[1.0.x] [V1.9f] Kerbal Foundries wheels, anti-grav repulsors and tracks

[wallawallaman]

Awesome Lo-fi!

I eagerly await the next release, almost as much as I want the kopernicus mod.......

Hopefully I helped in some small way.

[lo-fi]

Absolutely, it's something I hasn't picked up before. I think at this stage I'm as eager to finally get it all bundled up and out into the wild as you guys are to get your hands on all the new parts. Quite exciting!

[Gaalidas]

Before you release everything to the masses, I'm doing some final touches on an attach/stack node redo on all the parts to eliminate odd behavior in how they attach to the parent craft (such as gaps, or attach spots that are different than it appears on the model, bad stack node orientations, and a few stack node size tweaks)

I'll update with my findings later. I'm short on time at the moment. If my next test goes well, I should have all the parts aesthetically pleasing as far as attachment goes.

[lo-fi]

That would be excellent, buddy

I'll get around to integrating your code additions too over the weekend

[Gaalidas]

awesome. I'd have those details by now, but my father and I decided to catch a showing of "Interstellar" this afternoon. I think I nearly fell through the floor at some point when I realized that my own theory on the relationship between black holes and the micro-singularities/exotic particles passing through our planet constantly being extensions of the same anomaly (a theory inspired by a certain part of string theory) was being represented right there on the screen. I think I'm still in shock.

[lo-fi]

Don't you just love it when that happens! I need to go and see that film. Did you see this? http://www.wired.com/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-black-hole/

TweakScale appears to now be fixed, so I'm spending a few minutes seeing if I can make it work.

[AccidentalDisassembly]

Don't you just love it when that happens! I need to go and see that film. Did you see this? http://www.wired.com/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-black-hole/

TweakScale appears to now be fixed, so I'm spending a few minutes seeing if I can make it work.

It's fixed...? Where did you get a new version from? Or did you have to put one together from the TS GitHub thing?

[lo-fi]

I just grabbed the latest build, noting that the version has been incremented and it appears to behave. Or at least it does with my parts! I have rudimentary support working for wheels and tracks with no major issues so far.

[Gaalidas]

That is awesome! By the way, having some troubles with the stack nodes when using NodeHelper to tweak them. I'm doing some final fiddling before publishing my tweaks.

Edit: So, the only thing I can come up with, after removing Nodehelper and still getting the attach/stack nodes being offset improperly after adjusting them is the possibility that the meshes could be interfering with the nodes. Could be something to do with the editor collisions that define the click-area for the part, or something of that sort. Either way, I cannot get the nodes to get close enough to the medium track's side to make them attach to a surface and still look like they are attached. Instead, they sit away from the surface unless you make use of the soft-attachment thing where you can bury surface attached objects within a larger object by shifting the mouse in the right direction before it snaps to another angle in angle-snap mode. Needless to say, this is simply unacceptable. Fortunately, this is only affecting the tracks so far. The RBI invertable track has a mounting bracket integrated into the model, and thus its attach node is perfectly aligned even after my adjustment. I'm thinking that the tracks you've made need something similar on them, a part of the model that is intended for attachment to the craft which is not contained within that collider. Either that, or the collider needs to be shrunk a bunch.

Edit: Just watched that Wired video. Awesome stuff in there. One thing in that article that I noted as being slightly inaccurate is the part where it says something like "if you were closer to the black hole, it would seem like my time is sped up." This is true, yes, but only from the perceptual angle of the person closer to the hole. By the other person's perspective, the person closer to the hole would be slowed down. That's the funky part of the time/space/light dilation effect. The other useful bit of data for that is where things seem to disappear completely when crossing the threshold where light can no longer escape. The object would not, in fact, disappear right away unless you were right next to it, in which case the time dilation would not be in effect between the two observers. Instead, since light travels at its constant speed in relation to time, and time itself is being dilated, then the image would begin to stretch back towards the threshold and would slowly fade until an image of the craft rested in a 2-dimentional plane just above the "surface" of the threshold. This image would persist for quite some time if you were observing from outside of the time dilation effect.

