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[1.12.X] Tantares - Stockalike Soyuz and MIR [16.1][28.05.2024][Mars Expedition WIP]


Beale

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I would agree that that the Spektr is closer to stock, and is better fitting with the smaller parts. Thanks for making it three as well!

In that direction...

316640e78f.jpgb9f69bdde4.jpg

Hey Beale, I noticed that ZodiaK hadn't yet provided a craft file for the Vostok (Almach) orbiter, so I quickly whipped one up for it. Here's the link:

https://www./?qs6m307cvuzm266

Should be close enough to that Almach depicted in your album on the OP.

Thanks! Added.

In a surreal moment, it seems a Tantares pod has landed in China.

17fd2007c7.jpg

Those are literally the same dimensions...

Edited by Beale
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How do you pronounce "Tantares"?

English is not my first language, so... I have no idea :)

I have seen some lets plays with:

"Tan-terrez"

"Tant-tar-ess"

"Tantar-ees"

What is the right way to pronounce the star Antares? I suppose that, but with a T ahead of it.

On a side note, I have also heard lets plays where I my self am mentioned as "Beale (like wheel)", which I guess is the correct way to say it. While in my head I am still pronouncing it "Bey-ah-lay" :D

Anyway...

Most of TKS modules are re-textured mostly from scratch.

Mainly very clean and plain, but with plenty of dirt and scuffs near the edges.

2b33ef0497.jpg5fce6b15ea.jpg

Edited by Beale
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Very nice :D I wish I could land that accurate.

What are the small "spiders" around the VA capsule top? I can't quite make them out.

Accurate: MechJeb...

"spiders" : Goodspeed mod, mini RTG.http://kerbal.curseforge.com/ksp-mods/221271-goodspeed-aerospace-parts-v2014-4-1b

ZAP-01 RTG, a radial RTG that only weighs 10kg (as opposed to the PB-NUK's 80kg), but is less efficient (only 4.8/min).

Perfect source of emergency ...

Edited by kopapaka
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I suppose that it would be really nice to make some textures optimization at the moment, as current version (v.11) is about 142Mb already while the textures & models are not that complicated.

Thanks in advance for all proposals to use ActiveTextureManagement, but no - it makes game look crappy in unexpected places.

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I think @Horus had a very good ideal Beale! Your pack is growing quite large (which under no circumstances is a bad thing! :D) but as consequence to that it means your pack is growing more demanding of memory :) I think that once you finish up your current projects the next step should be to learn texture sharing of parts (where multiple parts pull their textures from the same file) as it could potentially go from 124 Mb to 24 Mb of space :D i personally have NO idea how to do it but some modders who use it all the time and could really help you would be Sumghai, the developer and maintainer of the Fustek Station Parts Expansion (your American parts analogue), or Helldiver, main artist and co-creator of the KSO Mini Shuttle System.

As far as I'm aware it's not a complicated system to learn as Sumghai learned it and applied it to his pack within the week of saying he'd try it out :) I remember you saying you wanted to get better at mod development and texturing (even though I already think you're doing awesome! :D) and this could be an amazing next step!

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I suppose that it would be really nice to make some textures optimization at the moment, as current version (v.11) is about 142Mb already while the textures & models are not that complicated.

Thanks in advance for all proposals to use ActiveTextureManagement, but no - it makes game look crappy in unexpected places.

@Beale

Maybe is dds a file format to go for the textures, well it would have sarbian's DDSLoader as requirement to work.

But as far as I understand it would free up some memory and loads the textures faster.

I think @Horus had a very good ideal Beale! Your pack is growing quite large (which under no circumstances is a bad thing! :D) but as consequence to that it means your pack is growing more demanding of memory :) I think that once you finish up your current projects the next step should be to learn texture sharing of parts (where multiple parts pull their textures from the same file) as it could potentially go from 124 Mb to 24 Mb of space :D i personally have NO idea how to do it but some modders who use it all the time and could really help you would be Sumghai, the developer and maintainer of the Fustek Station Parts Expansion (your American parts analogue), or Helldiver, main artist and co-creator of the KSO Mini Shuttle System.

As far as I'm aware it's not a complicated system to learn as Sumghai learned it and applied it to his pack within the week of saying he'd try it out :) I remember you saying you wanted to get better at mod development and texturing (even though I already think you're doing awesome! :D) and this could be an amazing next step!

