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

[Robotengineer]

Do you still need help with texturing? I might also be able to make some tracks as well.

[Madrias]

As I've mentioned before, I'm not sure how easy/hard/impossible it would be to do, but a set of tracks with a steering knuckle would be completely amazing, and amusing. Especially for a small set of tracks.

As for what I'd voted for in the poll: Rover bodies. If only because we're missing nice, individual parts that allow us to build awesome cars, trucks, boats, and dune buggies. Sure, KSO gave us beautiful one-piece solutions for a lot of things, but there's something to KSP and that whole mix-and-match factor. Being able to put together a car from, say, 5 or 6 pieces, not including wheels, could be nice.

I'm not saying that we need individual quarter panels, doors, etc. I was thinking along the lines of Frame Pieces, front-clip, hood, front-half-cab, rear-half-cab, rear-clip, engine, wheels/tracks/screws

Each part does the following.

Frame Pieces: has mounting points for "wheels", engine, front clip.

Front Clip: Has mounting point to attach to frame, hole for engine, mounting point for front half of the cab. Contains lights, has high impact resistance, has electric charge holding capacity.

Cab Halves: Holds Kerbals in varying amounts. Front holds two Kerbals, rear holds 0-5 Kerbals, depending on design. Has antenna built in.

Engine: Makes noise, generates resource "Torque" used by drive mechanisms, generates Electric Charge, consumes Fuel.

Hood: covers engine. Some with holes for larger engines that would otherwise stick through.

Rear Clip: holds Fuel, contains lights.

Wheels/tracks/screws: Same as what we have, but with mounting nodes and configured to run on Torque instead of Electric Charge.

Yes, I know my idea is a mess, but it's just what came to mind right now. Between the frame parts, various front clips, cabs, engines, rear pieces and drive outputs, a small scattering of parts made to fit with one another could allow untold combinations of vehicles.

[lo-fi]

Here's for inspiration )

I found that video on my travels last night, was the best I found

Haha, look at these... Kind of - tracks with float-bodies. Impressive what ppl can come up with if you put them into rough terrain.

Never seen that before! I can't recreate at the moment, though it did get me thinking for another, better way I can do the tracks... Damn you

Hooooly crap. I am hugely impressed with the performance of these tracks man. Way better than the originals. Excellent job!

http://i.imgur.com/EADamzK.png

Thanks, glad you like them!

Neat! Tracks! I love me a good tracked vehicle.

In regards to the poll, here's what I want to see:

More tracks. In lots of variants. Im' thinking:

Slow, high traction, suspensionless units ala bulldozers. No real weight limit but they're scarcely able to outrun continental drift.

Medium capacity, Medium speed, suspended. Think M4 Sherman or Panzer IV tracks. Good for light-ish kethane rovers and the like. Good and mobile, one pair can support up to 30 tons or so.

Heavy, medium speed, suspended: Think Tiger, Panzer V, IS-2, KV-2. Still tank tracks, bit slower that hte above set but a pair can handle up to 60 tons just fine.

Light, high speed, Suspended. Think M3/5 Stuart tracks. Weight limit of about 10 tons or so but they'll rip along at almost freeway speeds.

Heavy, high Speed, Suspended: Cheat part. Tracks off a modern MBT(M1A2 Abrams, Leo2A6, Challenger II, JGSDF Type 10, Russian T-90, etc). 60 ton weight limit, blisteringly fast. Overpowered cheat part that people can use for screwing around and making tank replicas. Also, I suppose, if you want your kethane refinery to get a speeding ticket.

Feather-duty, Suspended: Think the sort of thing you'd put on a racing quadbike-turned-tracked-vehicle. Weight limit of, say, 2-3 tons, but fast. Could be used for half tracks as well.

Extreme Duty: NASA CRawler Transporter tracks, basically. Not sure what use these would be, or even how you'd get the bloody things off world, but hey.

Recreating 'real'in stuff in KSP isn't really my thing, but I get what you're aiming for. 'Kerbalised' version of the above, yes

Do you still need help with texturing? I might also be able to make some tracks as well.

Thank you, I'll be in touch!

As I've mentioned before, I'm not sure how easy/hard/impossible it would be to do, but a set of tracks with a steering knuckle would be completely amazing, and amusing. Especially for a small set of tracks.

As for what I'd voted for in the poll: Rover bodies. If only because we're missing nice, individual parts that allow us to build awesome cars, trucks, boats, and dune buggies. Sure, KSO gave us beautiful one-piece solutions for a lot of things, but there's something to KSP and that whole mix-and-match factor. Being able to put together a car from, say, 5 or 6 pieces, not including wheels, could be nice.

I'm not saying that we need individual quarter panels, doors, etc. I was thinking along the lines of Frame Pieces, front-clip, hood, front-half-cab, rear-half-cab, rear-clip, engine, wheels/tracks/screws

Each part does the following.

Frame Pieces: has mounting points for "wheels", engine, front clip.

Front Clip: Has mounting point to attach to frame, hole for engine, mounting point for front half of the cab. Contains lights, has high impact resistance, has electric charge holding capacity.

