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

[damerell]

Wait a minute. Are you using the latest version? Some of the older revisions had issues like that.

1.8g, from CKAN, which from thread title is the latest version. High terrain detail.

[smjjames]

Oh um, a thought occured to me, could you maybe check out if the memory leak (I think it's a memory leak) and output log spam posted here is coming from Kerbal Foundries? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/105094-1-0-2-Better-Buoyancy-v1-2-Simple-Water-Fixes-5-8-15?p=2018078&viewfull=1#post2018078

It doesn't specifically say either BB or KF, but it's only happening in that situation. I attempted to reproduce without BB, but the repulsors don't behave the same and I was unable to get it to reproduce without BB because I was unable to get it into the situation that it was happening with BB.

[Tyren]

Its likely that the interaction between the repulsors with the changed water.props is causing this. I am far from being a coder, but the continuous calculation of colliding could be the issue.

[lo-fi]

No idea! It's not a message that comes from KF directly. Looks like a KSP message having done a little digging. BB may well have an issue with the repulsors - they create a fake collider just under the water to ride on. Beyond that I can't tell you much I'm afraid.

EDIT: Also, who the heck put it on ckan??

Edited June 15, 2015 by lo-fi

[ZodiusInfuser]

EDIT: Also, who the heck put it on ckan??

Anyone can add stuff to CKAN it seems. All my model rework packs are on there for instance, and I didn't put them there.

[lo-fi]

This explains a lot...

[Tyren]

I dont know either, but its there at least since 1.8g...

[*Aqua*]

Also, who the heck put it on ckan??

Either someone put it on CKAN or KerbalStuff did it if you clicked the CKAN checkbox. KS will then auto-update the CKAN repo if you upload an new version. I can't see the CKAN mark but you set a very long title which may be the reason why the mark isn't shown.

[smjjames]

No idea! It's not a message that comes from KF directly. Looks like a KSP message having done a little digging. BB may well have an issue with the repulsors - they create a fake collider just under the water to ride on. Beyond that I can't tell you much I'm afraid.

EDIT: Also, who the heck put it on ckan??

Okay, just wanted to eliminate KF for sure. Doesn't rule out an interaction between KF and BB though, Ferram would have to look at that.

[A-Stax32]

Just a thought, but perhaps it would be good to update the imgur album in the OP with some new screenshots of parts added since it was last updated. I think that the lack of information on all of the parts in the mod might make some people less likely to give it a try.

[Tyren]

Better focus on the list thats been put up already, we can do some shoots on the way there.

If my time allows it, i will put up some screenies then.

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Anyway, thanks for your input.^^

[Gaalidas]

Yep, there are certainly some weird things that go on..

By the way, everything is going to be all over the place in dev for the time being. I'm trying out some new features! Rovers will be faster or slower to accelerate than usual because the wheels now react to vessel mass correctly - what Riocrokite was talking about. I'm not sure if the methods are quite bullet proof enough yet, but the effects shouldn't be devastating. Also added some bits in for electronicfox and Zodius that will be useful for their stuff. More to look into on DustFX

New tracks are coming along nicely.

On the DustFX layer, I've been experimenting on the min/maxSize parameters and have done some modifications to a few of the equations that I'll merge in soon. Right now, I'm trying to solve the over-water effect part. I am unsure how I could detect if the repulsor is repulsing from it's water collider, but in the meantime I was trying to simply find out if the active vessel is currently in a splashed state. That is assuming it would actually report such a state when hitting the water colliders at all. I'm pretty much swinging at the air and hoping to hit something. Unfortunately I had to scrap that method due to a headache that formed when trying to determine what the current vessel is so that I could check its info, and discovered I was going in circles with definitions of different parts of that entire "Vessel" method in the attempt to find something useful. Irritating!

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Ah, excellent! It just so happens we have an opportunity...

Just a little teaser:

http://i.imgur.com/2YwCw9w.png

Ignore the temporary textures.

EDIT: also ignore the rollcage being too big. Blame the silly default scale factor.

I thought the tracks were simply really tiny.

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I dont know either, but its there at least since 1.8g...

For the record, I didn't do it. I don't even like CKAN.

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Also, I think I broke the biome colour stuff in DustFX. Sad

Dangit. If your "break" is in the code on the repo, I'll take a look and see if I can figure that out.

