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


lo-fi

What to work on next?  

1,282 members have voted

  1. 1. What to work on next?

    • More wheels
      123
    • More tracks
      453
    • Rover bodies
      241
    • Landing gear
      137
    • Landing legs
      108
    • Something completely different
      193


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  On 7/31/2016 at 11:22 PM, 50calkerbin said:

I have been coming to this ksp forum each day for almost a week to see if it has been updated, but it never is.

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Is this a complaint? Well, then: rest easy, my friend, there's a solution! YOU go spend many hours building a wheel system from scratch for KSP, then provide it to others for free. If you're not willing to do that, then I wonder what you're hoping your comment will achieve. Do you want us to congratulate you on your clearly remarkable powers of observation...?

Edited by AccidentalDisassembly
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  On 7/31/2016 at 11:22 PM, 50calkerbin said:

I have been coming to this ksp forum each day for almost a week to see if it has been updated, but it never is.

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Be patient. I haven't been playing the new versions at all because my space program pretty much revolves around sending tracked rovers everywhere. Yet you don't see me begging and whining and complaining that these things aren't updated.

 

 

Lo-fi and co are working tirelessly to generate an entirely new wheel module for the game to get these things to work because the one that came with Unity 5.x is so crap it's laughable they even shipped it. It's not a quick process. Patience is key. Harassing mod authors has never worked, and we've lost very talented creators(BobCat for one) to it in the past. Please for the love of god do not chase Lo-fi and crew away and leave us all without tracks indefinitely.

Edited by Kenobi McCormick
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You guys crack me up :D thanks for all the good natured fish slapping shenanigans. 

I'm working on it slowly but surely, and I do understand the frustration of those waiting. It never ceases to amaze me how popular a mod it's become! 

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  On 8/1/2016 at 8:32 AM, lo-fi said:

It never ceases to amaze me how popular a mod it's become! 

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While you weren't the first to bring us tracks, you brought tracks that were highly reliable, screw-drives that work in water, anti-lithobraking devices that allowed us to float a few meters above the surface and travel at obscene speeds, and a variety of wheels that never gave up and never surrendered, no matter what we made them move.

I'm hardly surprised it became so popular.

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  On 8/1/2016 at 5:35 PM, Madrias said:

While you weren't the first to bring us tracks, you brought tracks that were highly reliable, screw-drives that work in water, anti-lithobraking devices that allowed us to float a few meters above the surface and travel at obscene speeds, and a variety of wheels that never gave up and never surrendered, no matter what we made them move.

I'm hardly surprised it became so popular.

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Well, it was a lot of fun doing it :)

@Shadowmage I'm really, really sorry for what I'm doing to your code. :confused: I've really got stuck in tonight and it's utter carnage in my branch right now but does at least compile. Hopefully all will become clear once I've added joints in, and you can help patch together the friction stuff from what I can throw out of the joints.

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  On 8/1/2016 at 10:51 PM, lo-fi said:

Well, it was a lot of fun doing it :)

@Shadowmage I'm really, really sorry for what I'm doing to your code. :confused: I've really got stuck in tonight and it's utter carnage in my branch right now but does at least compile. Hopefully all will become clear once I've added joints in, and you can help patch together the friction stuff from what I can throw out of the joints.

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No worries :)

The actual functional friction code was minimal, mostly consisting of the friction curves; the rest was merely framework to calculate and apply the suspension.  So, not surprising that it would require a different layout when using the joints for suspension.  In the end all that is really needed to make the friction work is to know what the current down-force is that is being applied.

Just let me know when you get the suspension stuff to a 'workable' state and I'll take a look / start working on re-integrating the friction end of things.

Also a quick heads up that I'll be out of town for the next few days/week or so.... so if I'm not responding, that is probably why :)

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Thanks for the confirmation, I was rapidly coming to that conclusion myself! I've got it functional in U5 - the joint suspension self supports when applied to a model approximating a KSP "Vessel", so I'll work on that and leave you to strip the redundant bits out of your code if that's OK? Compression against the spring rate is about the best we can do to pass out to the friction code. As I think we've discussed, along with @damerell (I think), we have edge cases where the suspension is too high a spring rate to compress, or two soft to actually suspend the weight it's carrying without resting on the bump stop which we can't measure. A PID loop adjusting the spring rate so we're always within the sprung range *could* actually work quite well and give an interesting sort of active stability control too. I believe this is actually something Squad were attempting with the stock colliders. We can, of course, do it better :wink:

Have a good trip!

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That does sound a bit interesting.  Essentially active suspension, always strong enough to hold the weight we're building onto the vehicle we've made, if I've interpreted that correctly?

Yes, I know, I'm trying to simplify programming to an engineering side to view it as I can see it (I do know a little programming, though only in BASIC, and even at that, it was a while ago) and actually understand it.  Still, it sounds like there's a prototype you guys are working with, and that's good to hear that it appears to work.

Either way, it's good to see a bit of progress.

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I'm actually starting to get hype that the update's approaching.

 

...Lower your Holy Mackerels, I'm not demanding an update or asking where it's going to be. I have other things to keep me going, other things to direct the hype train towards. So should everyone else.

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  On 8/2/2016 at 7:51 PM, Madrias said:

That does sound a bit interesting.  Essentially active suspension, always strong enough to hold the weight we're building onto the vehicle we've made, if I've interpreted that correctly?

