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

[Tiberius]

The deploy function shouldn't even be there in the release version! Sorry about that. That should at least be an easy fix, though.

Indeed, I suggested a page or so back that one user remove the deploy/retract lines from the wheel configs to reset them to their default "false" state. I think one of his wheels on his rig was being retracted somehow, causing it to not function correctly. I never did hear back to see if that was fixed.

Thanks for your help guys. I deleted all my crafts with rover wheels, and this solved the problem for the smallest size double rover wheel. It was very odd because I had no active vessels and was making new rovers that weren't working. Somehow, hitting that button once on a craft and having it saved was enough to mess up all the other wheels. The other KF Small rover single wheels still do not animate or deploy properly, but they may never have worked correctly in the first place. At least the smallest wheels now work. I couldn't find that config file you were talking about though. Sorry for the bother, I've looked through the pages a few times, I must just be missing it.

Edited September 3, 2015 by Tiberius

[Gaalidas]

There wasn't an actual config in any of these posts, I was just suggesting that you (as in anyone unwilling to wait for an update and feeling adventurous) look in the KF part configs for any parameters in the KFModuleWheel module that have anything to do with "retract" or whatnot, and simply remove them to let the module reset to default. This would, of course, likely mean you'd need to relaunch any vessels that are currently in the world with those parts.

lo-fi: Perhaps sometime in the next few days you should grab the latest code from the main KF_plugin repository and give it a compile, then package that up with the latest configs and such from the main repository and put up a new update. I've done a number of fixes to the configs and reworked/polished a number of the features we've been working on and I think it's all ready for a release... and should be more stable than the last number of releases. Perhaps it will put some of these issues to rest that are being reported.

Edited September 3, 2015 by Gaalidas

[sashan]

Will ordinary FSwheels work with this mod's dust fx? I'm working on revamp of KSO rovers and heli, and it would be awesome to have that.

[Gaalidas]

"ordinary" FSwheels? I wouldn't call them ordinary. Certainly not as awesome as KF wheels though. Perhaps the word "mundane" could be more accurate.

Technically, this version of DustFX will not. However, I do intend on making a separate module (perhaps releasing it as a separate mod) that would allow for other wheel systems to use these effects. The issue will be how to make it work with both the stock wheel module and all the other modded wheel modules without having to write completely different configs for each mod/part. That will be something I'll work on at a later date though. Alternatively, if those wheels could be revamped to work with KF steering and such, then all issues would already be worked out. From what I remember, suspension for those parts is pretty much non-existent, but I think you could still configure them to use KFModuleWheel/KFWheel with a suspension of zero. That's something I've wanted to look into for a while now: making the suspension optional. There's already a check in the module(s) for whether the part is simply a non-interactive wheel, or if it's a fully functional wheel (for unpowered trailers and such) and I think the same logic behind that could be used to simply default the suspension values to zero and remove their tweakables.

Both options are in the works, just not a priority right now. Originally, DustFX wasn't going to be a part of KF at all, it was simply geared towards it. In it's earliest conceptions, it actually worked for anything that could collide with the ground. It probably wouldn't take that much effort to simply strip it back down to standard collisions instead of specifically KFWheel collisions.

[Libra00]

Apologies if this has been mentioned before, but searching didn't find any mention of it.

I just installed KF for a new 1.04 install and it seems to take longer to load than all my other mods combined. Especially diffusemap2048 at the beginning, but generally everything under the KerbalFoundries/assets folder just seems to take noticeably longer to load than other mods. Not sure if it's just big textures, something weird with my install, or perfectly normal, it was just a big sudden change. Anyway, love the mod, I'll keep it either way, just making sure I didn't break anything.

[V8jester]

Apologies if this has been mentioned before, but searching didn't find any mention of it.

I just installed KF for a new 1.04 install and it seems to take longer to load than all my other mods combined. Especially diffusemap2048 at the beginning, but generally everything under the KerbalFoundries/assets folder just seems to take noticeably longer to load than other mods. Not sure if it's just big textures, something weird with my install, or perfectly normal, it was just a big sudden change. Anyway, love the mod, I'll keep it either way, just making sure I didn't break anything.

