Making Parts

[DuoDex]

First off, I'm pretty far into the woods at this point. I'm coming into this with a small amount of programming experience and honestly ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA where I should start. My goal is to be able to make parts with a fair degree of competency and not have them break the game.

I've done a little research and found out that what my parts need are a .mu file for the model, some other files that also help the model and a .cfg for the actual part definition. I got all the software recommended for modding, Blender, Unity, etc. but don't really know where to start.

Thank you!

[Supernovy]

If you haven't already, check out the compilation of modding links thread. It has tutorials and instructions on nearly everything to do with making parts.

EDIT: and since this is not really a plugin question, I've moved the thread to the main add-on development forum.

Edited March 29, 2014 by Supernovy

[blackheart612]

Most important thing? Do not get overwhelmed by the things you need to do nor get lazy because of it.

You need general information?

Don't miss anything. Each general information here has something more specific to do, at least you would know where to start.

Here:

-Model first (blender/3ds/sketchup-anything) as long as it ends up in an importable format for Unity

When using blender, familiarize yourself with the UI first, then controls. All I care about is Smooth and flattening of the model cause it's only for texture.

-Learn to unwrap a UV after you model. Once you export a good enough UV map, it's texturing time

Depends on what you use for texturing, GIMP is a free software, Photoshop is also a good one. Or maybe Paint Tool SAI if you want

-Set up Part Tools in Unity (Of course you need Unity) again, familiarize with the UI first, then controls. The rest you need to do is know how to apply the part tools you have and then that's easy.

Here's a trick, try importing a single mesh to the game. doesn't matter if it has messed up nodes or anything, what matters is you'll get the hang of it (most likely).

Here's a video on blender tutorial, pretty helpful series. (I suggest you follow what he is doing to understand it and less likely to forget it)

This one's if you are a reader:

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:Making_an_asset_from_start_to_finish

For Unity importing to KSP, Tiberion made a pretty awesome, clear tutorial video about it, you'll see it somewhere, its helpful.

Edited March 30, 2014 by blackheart612

[DuoDex]

Right, got that done. I have a little engine texture now that I'm going to call an antimatter engine and make it have unrealistic efficiency and thrust (because that's what I want to do). I checked in the parts.cfg of the Mainsail engine, and everything makes sense except this: How do you set engine efficiency? You can set it to have massive thrust, but it runs out of fuel very quickly even with the Jumbo tank. Also, why is it impossible to have a decently light fuel tank with lots and lots of fuel, so that I don't run out of fuel with my antimatter engine. I tried just setting the resource nodes to 500000 and when I put it on the launchpad it just collapses. Do I need to write a plugin for that?

[Sethnizzle]

To adjust the efficiency of an engine you need to adjust the atmospheric curve module. I believe the first number is the ISP in atmosphere, and the second is the ISP in vacuum. For fuel tank cfgs, you define the empty mass of the tank, and the amount of the fuel in the tank. The reason your tanks are collapsing is because the mass of the fuel itself if just crushing everything. You can try tinkering with the resources cfg file but then you'd be changing the fuel for every tank. If you are just trying to debug your engine, press alt+F12 to open the debug menu and turn on infinite fuel.

[frizzank]

look up the part about resources in http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25013-Compilation-of-modding-information-links-for-0-19-20-21-22-23-Last-update-24th-Jan

You will have to make a new resources.cfg and add a new fuel with a much lower density.

This part in the engine .cfg deals with efficiency.

0 is atmo, 1 is space.

	atmosphereCurve
 	{
   	 key = 0 260
  	 key = 1 340
 	}

Engines can run on any resource so you could have it run on electricity for testing and have a tank that was full of it for no weight gain at all.

[wasmic]

look up the part about resources in http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25013-Compilation-of-modding-information-links-for-0-19-20-21-22-23-Last-update-24th-Jan

You will have to make a new resources.cfg and add a new fuel with a much lower density.

This part in the engine .cfg deals with efficiency.

0 is atmo, 1 is space.

	atmosphereCurve
 	{
   	 key = 0 260
  	 key = 1 340
 	}

Engines can run on any resource so you could have it run on electricity for testing and have a tank that was full of it for no weight gain at all.

And just an addendum to this, you can have more than two values, like this:

	atmosphereCurve
 	{
   	 key = 0 260
         key = 0.5 300
  	 key = 1 340
 	}

Which will make you able to shape the curve more to your liking. Bear in mind that these are points for bezier curves. Don't ask me what a bezier curve is, but it can make things go wonky in certain setups.

[DuoDex]

Thank you all for all your help! I'm going to make some more fuel types and package them properly, I hope. I just make a resourcesgeneric.cfg in the same format as the Squad one and put it in the Resources folder?

Will probably be up on Spaceport within a week if I get this sorted out. Expect some "overpowered" parts that are actually balanced by their tendency to explode violently. And probably a "TARDIS" part that regenerates fuel because I'm a Doctor Who fan.

[NathanKell]

Engines can run on any resource so you could have it run on electricity for testing and have a tank that was full of it for no weight gain at all.

This isn't actually true--any engine needs to have at least one PROPELLANT with a density > 0. This is why, for example, Firespitter electric engines both create and use Coolant, so there will be some mass involved. This is because of how Isp is converted into fuel usage; Isp is a measure of how much *mass* of fuel is used per unit of thrust per second (or, put another way, one (weight unit) of fuel will provide one (weight unit) of thrust for (Isp) seconds).

Otherwise ModuleEngines will be dividing by zero...bad stuff.

DuoDex: I can give you the exact math if you want, but what you should probably do is just give your engine a *very* high Isp; you will find, for a given Isp, that the engine will use the same *mass* of fuel per second, no matter what density you specify in the RESOURCE_DEFINITION: this is because, again, efficiency as given in Isp measures how much *mass* of fuel you're using, not how many "units."