Cab Halves: Holds Kerbals in varying amounts. Front holds two Kerbals, rear holds 0-5 Kerbals, depending on design. Has antenna built in.

Engine: Makes noise, generates resource "Torque" used by drive mechanisms, generates Electric Charge, consumes Fuel.

Hood: covers engine. Some with holes for larger engines that would otherwise stick through.

Rear Clip: holds Fuel, contains lights.

Wheels/tracks/screws: Same as what we have, but with mounting nodes and configured to run on Torque instead of Electric Charge.

Yes, I know my idea is a mess, but it's just what came to mind right now. Between the frame parts, various front clips, cabs, engines, rear pieces and drive outputs, a small scattering of parts made to fit with one another could allow untold combinations of vehicles.

I've got some ideas for little tracks that steer like wheels, I think that will be really cool.

Regarding the rover bodies, I'm sort of creating something not a million miles from that, though not quite as modular. Less individual parts, but I've got some clever tricks for customising them for the role you want the rover to perform. I've figured out the external seat as well, so that will feature too

I did look into adding more resources for wheels/repulsors etc, but I couldn't see the advantage. There used to be some truck wheels that used engines and stuff, which I got fed up and frustrated with fairly quickly and decided I never wanted to go that route, so EC it is! It keeps it flexible and usable with nothing but stock parts, which I think some mods kind of miss the mark on. Generators: absolutely. Spanner has worked up a wicked little LF+O powered unit that I've scripted to auto throttle. He's produced a second model which I need to rig up, then I'll be releasing once I've figured out how to make it switch to intake air without borking the alternator.

[Kenobi McCormick]

Recreating 'real'in stuff in KSP isn't really my thing, but I get what you're aiming for. 'Kerbalised' version of the above, yes

Indeed, kerbalized versions to spice up the track selection. Also get them a bit narrower and longer, which leaves more room between them for machinery and such.

[Haifi]

Never seen that before! I can't recreate at the moment, though it did get me thinking for another, better way I can do the tracks... Damn you

I'm really sorry for giving you ideas... Well not really

[JDLENL]

are submarines a thing?

[lo-fi]

I thought there was a mod someone was working on for subs? Not entirely sure how, water in KSP is strange to say the least! I'm struggling to get it to do anything terribly sensible and I'm not sure it's battle I'll ultimately win... I've been playing about trying to get the screws to work in water. One or two more things to try, them I'm all out of ideas...

As a side-note: Does anyone know how to activate the splashing particle effect, should I actually get something approaching a workable solution?

Edited August 29, 2014 by lo-fi

[Haifi]

Here you get airships and submarines

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53961-0-24-HooliganLabs-Mods-on-Curse

I really like the airship parts, have not tested the submarines yet.

And for the particle effect, it should be: fx_splashdown

Edited August 29, 2014 by Haifi

[OrbitusII]

As a side-note: Does anyone know how to activate the splashing particle effect, should I actually get something approaching a workable solution?

I'm not sure how you would trigger the built-in splash effects, but I'm sure you could put together some particles in Unity and have the plugin spawn those when you need it to. I would do the latter since you can also optimize the particles more than the stock ones.

[Haifi]

Oh, and on the splash fx, if I remember correctly in Firespitter you can activate /deactivate splash fx on the seaplane floats. Maybe try asking Snjo how he did that.

[Gaalidas]

Yeah, before I got to the bottom of the page, I was going to reply in regards to Firespitter. There's something in that plugin that does the splashing effects, but I never really liked them much. For starters, when "floating" on the water, you do not need to see or hear a "big splash" every time the simulation detects that you're touching water and not-stationary. It got rather irritating and I eventually disabled it.

On the topic of the Hooligan Labs submarines, from what I could tell there was a development in the plugin somewhere that could "reset" your camera from the above-world area, and thus over the collider for the water, to a default position near your submerged vehicle, and below that collider. Thus, your camera would collide with the underside of the water and not clip back to the over-world. at least, that's how I gathered it. I never really bothered with subs considering that KSP is about space and planetary surfaces, but with so little detail in kerbin's above-water world, I decided it was unlikely that the bottom of the sea was detailed enough to bother, if it even had a collider for the landscape below the water at all. Even if all that checked out, in a game that does not originally feature under-water landscapes there would unlikely be shaders and effects devoted to that environment.

Edited August 29, 2014 by Gaalidas

[CrazyIvan]

Um for some reason I'm crashing with this mod whenever I launch the game (the 64 bit version) is this a bug? I also happen to have KSPX and KW rocketry. Can anyone halp?

[lo-fi]

We have been testing in 64 with this being the first reported issue. Could you send an output_log please?

Having a look at KSPX, I can't see anything there that should cause an issue and I use KW myself.

Edited August 29, 2014 by lo-fi

[lo-fi]

I've never played with particles in unity, that might be an interesting challenge! FS does indeed give me all I need to be able to spawn the effects, though I agree about the sound being a bit OTT for constant movement. Not going to spend too much time on it, but I'll have a go at making vehicles amphibious

[lo-fi]

Some testing required because this did require some meddling with the track code, so I need to make sure I didn't break anything in the process. But:

This adds amphibious capability to tracks too

Effects are only what KSP decided to give me. A little random.