You should see how long 50 mods take to load you'll be begging for your load time

[Libra00]

You should see how long 50 mods take to load you'll be begging for your load time

I have, for years, excessively modded KSP. I've seen very very long load times due to massive numbers of mods. This is different; it's one mod that takes more time to load than all the other mods I have installed combined, and it appears to be new to the latest version of KF since I have about the same mod setup now as I had before and it wasn't this way. So you can see why I might think something weird is going on.

[Gaalidas]

It's true that KF textures are noticeably larger than some other mods on the market, but not overly so. That said, I'm on a non-gaming laptop so I usually reduce any texture for any mod I download, including the assets for this one, by at least 50% before installing them.

Also take note that we opted out of converting our textures to DDS ourselves due to massive quality losses in the conversion. Converting yourself either manually or using the tool available (somewhere in the tool release forum I believe) would increase the speed of loading.

Edited September 4, 2015 by Gaalidas

[Gaalidas]

Just discovered a new wheel we need to look into converting: the USI Karibou Expedition Rover wheel. That wheel looks awesome, but I can't bring myself to ever use it with the stock wheel modules.

[Mynar Moonshadow]

Just discovered a new wheel we need to look into converting: the USI Karibou Expedition Rover wheel. That wheel looks awesome, but I can't bring myself to ever use it with the stock wheel modules.

I was watching most of the twitch streams while Roverdude was working on the wheel. Unfortunately for me, I believe he finally got everything working while offline and did the final touches on the models/texture while streaming so I didn't get to see the whole process. The animation has a noticeable "snap" from retraction / resting point ... but I know he can work that out in time. I do know he has used KF tracks on his stuff (watch any of his previous streams while playing instead of modeling ... KF tracks on his "watneymobiles" for example).

I'll go out on a limb here (I have no direct knowledge, just guessing at this point) and hypothesize that he used stock modules because A.) 1.1 is supposed to update the wheel modules with "stuff" and B.) He's been burned by taking dependencies on other mods in the past. My personal opinion is that quite a few mod authors are waiting for the 1.1 hammer to drop, fixing their own stuff, then figuring out what to do from there. Roverdude loves to collaborate with other modders and actively encourages sharing / playing nice together. I'm optimistic that if folks reach out to him, he would be receptive. I'd love to see DustFX on his wheels as an example.

As someone who has spent probably 50 hours going from "never modeled a bloody thing for game" to (finally tonight!) successfully Blendering / Paint / Unity-fying a simple cylinder while referencing tutorials 2 years out of date ... I have newfound respect for all the folks who make mods. I completely understand mod makers who were actively developing their mods 5 KSP versions ago being slow to update until KSP settles down. There has to be some burnout after a certain threshold. Unfortunately it also puts the people who take dependencies on someone elses' work in a bad spot if they don't update as quickly. Hence RoverDude helping out with Firespitter patches to get his own mods working again recently.

I'm still using KF 1.8(insertsomeletterhere) mainly because I've frozen my career mode game mods as a snapshot. I know what to expect, where to find it, and what bugs I need to work around with the few mods I have installed. If I choose not to update them, well it's all on me. I'm at a good playable state with my current selection until 1.1 drops and screws everything ... errr ... modifies the game in dramatic ways that I have to readjust to.

~M~

[lo-fi]

Oh, that reminds me that the configs need updating, Gaalidas! I might have a poke about with the USI's

Good points well made, Mynar. What we've been doing is maintaining alternate configs for certain wheels, so if you want all the KF features you can have them patched. I tend to sort out suspension and grip settings too if needed. I actually haven't got round to updating for 1.9 yet, though.

[Gaalidas]

I had a look at his model via import to blender. Compared to even the ERS wheel, this thing is crazy complicated. I simply do not have the brain power to sort out what objects in his model would correspond to what in a stock wheel, and thus no clue how I would set it up compared to the configs that already exist for the stock wheel conversions. As for any animation hiccups, I have not experienced them. Either he already fixed it, or I'm just not picky enough.