Another thing worth noting is that all that junk orbiting the hole is extremely stressed particles of light and left-over matter from the star's supernova which would have taken place just before the collapse. It's a failure of the star in producing too much iron in its core when it swelled during the end of its life-cycle. The resulting explosion throws all that matter out, which would have vaporized the planets that were orbiting at the time (which means those planets in the movie had to have been attracted to the system after the collapse, or they were originally ice-dwarves at the far-reaches of the star's SOI) and then collapsed into the black hole. The matter is then pulled back in, but not all of it at a perfect angle to simply disappear. This means that, if indeed that particular black hole was spinning at near-light speed, you have a lot of highly charged and thermal-emitting particles of star-stuff that are being pulled around it. while these particles are what made up the star, and due to time dilation they would appear to be active, the light emitted from them would be extremely low when viewed from the atmosphere of a planet like the ones orbiting the hole. The result would be a frozen wasteland with a dim light at the noon-time that would barely feed your solar calculator, and the magnetic affect on electrical system would wreak enough havoc to make a happy little EMP generator seem like candy in the hands of a child. That means your calculator is going to be spitting out martian swahili in response to your mathematical queries.

All that aside though, good movie and highly recommended.

Edited December 1, 2014 by Gaalidas

[lo-fi]

Ah, I normally just use a few GameObjects in Unity to aid with node placement. You shouldn't struggle too much hopefully as all my stuff should be scale 1. Thanks for doing that, I know I've been a little slap-happy with that the attach points while I've had bigger proverbial fish to fry!

Mind boggling things, aren't they! What a thing it would be to stare at a fading image stuck on the crest of the event horizon...

Large and medium wheel, plus medium track are in the dev repo now with all their TS paraphernalia in the configs. TS version 1.47, I believe.

Which leads me neatly on.... The parts could do with some better names!! I did come up with a funny naming scheme, but I think it might land me in trouble with the moderators :/

[Gaalidas]

Well, as far as I can tell, I'm at a point where I can't go any further unless the models are modified with a visual attachment thingie, or I find some new information about placing stack nodes underneath the part's editor collisions. as it is, no matter what I do, the node is being reset to its default position. I don't know how KSP is storing that information, cause it's not in the persistence, and there are no MM patches modifying the nodes, and the node positions defined in the part should be correct because, when using nodehelper, I can load up the part and see that the node has been shifted off its position; I can then copy the correct position from the cfg into nodehelper and tell it to reset the node to the entered coordinates and the node will visually shift to that spot. So, I know that my coordinates are correct, but still I get the wrong position when KSP loads the part. It's driving me insane. I'm about ready to try and weld a stock truss to the side of the tracks so that I can position this thing better.

I sorta wanna hear your naming scheme anyway, just for a laugh. When it comes down to it the part name doesn't really matter, as long as it properly describes what it does at a glance.

Edited December 1, 2014 by Gaalidas

[lo-fi]

Quiet, they might be watching... _{I was going to give them numbers: 36FF, 32C, 28A...}

Hmmm, no idea what's going on there. I just play with the node_attach values in the config and reload database. It's tedious, but you'll soon get used to how the values work, and it's not as tedious as having to restart the %$^$%&( game every time I want to make a change to the plugin... The only thing I can think of: You'll find that once the parts are launched, their node placement values don't affect their placement on the vessel. You'll have to remove them in the editor and re-place them to see where the new node puts places it, but I could be misreading what you're saying.

[Darren9]

I almost looked for a suitable picture of a nice pair of Boobies. I upgraded my repulsor field emitter to have, um, ninety repulsors and would you believe it lags a bit - do you think anything can be done

[lo-fi]

ROFL! Brilliant, as always I honestly had no idea you could do that with repulsors... Kerbals looked like they were having fun!

Hmmm, 360 wheel colliders in one scene... That's got to be a record! The latest dev builds have some minor optimizations, but I think that's just the poor physics engine dying under the sheer weight of repulsor craziness

Edit: The KSP spandex video is the funniest thing I've ever seen in KSP. Did you used to play Lemmings at lot, by any chance?

Edited December 2, 2014 by lo-fi

[Gaalidas]

Quiet, they might be watching... _{I was going to give them numbers: 36FF, 32C, 28A...}

Hmmm, no idea what's going on there. I just play with the node_attach values in the config and reload database. It's tedious, but you'll soon get used to how the values work, and it's not as tedious as having to restart the %$^$%&( game every time I want to make a change to the plugin... The only thing I can think of: You'll find that once the parts are launched, their node placement values don't affect their placement on the vessel. You'll have to remove them in the editor and re-place them to see where the new node puts places it, but I could be misreading what you're saying.