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

lofi very cool as usual, any chance of a tester? I've been messing about in ksp water since i started playing, so i know what floats, works doesn't etc, and real world hull shapes don't work sadly but spanner world hull shapes do, the screws would be ideal for my monster landing craft, being able to drive out the water for loading and unloading would be perfect. go on let me have a play, would be interesting experiment to actually build them into a hull.

[sidew]

There are some real-live screw propelled vehicles from russia: http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2011/03/radical-screw-propelled-vehicles.html and also a video:

[lo-fi]

They're in the dev repo now, Spanner! The ZIL was what gave me the idea someone posted the other day and I thought it was too cool a concept not to make into a part. I like the retract, though, that's really cool.

[Gaalidas]

Some testing required because this did require some meddling with the track code, so I need to make sure I didn't break anything in the process. But:

http://youtu.be/-OxidnKB2xc

This adds amphibious capability to tracks too

Effects are only what KSP decided to give me. A little random.

Yeah, so those effects aren't too bad... just need to take control of them and have them originate only from the ends of the screws (I still feel really nasty taking about screwing the terrain), downsizing the effect considerably, and fixing the blinking. I think that was what the firespitter version was attempting to make happen. It's actually quite possible that my complaint was not in fact with the firespitter effects, but with the vanilla effects which weren't also turned off, which would occasionally smack you in the face. It's possible that firespitter splash effects were completely acceptable. It's just so hard to tell what it what when vanilla effects are so over the top, adn not in the good way. If those could be disabled and replaced completely with something else, then it might be okay.

[Neutrinovore]

Yeah, so those effects aren't too bad... just need to take control of them and have them originate only from the ends of the screws (I still feel really nasty taking about screwing the terrain), downsizing the effect considerably, and fixing the blinking. I think that was what the firespitter version was attempting to make happen. It's actually quite possible that my complaint was not in fact with the firespitter effects, but with the vanilla effects which weren't also turned off, which would occasionally smack you in the face. It's possible that firespitter splash effects were completely acceptable. It's just so hard to tell what it what when vanilla effects are so over the top, adn not in the good way. If those could be disabled and replaced completely with something else, then it might be okay.

Regarding your comment, made bold above: Call them 'Archimedean' propulsion, or something like that. Or, I guess, ArKimedean, if you want to Kerbalize the spelling, lol. Ooh, maybe 'Spiral Propulsion Devices'? A screw thread is defined simply as being 'a helical groove or raised ridge that spirals around a cylinder, with a regular pitch and form.' At least, that's MY definition. 'Helical Propulsion'?

Just some ideas there.

[lo-fi]

You know, I quite like 'Spiral Propulsion Devices'. Neatly bypasses all those screwing jokes we've all been dying to make

I've not actually tested the FS module yet, though it appears to do some removal of the stock stuff, having looked through the code. A little out of my depth (boom boom, tishk), but it seems from my limited testing that most problems are caused (both effects and splashdown damage) by parts lifting out of the water then returning to it. Spanner seems to have some insights having done some testing, I'm interested to see what he has to say.

What a journey this is turning out to be! A few months ago I made a simple wheel and joined the forum for a bit of help, now I'm messing about with amphibious drive systems.. Thanks to whoever posted the spiral drive, its a wicked idea and has lead to some useful improvements to both tracks and wheels while I've been messing about making it work. Once I've completed my replacement wheel plugin all my wheels will also have at least some limited amphibious drive capability.

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

Hi,

I prefer Helical Drives, but as long as it works it could be called furry tom tom and i wouldn't care.

Tested on the cat with good results, I expect you know about the strange pulsing or pausing depending how you look at it, of the units, and it's early days for the new tech, but it does what i want, loads of drag though, may need to be housed in a bay for my purposes, but here they are pulling 36Mton out of the water and pushing it back again and as a reference speed on/in water for 8 drives and 36tonnes 17ms, damn fine job yet again. cheers

[lo-fi]

Bl**dy hell! Well, I guess we have what passes for Kerbal propellers now

I need to work out something to stop the freewheel speed running way out of hand, that's what causes the strobe effect. If only we had some motion blur..

I'll get working on finishing the model too.

[ZodiusInfuser]

Bl**dy hell! Well, I guess we have what passes for Kerbal propellers now

I need to work out something to stop the freewheel speed running way out of hand, that's what causes the strobe effect. If only we had some motion blur..

I'll get working on finishing the model too.

Maybe cap the speed you rotate the model at so it's no more than 180 degrees per update (or 90 if you have two spirals etc)?

[lo-fi]

Thanks, that's a really good call. I can just clamp the calculated value in the update routine

I just realised I made a stupid noob error with the centre of mass placement in all my models. I'll be fixing for the next release, which is looking to be quite a major one. I believe Justin is close to finishing the texture on the converting repulsor wheel too, so a few new parts plus updates for existing stuff.