I also noticed something not quite right about the ERS wheel conversion. In all the other stock wheels you always destroyed the broken wheel object, but in the ERS wheel you didn't. Not that it really matters, however. The busted wheel object isn't really visible, and KF wheels don't get damaged.

[lo-fi]

I guess I forgot the busted model and it just doesn't show. Won't take me long to figure out the USI one when I get around to it. Blender does not make it easy, so you might find it easier to save it out as a .blend and look at it in Unity.

[Gaalidas]

I had no idea I could actually do that. Huh. Interesting...

Scratch the interesting part... at least in blender I can see the animation. Can't hold on to that when I bring it into unity. Otherwise, unity actually makes it harder due to the camera controls and such. Still doesn't help much at all. RoverDude sets up his parts in a completely different manner than I've seen any other parts set up, and it definitely doesn't make it easy to figure out what is what.

Edited September 6, 2015 by Gaalidas

[Lego8_bit]

i did notice that the textures were updated along with a new repulsesor that is somewhat omni-directional. did you update the pack a few days ago???

[Gaalidas]

Actually, that part went in a while back, when we did our first 1.9 release. I'm hoping for another release soon to address some final bugs and introduce a few more useful features/fixed features I've been developing.

So, lo-fi, just I wanna get you on the same page really quick. I decided, locally, to extract the two classes in VesselTools into two files named after the classes in it. This has made it a bit easier to keep track of what is doing what, which in turn made it a lot easier to keep track of what was happening with the water slider. I'm still unsure if it's still spawning a new slider in mid air for missiles and such from BDArmory since I really don't use most of the features of that mod on a regular basis. If that little bug is actually not present in the current code then I won't need to continue with my vessel module experiments quite so seriously right now. Otherwise, I think I may be close to a way to regulate what is running on what vessel at all times with little chance for errors. So, if there's no objection to splitting those classes into their own dedicated files, I'll go ahead and commit that part at least.

Edited September 7, 2015 by Gaalidas

[lo-fi]

You can see the animation in Unity too, you just have to set the clip up. There was a tutorial knocking about - it's quite easy. I wonder if Roverdude has used a few of my tricks...

The way the water slider is set up now, there is zero possibility of getting a water slider added to a vessel (or anything else) that does not have repulsors. It's simply not possible, so that BD bug will be long gone. Turning that into a vessel module was the biggest mistake I ever made with the plugin.

[S1000RRHP4]

Hello i have a problem i can't use tweakscale with the small wheel, it is the only part on which i can't change the scale.

Could you help me?^^

[Gaalidas]

You can see the animation in Unity too, you just have to set the clip up. There was a tutorial knocking about - it's quite easy. I wonder if Roverdude has used a few of my tricks...

The way the water slider is set up now, there is zero possibility of getting a water slider added to a vessel (or anything else) that does not have repulsors. It's simply not possible, so that BD bug will be long gone. Turning that into a vessel module was the biggest mistake I ever made with the plugin.

Oh I'm not sure that was the biggest mistake ever. While it worked out well in the end, the biggest mistake was probably letting me commit to the repository. I've surely complicated things a ton since I started contributing to this project.

Anyway, I'll put the controller vessel module on hold for the time being, but I've still got this nagging idea in my head of how to better control when, where, and how any dynamically added module/component is used on a vessel and/or in its parts with a single vessel module that actively tracks the state of the vessel and reacts accordingly. So, I'll definitely be playing with that over time. It's probably born from a common trait amongst geeks known as a "god complex" which urges us towards a goal of "ruling the world" in which I am helplessly drawn.

As for the unity animations and such, I'm way too lazy to figure all that out. I figure it should be able to simply set that up itself when the asset is imported into the project, just like blender is able to import it from the .mu file. Anyway, Unity didn't show me anything that I wasn't getting already in blender, I'm just too lazy to do all the work of trying to figure out what I should set everything to for your module to make it interact with a part that makes no sense to me.This is especially true if RoverDude did use some of your tricks. I could never make much sense of your parts either. I suppose we all have our specialties. Mine definitely is not in the modelling.

- - - Updated - - -

Hello i have a problem i can't use tweakscale with the small wheel, it is the only part on which i can't change the scale.

