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

[lo-fi]

So cool catching your own smoke trail, and I love the interesting use of the small tracks How are your finding the DSR2, btw?

I think I might have this water thing nailed, though I've just found a bug with the repulsors which means you can't reactivate them if they turn off due to low power, even when you have plenty of power again.

[Madrias]

I like the DSR2, actually. And, yeah, I caught that repulsor bug, too, shortly after running a while. With the repulsor wheels, it'll also jam them in the repulsor position. Not sure if they function as wheels or not, though, when jammed (8 wheeled craft, stable on 6. Rear wheels and fronts steer, fronts jammed (action groups 1-4 controlled individual wheel sets) as I was powering down due to a lack of sufficient power).

The DSR2 is actually a nice rover pod, containing nearly everything one could need. It's stable, has a chunky amount of reaction torque for use with repulsorcraft (or unrolling yourself), and actually looks good. Just wishing I had more parts to match it so that I could go cruising around with it and not worry about the fact that anything I put on it looks out of place.

[lo-fi]

Working on fixing now, I messed it up when I changed to the smoothed height update method.

Fair comments, it does have an external style all of its own. Spanner is working on sleeker version, and I have some ideas for larger bits that blend things together nicely, along with the texture tweaking in progress.

[Gaalidas]

Something in that last post reminded me of something I thought to mention. Actually, two things.

First off, I did something really stupid (stupidly awesome, but still really stupid). I loaded up an ASET rover body (around 12 segments long) with four sets of four medium wheels each (y'know, the ones that look like repulsor wheels but don't transform, though I wish they could still transform and act like landing-legs). So that's four wheels, set in standard rover format around a central tube, then copied three more times and put into a square formation. I know, it's pretty nuts. I was trying to see if the module could make the necessary adjustments for wheels in this nutty arrangement, taking inspiration from that kethane mining rig shown early on in the mod's development, and taking it a little bit further.

Performance from the start was pretty good, though I couldn't tell if the wheels on the inside track were reacting properly considering they were attached to a part facing the opposite direction than would be expected considering the side of the craft they were attached to. So, I begin rolling with this giant 16 wheeled monstrosity (abomination possibly?) and performance is great... until... one of the wheels from the four quads gets stuck in full suspension extension and refuses to turn. In fact, it causes so much friction that it is tearing the rest of the craft apart. On top of that, the rest of the wheels were spinning in place. Long story short, I pushed it to get it unstuck and ripped one of the quads off the thing. It still worked after that, just sagged a bit in the front.

EDIT: I just realized that's only one thing! Now for Number 2!

Okay... now, what was number 2 again? Think brain, THINK! Gah! I've got nothing. okay, just that one little weird thing then. I'll think of the other one later I'm sure.

Edited October 29, 2014 by Gaalidas

[Madrias]

Out of curiosity, seeing as it'd been mentioned NOT to do earlier (regarding multiple pods and their views), what exactly is the issue with running multiples? I've coupled a pair of DSR2's back-to-back and other than not being able to EVA (cause I've blocked up the hatches in doing so), things seem to still work okay. Other than, of course, massive loading lag.

Yes, I do sometimes wonder why, exactly, I do these kind of things. Tell me not to do something and what do I go and do? Exactly what someone said not to do.

Still, I'll keep trying to break things. Or find broken things.

Oh, the Alpha Wheels aren't working right now. Looks like an elephant sat on the suspension and crushed it into the wheel.

[lo-fi]

Something in that last post reminded me of soemthing I thought to mention. Actually, two things.

First off, I did something really stupid (stupidly awesome, but still really stupid). I loaded up an ASET rover body (around 12 segments long) with four sets of four medium wheels each (y'know, the ones that look like repulsor wheels but don't transform, though I wish they could still transform and act like landing-legs). So that's four wheels, set in standard rover format around a central tube, then copied three more times and put into a square formation. I know, it's pretty nuts. I was trying to see if the module could make the necessary adjustments for wheels in this nutty arrangement, taking inspiration from that kethane mining rig shown early on in the mod's development, and taking it a little bit further.

Performance from the start was pretty good, though I couldn't tell if the wheels on the inside track were reacting properly considering they were attached to a part facing the opposite direction than would be expected considering the side of the craft they were attached to. So, I begin rolling with this giant 16 wheeled monstrosity (abomination possibly?) and performance is great... until... one of the wheels from the four quads gets stuck in full suspension extension and refuses to turn. In fact, it causes so much friction that it is tearing the rest of the craft apart. On top of that, the rest of the wheels were spinning in place. Long story short, I pushed it to get it unstuck and ripped one of the quads off the thing. It still worked after that, just sagged a bit in the front.

Ummmmmm... Screen grab???

Out of curiosity, seeing as it'd been mentioned NOT to do earlier (regarding multiple pods and their views), what exactly is the issue with running multiples? I've coupled a pair of DSR2's back-to-back and other than not being able to EVA (cause I've blocked up the hatches in doing so), things seem to still work okay. Other than, of course, massive loading lag.

Yes, I do sometimes wonder why, exactly, I do these kind of things. Tell me not to do something and what do I go and do? Exactly what someone said not to do.

Still, I'll keep trying to break things. Or find broken things.

Oh, the Alpha Wheels aren't working right now. Looks like an elephant sat on the suspension and crushed it into the wheel.

I think we all suffer from this affliction! Which wheel, could could you do me a screen grab? I've been messing with the suspension stuff, so I'd be very interested to see what I broke..