It's much easier with the node helper plugin, and I think I've eliminated that plugin as the root problem, though it complicates things further than it should. with NodeHelper, you can visually and mathematically alter the nodes in real time to get them where you want, though you'd better modify the part configs yourself before launching with a craft using modified nodes. What seems to be happening is that the node position is being set, the game shut down (LoadOnDemand mod freaks out when I do a database reload, and I can't launch without it), the part config edited to match the new values, and then re-loaded with a new launch of the game only to find that the nodes are resetting themselves to a new position each time. It only affects the tracks, and only the ones that you made. my thought is that the collider that controls where another surface-attachable object would stick to the part (if it were allowed) and/or the one that controls the clickable space around the part in the editor are interfering with the node placement. It's like trying to put a camera inside a brick wall without making a hole where the camera can sit. Unfortunately, in this specific situation, the brick wall is invisible and the camera is our stack node that isn't cooperating.

EDIT: I just got that naming thing... very clever... and yeah, they might have issues. I'd so do it anyway though.

EDIT2: That array is awesome. Lags a bit? You bet it does, and by design too! Honestly, if you build something like that and it runs smooth as silk, then you need to pinch yourself and wake up.

Edited December 2, 2014 by Gaalidas

[lo-fi]

Errr, that's weird.

Are you tweaking the position of the surface attach nodes, or adding stack nodes? I can't think ive ever had a collider interfere with a nodes placement, it just tends to not want to mount the part if the collider clips with what you're trying to mount it to.

I've played with the node placement a few times, and other than being a bit slap happy with it, it's never given me any trouble.

Wait a minute, TweakScale messes with attach points, though! It has to do so when you rescale a part with stuff mounted to it. That's the only thing I can think of that you've probably got installed that may be causing an issue.

Yeah, tempted to work something into the part names and wait for the slap on the wrist

Edited December 2, 2014 by lo-fi

[Darren9]

Thanks, I wasn't really expecting it to even make it to the launchpad with that many. I had forty on the mark one which ran OK but they fell through the gaps too easily.

[Gaalidas]

Errr, that's weird.

Are you tweaking the position of the surface attach nodes, or adding stack nodes? I can't think ive ever had a collider interfere with a nodes placement, it just tends to not want to mount the part if the collider clips with what you're trying to mount it to.

I've played with the node placement a few times, and other than being a bit slap happy with it, it's never given me any trouble.

Wait a minute, TweakScale messes with attach points, though! It has to do so when you rescale a part with stuff mounted to it. That's the only thing I can think of that you've probably got installed that may be causing an issue.

Yeah, tempted to work something into the part names and wait for the slap on the wrist

Well, I just installed your update for the TS stuff, and I'll see what happens. I think possibly NodeHelper was giving me false data. I checked my tweaks against your configs and it turns out some of my numbers were higher than yours, when in fact they should be lower since I am mostly copying the attach node and reducing the numbers on it for the stack position so that it looks plausible when attached. I then modify the attach node to match so it consistently attaches in both ways. It's possible that the same issue encountered with the icon size is also affecting how the numbers are being worked out by the other plugin. I've since reinstalled Nodehelper and I'm going to see what it looks like with some of those nodes reverted to the default. I'm not done struggling with this stuff yet!

Worst case scenario, I'll see if I can weld in a little I-beam into the part without messing with the rest of the wheel's functionality so that I can get the visual-connection setup properly without having to adjust the node too. I'll keep you posted.

Speaking of the icon fix, apparently the fix has been posted as a potentially separate plugin, though upon adding it to my installation it stalled my loading process every time i launched. It could be conflicting with parts of that fix that you've integrated into this project, but I'm not seeing any evidence to support that theory yet. More likely it has something to do with his plugin trying to fix parts without requiring the use of MM patches to apply the fix variables. It's just a guess at this point though.

EDIT: So, to answer your question... I'm doing both actually. Adding and tweaking to both node types.

Edit2: Oh, by the way, I noticed the icon size fix is working great, though the RBI invertible track seems to be spinning around a spot at the end of the track, and when the opposite end spins behind the rest of the mesh, the icon-area rendering system cuts the mesh off due to its depth being really small (or whatever you'd call it, sorta like setting a fog range to an insanely small number like we did back in the old days when our 3d accelerated graphics cards were little more than recycled computer chips glued to toothpicks and pumped full of electricity until they made something glow really nice.)

Edit3:

I almost looked for a suitable picture of a nice pair of Boobies.

I was so not expecting that when I finally got around to clicking that link. What an unfortunate name that species has.

FINAL EDIT: (I swear!)

