follow the root in the chain). So I animate once, and just attach new variations in the hierarchy when they're done. Easy

Only issue i can see is running out of texture space in the 512 map i'm limiting myself to, but i think four variants is more than enough for now.

And nope, that base is the attachable part of the shroud. You place the base at the bottom of a core, and extend the shrouds up until it covers the height of your stack. Everything within it becomes shielded as it would with a stock cargo bay. The ACD would likely go on top of the stack, between the capsule and the core.

Also! Just for reference so i don't forget, or if anyone is interested how i'll be doing this.

Edited July 25, 2015 by Daishi

[Motokid600]

http://i.imgur.com/1N7q4xa.jpg

Insulation foil on the inside of the bays? Yay or nay? This is just a copy-paste from an existing texture, i'd have to make sure the real thing is handpainted and matches the rest of the style of US\stockish KSP. Not sure if it'll look too flat without normal maps (which i'm reluctant to add), or extra geo suggesting folds in the foil.

I like the foil, but gold might be better for some contrast.

[Vahal]

http://i.imgur.com/45Xcsd1.gif

A door test (with actual doors this time, the left door doesn't open all the way though). Thinking of having two door toggles - with each side marked so you only open the side you need.

And what about the two other doors? If you open the four, there will be some clipping right? It alerady looks that there is some clipping between the inner door part and the chassis on the right door setup. The left one avoid clipping and should allow all the doors to be open at same time but it's 1/2 wide as the right door.

If the first part was sliding above the inner part of the door (as it acts now) then the inner part was not sliding on the chassis but conventionnaly open like the vanilla bay doors that would solve both clipping with chassis/doors and opening width and the doors would not be as inconvenient that vanilla bay door can be since they are half sliding

My poor two funds.

And many thanks for your mods guys!

[Daishi]

And what about the two other doors? If you open the four, there will be some clipping right? It alerady looks that there is some clipping between the inner door part and the chassis on the right door setup. The left one avoid clipping and should allow all the doors to be open at same time but it's 1/2 wide as the right door.

If the first part was sliding above the inner part of the door (as it acts now) then the inner part was not sliding on the chassis but conventionnaly open like the vanilla bay doors that would solve both clipping with chassis/doors and opening width and the doors would not be as inconvenient that vanilla bay door can be since they are half sliding

My poor two funds.

And many thanks for your mods guys!

Its important that these doors open as wide as they can - we have Dmagic's parts to think about and i'd rather not force him to remake the deployment animations on everything for the sake of a half-opened cargo bay. What will happen is that the second doors will initially open wider than the first, and overlap the deployed doors. It'll be chunky but have a smaller profile than what we have in US1 now.

That, and i'm concerned about performance. Because everything is animating at once (four heights, multiplied by four variants) I don't want to make these animations overly complicated or else it will come back to haunt me in the long run.

What you saw in that above gif is just a test - with only one door working because they're really just duplicated and that's all i need to prove a concept works. Any clipping you see is just little things i'll fix when this is resolved and i start making things properly

Edited July 26, 2015 by Daishi

[Vahal]

The picture is enlightening Well, explanations too of course

[gerishnakov]

Not sure if this has been put forward as an idea before, but how about implementing a universal storage core that is also, wait for it... a probe core? Certainly in the early career game this would save a lot of space and mass on those early probes.

[Daishi]

Not sure if this has been put forward as an idea before, but how about implementing a universal storage core that is also, wait for it... a probe core? Certainly in the early career game this would save a lot of space and mass on those early probes.

Ya think? Doesn't our quadcore appear after at least two stock probe cores anyway? Don't hold me to it though, haven't played a career game in ages

Edited July 28, 2015 by Daishi

[gerishnakov]

Possibly, I haven't actually player a stock career game! I've only ever done a career with the setiCTT installed as an unmanned start just made far more sense to me. In seti you start with the HECS probe core then no other probe cores are unlocked for quite some time; the quadcore is unlocked after a couple of techs though.

[Daishi]

Possibly, I haven't actually player a stock career game! I've only ever done a career with the setiCTT installed as an unmanned start just made far more sense to me. In seti you start with the HECS probe core then no other probe cores are unlocked for quite some time; the quadcore is unlocked after a couple of techs though.

Will give it some thought when the central stuff is done (very stretched for time at the moment ). It's easier to work on additions when everything is finished, and I can model it alongside resolved parts so it doesn't look out of place.

Opening mechanism revision of the shroud doors.

[ModZero]

OMG that tiny roller thingie is so cute!