EDIT: I can confirm it works, and I tried to update my code with what I've done recently but... it seems I don't have permission to do that. Care to comment?

Edited June 15, 2015 by Gaalidas

[Tyren]

he says!

Seriously, any way to get a sneak peek on that feature?

[lo-fi]

Just a thought, but perhaps it would be good to update the imgur album in the OP with some new screenshots of parts added since it was last updated. I think that the lack of information on all of the parts in the mod might make some people less likely to give it a try.

Better focus on the list thats been put up already, we can do some shoots on the way there.

If my time allows it, i will put up some screenies then.

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Anyway, thanks for your input.^^

You're right, we could do with some beauty shots, and if you get round to getting a few that'd be fantastic, Tyren. Not that concerned though - I don't get paid any more if more people do download nearly 100k seems like quite a lot already!

On the DustFX layer, I've been experimenting on the min/maxSize parameters and have done some modifications to a few of the equations that I'll merge in soon. Right now, I'm trying to solve the over-water effect part. I am unsure how I could detect if the repulsor is repulsing from it's water collider, but in the meantime I was trying to simply find out if the active vessel is currently in a splashed state. That is assuming it would actually report such a state when hitting the water colliders at all. I'm pretty much swinging at the air and hoping to hit something. Unfortunately I had to scrap that method due to a headache that formed when trying to determine what the current vessel is so that I could check its info, and discovered I was going in circles with definitions of different parts of that entire "Vessel" method in the attempt to find something useful. Irritating!

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I thought the tracks were simply really tiny.

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For the record, I didn't do it. I don't even like CKAN.

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Dangit. If your "break" is in the code on the repo, I'll take a look and see if I can figure that out.

Nah, won't register as splashed. You could check if what they're colliding with is called "ModuleWaterSlider.Collider", though. That ought to be pretty robust:

if (string.Equals("ModuleWaterSlider.Collider", col.gameObject.name))
            {
                //do some stuff
            }

I think the repulsor dustfx and normal dustfx could probably be amalgamated, along with a few checks to see what modules are running on the part. Would save a hell of a lot of duplicate code! There's about a ton of stuff that can be stripped out too. It might even be worth stripping down the DustFX stuff to some static methods that get fired by collider collision info being handled by KFModuleWheel and KFRepulsor, which both hold lists of wheel colliders themselves and grab hit info anyway (or should in the case of KFRepulsor). Another thought I had for effects on the tracks is use the list of colliders to set limits for random number generation and have a wheel collider in multi-collider parts (tracks, repulsors etc) get randomly selected to spawn the particles from its collision location. That way it certainly won't overload and would give a nicely spread effect. Don't want to do too much while you're messing around yourself, though, or we'll end up committing changes to the same file and GitHub will complain bitterly.

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http://www.icge.co.uk/languagesciencesblog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/you_shall_not_pass1.jpg

he says!

Seriously, any way to get a sneak peek on that feature?

It's broadly similar to the dust thrown up from CollisionFX by PizzaOverlord, except we're trying to do something more specific with it. Assuming that's what you're on about?

[Tyren]

Well, a particle fx thingy without dependencies is seriously epic But the looks are pretty similar you say? :>

[Gaalidas]

if (string.Equals("ModuleWaterSlider.Collider", col.gameObject.name))
            {
                //do some stuff
            }

-snipped a bunch of stuff-

Don't want to do too much while you're messing around yourself, though, or we'll end up committing changes to the same file and GitHub will complain bitterly.

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It's broadly similar to the dust thrown up from CollisionFX by PizzaOverlord, except we're trying to do something more specific with it. Assuming that's what you're on about?

So yeah, it's actually extremely similar to what CollisionFX throws up, but CollisionFX at this time tries to disable itself on wheels because it can't detect if we're supposed to be colliding or not, as is the case with wheels and such, and so it also throws up sparks. I began, about 6 months ago, attempting to adapt the dust portion of that mod for use as an effect which would simulate the dust that gets thrown up, especially by either fast-moving or very large wheels over surfaces that are not completely stable. That part was a complete success, but I decided that I would merge it with the work I was doing on KF in order to make sue of some special features that are unique to kF wheel modules.

For a good example of what it should look like, simply watch a video that features a large truck moving at high speed over an unpaved surface. You'll get the idea.