I think I have the node-placement issues ironed out. It's rather complicated, but it turns out that NodeHelper does indeed add to the original positions of the nodes when editing them so, if you tweak based on its output alone, the nodes will be all out of whack. What I did was first take down the position NodeHelper first reports, then I tweak the position of the node and take down the new data. I then calculate the difference between the two and add that difference to the original coordinates in the part config. I had to make sure I was incrementing/decrementing the numbers in the right direction based on whether I tweaked the node positively or negatively. I then applied all my tweaks and, if my test tomorrow goes well, I'll be ready to write my report. I'd do it now, but it's getting late and I just spent an hour sending that evil reaper guy a list of all of my mods (wrote it out by hand, and I have a TON of them) so he could maybe track down a bug with his official icon-fixer mod that was causing my load-ups to stall half way through every time, and succeed every time when his mod was removed. The part of that fix that you've integrated into KF does not affect me in this way, making me wonder if there's a conflict between the implementations. Anyway, bed time.

Edited December 2, 2014 by Gaalidas

[lo-fi]

Darren, apart from being an awesome bit of silliness, that's actually really good info to have, with respect to performance!

10/10 for perseverance, Gaalidas! The icon fix that EvilReeper posted is an updated version of what's compiled into KF at the moment. I'll shift to using it once the loading bug is ironed out, as it had wider applications than just KF. So good to have working icons, though! its getting stuck on an internal space in your log, which it should not be messing with, but it won't take long for EvilReeper to figure out -thanks for getting that list over.

Interesting information on the node helper too!

[Gaalidas]

Yeah, he posted a possible fix that I'm going to look at in a few minutes. The main event right now is that I have some updated information for you considering my tweaks. This time, I can actually post a successful test and some new data to merge in (whenever you feel like plugging some numbers in and "hoping for the best" result.) Any parts that go unmentioned were found to be perfect as they are.

Alright, lets get started.

AlphaMediumTrack:

node_stack_001 = 0.535, 0.355, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1
node_attach = 0.535, 0.355, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0
attachRules = 1,1,0,0,1

KF_MediumWheelALPHA:

node_stack_001 = 1.385, 0.52, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1
node_attach = 1.385, 0.52, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0
attachRules = 1,1,0,0,0

RBIInvertingTrack:

node_stack_001 = 0.525, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1
node_attach = 0.525, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0
attachRules = 1,1,0,0,1

AlphaRepulsor:

node_stack_001 = 1.39, 0.315, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1
node_attach = 1.39, 0.315, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0
attachRules = 1,1,0,0,1

AlphaRepulsorSurface:

node_stack_001 = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0
node_attach = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0
attachRules = 1,1,0,1,1

ScrewTest:

node_stack_001 = 0.545, 0.38, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0
node_attach = 0.545, 0.38, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0
attachRules = 1,1,0,0,1

AlphaSmallTrack:

node_stack_001 = 0.21, 0.13, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0
node_attach = 0.21, 0.13, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0
attachRules = 1,1,0,0,1

AlphaLongTrack:

node_stack_001 = 0.605, 0.295, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1
node_attach = 0.605, 0.295, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0
attachRules = 1,1,0,0,1

RBITinyTrack:

node_stack_001 = 0.375, 0.34, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0
node_attach = 0.375, 0.34, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0
attachRules = 1,1,0,0,1

IE_RepulsorWheel:

node_stack_001 = 1.385, 0.52, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1
node_attach = 1.385, 0.52, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0
attachRules = 1,1,0,0,1

Skid:

node_stack_001 = 0.0, 0.17045, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0
node_attach = 0.0, 0.17045, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0
attachRules = 1,1,0,0,1

KF_SmallWheelALPHA:

node_stack_001 = 0.33, -0.01, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0
node_attach = 0.33, -0.01, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0
attachRules = 1,1,0,0,1

AlphaSurfaceTrack:

node_stack_001 = -0.255, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1
node_attach = -0.255, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0.0, 0.0
attachRules = 1,1,0,0,1

KF_TonyWheelALPHA:

node_stack_001 = 0.1, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0
node_attach = 0.1, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0
attachRules = 1,1,0,0,0

And that should be the lot of them. Are you tired yet? Cause I sure am!

[lo-fi]

Spot the spelling mistake

I really need to refactor all the part names now there's only one version of each :/

Cheers dude, I'll get round to some copy/paste this week

[Gaalidas]

Hey, the name's accurate enough if you factor in the foreign accent. "dat's sum tony whahl der!"

Oh, I can confirm that the part icon fixer is working much better with his recent update. I actually discovered some duplicate parts that I wasn't even aware of due to his debug output, and I'd been using those configs for months.

Edited December 2, 2014 by Gaalidas

[Neutrinovore]

Hmm, I had a whole big post of opinions, but nothing constructive, so never mind.

[Gaalidas]

Hmm, I had a whole big post of opinions, but nothing constructive, so never mind.

I hate it when that happens.

[natas]

Hey, can u make a separate download because MediaFire does not work for me?