[Paul Kingtiger]

That looks super cool!

[ev0]

I love the little L-shape protrusion on the first door that fits flush against the second door too!

[Daishi]

I love the little L-shape protrusion on the first door that fits flush against the second door too!

That looks super cool!

OMG that tiny roller thingie is so cute!

Thanks guys! Trying something different, if I do the mechanism like this it's far easier to scale vertically for the different heights. Don't think it looks too shabby

[Daishi]

Texturing progress on the internal surface of the 1.25m shroud. Not too happy with the same-ness of it all, so i might start playing with contrasting elements (like text, markings, more warning stripes) soon.

[DavidBowman]

You should be happy, 'cause that looks pretty cool!

[rambokai]

Looks great!

Dig the animation too.

[Daishi]

You should be happy, 'cause that looks pretty cool!

Looks great!

Dig the animation too.

Thanks! Progress has been a bit slow lately with family things going on, but i'm chugging along at a steady pace

[Daishi]

Texturing the base of the 2.5m shroud. Using atlasing with this - so both the 1.25m, 1.8m, and 2.5m shrouds share the same texture. Takes a bit to work out, but it saves a lot of memory in the long run.

Perfect fit!

Edited September 4, 2015 by Daishi

[Daishi]

Support girders of the shroud finished, onto the 2.5m interior and doors.

[Daishi]

Bit of a revision with the 2.5m shroud. Remembered that the Dmagic parts need a ton of free space to extend (the Magnometer, telescope, shown in blue), so a sliding door wouldn't have worked too well without covering a wedge bay up. Or compressing itself down to overly complicated, slender panels that would have been really hard to animate.

The new design has...

* Two wide access lateral bays that allow large payloads (when the octocores and support girders are replaced with a mounting bracket) to be accessed and decoupled. Similar opening profile to the stock service modules. Shown in yellow

* Two top and bottom bays that open separately (and much faster than the larger doors) - useful for science experiments or wedges you intend to use often (antenna, radiators, etc).

* All doors open wide to ensure each bay has clearance for large deployment animations. The wide doors have a second hinged segment, that folds in explicitly for this.

* Each door segment will be marked from the outside, and should be able to be selectively opened.

[Paul Kingtiger]

Hey Simon,

There's a lot of space between the wedges. Could you make the doors hinge open out like they do in the current US, then slide inside that gap?

That way the doors would be totally contained in the stack when open or closed, so no clipping issues and it'll look great kept open on a station.

[Daishi]

Hey Simon,

There's a lot of space between the wedges. Could you make the doors hinge open out like they do in the current US, then slide inside that gap?

That way the doors would be totally contained in the stack when open or closed, so no clipping issues and it'll look great kept open on a station.

Hiya, not too sure that I can. What I learned from the development of the Dangit toolbox (that nobody's released yet...) is that complicated door animations with multiple parts really spike the drawcall count to the GPU, and slow the game down about 10fps when they're playing.

Each door segment is pretty loaded (no more than the current US parts, but I don't want to make the performance worse), and the more segments i have, the worse the cumulative effect is. For each uniquely animated door segment, there's over 4 drawcalls. Increase that further with every customizable skin on top of that, and for a model that folds open as much as this will, it'll be a nightmare of lag.

I'd love to have the doors have a smaller opening profile, but for the potential performance hit I don't think that's the best move. We get enough flak for having complicated meshes as it is

Its why i thought two smaller bays for more commonly used wedges would be a nice compromise, which also mirrors the CSM science bays that only took up one section of the service module's truss.

And remember these shroud things are tweakable, so you can always send up a bare section for a space station and just cover it up with fairings on ascent instead.

[ev0]

the Dangit toolbox (that nobody's released yet...)

^

Interesting change to the doors. Personally I would like something with a smaller radius, but I see your reasoning. I think the thing that looks most off about them right now is that they look too thin. Do you plan on making them thicker, like the current US? Also, do you have any wedges ready (textured or untextured) to put between the girders, to give us an picture of what the final model would look like with the new doors?

And just thinking out loud - part of the point of US2 is to be able to extend the wedges vertically to reduce part count, right? But now with those wide doors, have you thought about being able to extend them horizontally as well? In this case, the two exposed girders between the wide doors would disappear, and then the wide wedge would fully wrap around between the two door edges. In combination with being able to vertically expand wedges, it could save a decent amount of parts. I could see it being used for fuel wedges and life support wedges for those long journeys or space stations.

Of course, this would limit the radius of the "wide-wedge" parts, so they would only fit on the 2.5m storage rack.