Lo-fi... There is really no chance of us committing at the same time because, you see, I do not have permission to commit to the KF_plugin github. Anyway, the separate modules were really only a temporary thing that I intended to re-merge at a later date. The issue I still have that keeps me from merging them is that I need to know if we're dealing with a repulsor or not so that I can force the dust to be thrown up at a much lower scrape speed than with the other parts. A repulsor field would not only push the repulsor part upwards, but also exert some forces on the surfaces in which the field is reacting. This would, in theory, throw up a small amount of dust even when the craft is stationary. I added the appliedRideHeight to the equations and lowered the default value of the field-variable which controls the minimum magnitude in which to call the scape method.

Either way, I'm perfectly happy deferring to your work on the Dust. I'm just trying things on my own because I can. my only interest in uploading anything is in fixing anything you might break, or fixing up the format of the code itself, which I'm rather obsessive about, and implementing the documentation aspects. Speaking of which, I fixed a few typos and such in other areas of your code where you'd added XML documentation. Awaiting permission to commit.

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Well, a particle fx thingy without dependencies is seriously epic But the looks are pretty similar you say? :>

The particle effects used in the DustFX portion of the mod are really just manipulations of the stock particles that come with KSP, which in turn are likely part of stock Unity. In reality, dependencies are not something you can avoid. The part we want to avoid is having a separate mod as a dependency. That's one reason why I didn't attempt to make a mod-mod (a mod that mods another mod... confusing eh?) for CollisionFX which would have simply used CollisionFX but injected different parameters into it for use on these wheels. By integrating the useful parts of the code directly, we eliminate CollisionFX as a dependency.

I'm unsure if the correct word is "epic" though. Definitely nice certainly.

Edited June 15, 2015 by Gaalidas

[Tyren]

Detail stuff:

Depending on the theory of those repulsors, they should push dust away to all sides, because of force losses. Just like a small scale version of the launch effects.

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...

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The particle effects used in the DustFX portion of the mod are really just manipulations of the stock particles that come with KSP, which in turn are likely part of stock Unity. In reality, dependencies are not something you can avoid. The part we want to avoid is having a separate mod as a dependency. That's one reason why I didn't attempt to make a mod-mod (a mod that mods another mod... confusing eh?) for CollisionFX which would have simply used CollisionFX but injected different parameters into it for use on these wheels. By integrating the useful parts of the code directly, we eliminate CollisionFX as a dependency.

I'm unsure if the correct word is "epic" though. Definitely nice certainly.

I dont know if i should be worried when i say: i can completely follow you.

[Gaalidas]

Worried, but not overly so.

[Madrias]

Lo-Fi, your single-folder thing in the Dev repository, it's not working out. Can't get the parts you've moved there to show up, and the ones outside the folder work fine. Hate being the bearer of the bug reports.

Edit: My bad. Complete and total PEBKAC. I didn't rename the folder from KerbalFoundries-master before trying to do things.

Edited June 16, 2015 by Madrias
Oops...

[Tyren]

Worried, but not overly so.

Gihi. Yeah, it aligned there. ^^

[BioRoots]

how can i get rid of the arrows that come with the track in the VAB

[Tyren]

Do they even show up outside vab?

[BioRoots]

Do they even show up outside vab?

no but i want to use the Kronal Vessel Viewer and they show in it

[lo-fi]

Ah ha! That'll do it, Madrias

Doh, keep forgetting to add you in as contrib. Will fix shortly.

Errr. No way I can think of to remove the arrows. They got added because I got fed up with "wheels no work" when people kept putting them upside down. Funnily enough i havent had a single issue since! How does vessel viewer deal with engine shrouds though? Does it show them?

[Gaalidas]

Lo-Fi, your single-folder thing in the Dev repository, it's not working out. Can't get the parts you've moved there to show up, and the ones outside the folder work fine. Hate being the bearer of the bug reports.

Edit: My bad. Complete and total PEBKAC. I didn't rename the folder from KerbalFoundries-master before trying to do things.

That's awesomely hilarious. I remember making a mistake like that months ago. Speaking of single folder mistakes, I tried to merge all of the KF part folders into one a while back but I left the "mesh" parameters alone without converting to "model" nodes. It turns out, KSP doesn't like that. Instead of loading the meshes specified, I ended up with 10 parts all using the APU model. Needless to say, there were many errors in the log that day.