Hi! It's important to understand the differences between size-on-disk and size-in-memory here.

Since moving from .TGAs Which were around 1.5MBs each, to .MBMs, which are about 5MBs each, yes the size of the mod has increased.

But once in-game, they are compressed to the same size. So the mod isn't really bigger than when it was using .TGAs (In fact it is smaller, as .TGAs werent compressed in the past).

Example

81c1366b61.jpg

Here's one of my 1024x1024 textures being saved to DXT5, which I think is what KSP uses, notice it's only 1MB as opposed to the 5MBs of the source .MBM.

Now, this won't be totally accurate, I'm not sure if KSP uses DXT3 or DXT5 for textures with an alpha map, nor do I know whether I'd need to auto-generate mip-maps.

Anyway, with regards to your suggestions:

DDS textures:

I'll take a look at the loader, maybe this could work. However, I'm keen to not introduce dependencies of any sort into the mod, I hope people understand.

Shared Textures:

Absolutely, I'm already doing this with a few parts so far, but there's certainly many more places where it can be applied.

Certainly with Salyut this can be done, but when you get to stranger shapes like capsules it gets hard quickly.

General Texture Optimization:

You can't win here :D I could reduce overall quality of some textures, already where I can I try to aim for 512x512 if it looks acceptable. But it really is a fine balance between losing all details and large textures.

Thanks for the feedback guys, and for the concern. This definitely is an issue that needs taking a look at.

I really would love to take a look into the texturing methods of other modders, but there's not a lot out there ( :blush: hint hint! )

At the end of the day, I've got 8GB of RAM, and these days it's not uncommon for people to have more than 16GB.

64-Bit / Unity 5 cannot come soon enough.

Ha! Any little green people inside? Also the new textures for the TKS are great! It's one pretty space bullet.
Antares is pronounced ah n - T AH - r eh s, so add a sharp T to the beginning I guess.

Retextures looking great, Beale.

We have a pronunciation!

Thanks both of you on the textures :)

By the way, I'll be putting up a new release tonight with the Spektr + quite a few little bug fixes and texture changes.

Edited by Beale
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Yay! Glad I was lucky not to take vodka, so I'll be enjoying new parts just after the release. :)

Hehe!

Well, here we are:

Tantares 11.5

A small update.

02/11/2014

-Added Spektr Module (No IVA yet).

-Texture Overhaul on TKS.

-Some balance and bug-fixes.

-A few alternate textures, for Salyut.

Eagleshift's balance overhaul sadly didn't make it into this release, but I'm still working on it.

53cc3ffba7.jpg

Edited by Beale
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Thanks for the update Beale! I really like the Spektr. It's a neat station part, and I have some other ideas for it as well!

UeJ9Jsm.jpg

As I said I might, I took the liberty of turning it into a command pod. For my own space agencies, I like designing ships that have a logical progression in style, like in RL how Gemini was the Mercury mkII. To that end, I added control and a heatshield to the Spektr. Anyone can grab the .cfg here: Download me! It doesn't have any windows (which are a luxury ;)) and once there's a station IVA it might be a little weird, but easy to overlook.

N9EwpvY.jpg

An interesting thing you might do, Beale, would be to make a command pod variant of the Spektr that seated four or five Kerbals with an appropriate IVA. Your mod has just about everything except a high-capacity command pod, and Spektr might be a unique choice for this! To help you visualize this, I've put the original IVA from Niemand303's Aeria in:

9v1iDk4.png

vF3a9Ud.png

sjXvuGv.png

(Also, that beautiful 1.875 tank is from this mod: 1.875 me!)

Edited by DGatsby
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Always nice to see activity on this mod. I check this thread pretty much every day. Last mod I did that with was the KSO shuttle, which got too memory-expensive to run after a while.

Also, Beale, if you ever decide to tackle an ISS part, Zvezda's bigger solar panels would be nice to see. But the stock 'XL' panels work just as good for now, so no pressure.

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Ãœþûþôõц on the release Beale ! :D

Already tested it, and working on updated configs with CLS integration, and possibly texture swapping using Firespitter, if the update version works and it doesn't take too long...

Where can i get Eagleshift's cfg files? His link doesnt work anymore.

I accidentaly blew up the whole repo of config, I'm working on making said configs (again).

I won't post them tonight, but they might be ready by tomorrow afternoon (let's say 12-14 hours from now, I hope), sorry for the delay ! ;.;

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