Yes, I know, I'm trying to simplify programming to an engineering side to view it as I can see it (I do know a little programming, though only in BASIC, and even at that, it was a while ago) and actually understand it.  Still, it sounds like there's a prototype you guys are working with, and that's good to hear that it appears to work.

Either way, it's good to see a bit of progress.

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It's an idea at the moment, but that's exactly it. And seeing as I'm writing it, I can (and will) build in a mechanism to allow the plugin that sits on top of it to adjust the response too. Steep learning curve with code, but get stuck in! You'll be surprised what you can achieve.

  On 8/2/2016 at 7:59 PM, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Good to see the progress here, not like the Adjustable Landing Gears mod (RIP)

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Don't forget that what we're writing can be used by other mods. And, in fact, other Unity games that require a wheel collider. Adapting ALG should not be hard.

  On 8/2/2016 at 8:01 PM, TARDISES said:

I'm actually starting to get hype that the update's approaching.

 

...Lower your Holy Mackerels, I'm not demanding an update or asking where it's going to be. I have other things to keep me going, other things to direct the hype train towards. So should everyone else.

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Hahaha! The hype train is a long, long way in the distance. A faint sound of a horn, maybe...

 

EDIT: Just had a look through the ALG thread. Seems that BD came to the same conclusion I did about U5 colliders and their ping-pong ball stability. Also that they needed the fish slapping rule implemented in that thread :wink: It's been the intention from the start to produce a workable collider that's discreet and separate from KF itself, and seeing that awesome set of landing gear sat unloved due to U5 makes that decision look even better. Meanwhile, code continues to be duct taped back together...

Edited by lo-fi
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That would certainly save a lot of SPH->runway development cycles. I was vaguely considering a system where you could adjust more suspension parameters (like spring strength) in biomes with names of the form KSC_foo (a nasty hack, that) but one that adjusts to the vessel mass (within sane limits) would be brilliant.

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Mm. I wonder if the adjustment would happen in the game world as well, IE loading up a tracked ISRU mining rig with ore would cause the springs to stiffen appropriately and vice versa. Would push these already fun tracks into an entirely new league, I think, as they'd handle 90% as well laden as they do empty.

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The problem before was that U4 (and 5, I think) wheel colliders wouldn't accept a change in spring strength without either leaving contact with the floor or being disabled for a physics step, which made adaptive suspension impossible. We're no longer constrained by such silliness, and yes, it'll work real-time. Seems like one to work on, as it's win-win for everything. My only concern is making a stable adaptation system that doesn't fight itself with many multiple wheels in use, but we'll cross that bridge as we come to it. 

I love it when a plan comes together. 

A little update: Ray and sphere casts are working, sticky grip is functioning perfectly, and I think I've figured out a perfect way to do steering. Plugging dynamic friction code back in will take a little discussion with Shadowmage, then a whole lot of experimentation.  

Edited by lo-fi
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Sounds awesome, and the multiple wheel thing working is a necessity anyway given that the tracks are chock full of them. IIRC there were 7 road wheels in the long tracks I based my space program around, so at minimum 14 wheels for a basic tracked rover. And then there's nothing stopping me from putting some normal wheels up front for a half-track, or docking to a tracked trailer...yaaah.

 

 

Nice to hear some good progress on the traction and steering, though! This is definitely gonna be worth the wait!

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  On 8/3/2016 at 12:21 AM, lo-fi said:

The problem before was that U4 (and 5, I think) wheel colliders wouldn't accept a change in spring strength without either leaving contact with the floor or being disabled for a physics step, which made adaptive suspension impossible. We're no longer constrained by such silliness, and yes, it'll work real-time. Seems like one to work on, as it's win-win for everything. My only concern is making a stable adaptation system that doesn't fight itself with many multiple wheels in use, but we'll cross that bridge as we come to it. 

I love it when a plan comes together. 

A little update: Ray and sphere casts are working, sticky grip is functioning perfectly, and I think I've figured out a perfect way to do steering. Plugging dynamic friction code back in will take a little discussion with Shadowmage, then a whole lot of experimentation.  

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That is all excellent news.  Plugging in the dynamic friction should be cakewalk compared to the rest of it :)

Multiple-wheel harmonics w/regards to dynamic spring strength adjustment:  good thing we're working on a custom solution where we have the capability to do something about it.  It might require some vessel-aware code at the KSP PartModule level (or VesselModule I suppose), but that is doable.  Might also just work with proper PID setup... I suppose we'll see when we get there.

If you are keeping Github up to date, I'll start looking at things when I return from my trip, and we can do some discussions next week/end about getting things integrated.

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  On 8/3/2016 at 1:16 AM, Shadowmage said:

That is all excellent news.  Plugging in the dynamic friction should be cakewalk compared to the rest of it :)

Multiple-wheel harmonics w/regards to dynamic spring strength adjustment:  good thing we're working on a custom solution where we have the capability to do something about it.  It might require some vessel-aware code at the KSP PartModule level (or VesselModule I suppose), but that is doable.  Might also just work with proper PID setup... I suppose we'll see when we get there.

If you are keeping Github up to date, I'll start looking at things when I return from my trip, and we can do some discussions next week/end about getting things integrated.

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I will update soon, now I'm not quite so ashamed of what I've done :D 

  On 8/3/2016 at 2:10 AM, RocketSquid said:

All aboard the great treaded hype train!!!

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Something like this:

 

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