Could you help me?^^

Give me a little more detail on the problem. First off, are you using the absolute latest release of TweakScale? What is it you see in the part context menu? For example: Do you get a blank spot where the TweakScale controls would normally be in the part context menu (as in an actual space that has nothing in it), or is there simply no option for it on the part at all?

[S1000RRHP4]

I have the latest version of tweakscale (2.2.1) and i will show you some screen of the Small Wheel context menu's and a panel from an other Kf Wheel on which i can change the scale.

It appear that i simply haven't any tweakscale option in the panel for the small wheel.

SMALL WHEEL:

OTHER KF-WHEEL:

[Gaalidas]

Gotcha, thank you. I'll look at the latest release package and get back to you here. I was pretty sure everything was set up properly, but mistakes do happen. One thing you can do to help, in the mean time, is to go into the KerbalFoundries mod folder and look for the "WheelSmall.cfg" in the Parts folder. Open that up and look for a module in that part that looks like this:

MODULE:NEEDS[TweakScale]
{
    name = TweakScale
    type = KFWheelSmall
}

If that is not present in the file, then that would be our problem. If, however, you do see that in the file then there's more going on here than a simply module definition and this all becomes just a tad more complicated.

Update: I checked both the latest KF release, my local install, and even my MM cache and, in all instances, the TweakScale module remained intact on the part in question. Given these facts, there are only a few things that could be happening on your end. First off, the module could be somehow missing from your small wheel config. In that case, you could simply add the module with the code in the above code block into that part's config and you're good to go.

Secondly, somehow the "NEEDS" check for the module could be evaluating false on your system. Changing ":NEEDS[TweakScale]" to ":NEEDS[scale]" would be more accurate and less likely to evaluate as false if you have TweakScale installed, but the folder name isn't being registered quite right somehow. Alternatively you could simply remove the entire ":NEEDS[TweakScale]" part of the module definition, since you obviously have TweakScale installed already.

The third option, which is a very hard one to track down, is that there's an MM patch being run somewhere after it checks the part config's "NEEDS" field which is removing the module from a wildcard search of part names. If this is the case, there's nothing i can really do about it except urge you to inspect any configs that may have MM patches, and may contain wildcard searches within those patches, and of which may be removing the TweakScale module within any of those matching parts that it finds, and... well, disable them or find a way to exclude the KF parts from it. I really hope it's not the third option however, cause those are annoying as heck.

Edited September 8, 2015 by Gaalidas

[S1000RRHP4]

I have the module in that part, exactly the same, and i did look in the .cfg of the tiny wheel, they have the same module, but in the game i am able to change the scale of the tiny wheel and i am not able to change the scale of the small wheel.....

i looked at the .cfg of multiple KF part and i don't understand why the small wheel are the only one to be exclude.....

Before i asked for help, i tried to fix this problem myself, i tried to change the tweakscale's module of that part in: "type= free"

but it didn't work at all the part is always exclude from tweakscale, even if i delete all the KF part, the small wheel is always excluded....

I will try a completely fresh install, and try with only tweakscale and KF, and i will add one by one each mod i have, that way i could find which one have an MM patches who conflict with that only part...

i keep you updated, i can only do that later today

Thank you for your time^^

[Gaalidas]

That is really weird, and I was afraid that it might come down to that. I know I'm able to scale them on my install, so the problem isn't reproducible on my end. I sure hope you figure it out, and let us know what you find if you achieve anything. I might be able to compensate for a specific mod that somehow is disabling it for that part. The only other thing that might fix this is a new update of KF with my most recent upgrades to the scaletypes. I will continue to bug lo-fi about doing another maintenance update.

[lo-fi]

I drop in from time to time, but moved on to other things and struggling to find any motivation for KSP modding. Do you have a KerbalStuff account? I can add in co-authors who can issue updates, I believe.

[riocrokite]

I drop in from time to time, but moved on to other things and struggling to find any motivation for KSP modding. Do you have a KerbalStuff account? I can add in co-authors who can issue updates, I believe.

Take your time mate, personally I would be already burned 10 times from the stuff you do with Gaalidas. Enjoy other stuff then come back refreshed when KSP has lots of new goodies