[Gaalidas]

Oh! I remembered the second thing! So, this is probably how it's supposed to function, but I discovered that a set of wheels with a group number 2 don't work too well with another set of wheels (even of the same type) with a group number 1. I had a rover with four wheels, but the front ones needed different torque settings than the back ones so it wouldn't do the monster truck flip on me when I accelerated. What happened was that the back wheels still reversed their steering like the stock wheels would do, taking into account their position on the craft, but they didn't necessarily work together, if you get my meaning. I reset the back wheels during the trip to group one again, and the steering started working the way it should from what I could tell. I took the test a bit further though, and put another set of wheels between the two sets and set the back four to group 2, Sure enough, the separate torque settings worked great but the middle two wheels were turning as if they were the front wheels. They didn't start acting like middle wheels until I set all the wheels to use group 1 again. So, I'm faced with a small problem of over-active wheel torque causing acceleration flips but turning amazingly well, or having less turning performance and being ably to manipulate things separately without hitting every single wheel settings sliders separately. Am I making sense?

[Madrias]

Now that I've grabbed the latest dev build, I'll see if those wheels are still broken, or whether I just had a minor quirk at my end. That, and I'm trying to come up with something just outright crazy to pull off...

Edit: Alpha Medium Wheel is still broken. Doesn't drive, doesn't steer. I'll upload screencaps when Imgur stops being a butt.

Edit 2:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Should shed some light on the subject. One taken from under the vehicle, showing that it's floating, despite not installing repulsors. One taken from above the vehicle, showing me inputting full steering and getting nothing in return (other than reaction wheel torque) and one from 3/4 view.

Edited October 29, 2014 by Madrias

[Gaalidas]

Weird, I use it all the time without issue. Be sure your craft doesn't have an errant collider that's sitting at the same level or lower than the wheels. I attempted to put wheels on those new wider RetroFuture parts and discovered that the hull was colliding with the ground below the wheel colliders, despite the visual appearance showing that I had plenty of clearance.

I won't be able to put up any screen caps of my misadventures. Trying to reproduce these things is rather difficult and time-consuming. besides, the craft that I messed up with no longer exists since I tend to not keep broken designs, I just fix them and re-save to the same file.

Almost wish I had the processing power to run a vid-cap program in the background during every play-through so I could document my stupidity in designing rovers.

EDIT: Probably a stupid question, but you are updating all of the files when lo-fi dumps his stuff (that sounds so wrong, sorry) right? Cause, if he updates the .mu and the .dll and only one gets updated on your machine, things will go funky sometimes.

Edited October 29, 2014 by Gaalidas

[Madrias]

That same body works just fine with the Repulsor Conversion wheels. Still, I'll try throwing a few other craft at it, including one of my simple testing designs.

[lo-fi]

Thanks guys, I'll do a bit of replication...

EDIT: Madrias, I just noticed you're using the old medium model. I've not tested with that, I have to admit. Anything in the logs? It may well be a victim of my refactoring. Which config are you using?

Gaalidas, I think you've discovered an edge case, and one where the settings menu is possibly not clear. I've modified to give different buttons to update steering and wheel settings independently, though still using the same group number slider. See what you think; hopefully it's not too confusing...

I think I've fixed that bug with the repulsors (and hopefully not caused any more), as well as finally fixed the water code to my satisfaction.

Edited October 29, 2014 by lo-fi

[Madrias]

Added another to the album, as simple as it gets. Two RTG's, two batteries, the flat-wide I-beams, and four wheels. Still not behaving.

[lo-fi]

Added another to the album, as simple as it gets. Two RTG's, two batteries, the flat-wide I-beams, and four wheels. Still not behaving.

Yeah, I'd say a config fubar, as I changed quite a bit in the plugin and done several repasses over all the models since I stopped testing with those. Any particular reason you like them over the repulsor wheels? I've updated so the (as-yet) unused repulsor mesh is removed on the new medium wheel that's using the repwheel mesh, which should sort it all out for you This needs to happen for release anyway.

[Madrias]

Not so much that I prefer them over the repulsor wheels, but I have a lot of crafts on other saves that use the Alpha wheels instead. It's just one of those things. With the new functionality built into the Rep. wheels (split modes that actually allow independant suspension/repulsor control), I'll be using them more often. Otherwise, it's a preference for a cleaner, sleeker looking craft.

As for what I'm up to... Making that new rover pod fly.

[lo-fi]

Ah got ya. If you don't mind backing up a save and testing, you ought to find that the new version is a direct replacement for the old model, as I set the name the same in the config. Hopefully nothing bad should happen with craft in flight...

Flying DSR2 sounds brilliant! I've been giving some thought to how to launch the thing on a rocket, which actually won't be easy as it stands.

[Madrias]

Ah. I went the easy way instead of trying to put it on a rocket and send it screaming into the sky that way.

Jeb decided to space-tape his remote control glider to the roof. Well, after they put the batteries in the shrink ray backwards and made it bigger, then glued some engines on.

Edited October 29, 2014 by Madrias

[lo-fi]

I believe the russians came up with just such a contraption in WW2 Very cool! Jebs half hidden expression in the screen grab is absolutely priceless too.

[Madrias]

One can air-drop the rover, too. Very useful in a pinch. Sure, it can't get off-world, but it was designed to drop the rover on Kerbin. I've used similar planes to explore Eve in the past, after getting them there. It's just how I am. I have no problems landing when there's atmosphere to exploit, but you yank that out from under me and I struggle to do anything.

[Gaalidas]

I'll give that new code a test in a few minutes. I figure, at the very least, a way to get separate control groups to work together in steering properly would be great.

Lets see... next up on my insane testing procedure (really just making it up as I go) will be to see how multiple types/sizes of wheels work together. Oh, one thing I did do a while back was add surface repulsors to a heavy craft to relieve the wheels from taking all of the weight, leaving them to handle the propulsion mostly. I ended up with a more stable craft in the forward/backward range. However, upon catching a little air the thing decided to flip over and explode. I have no idea what happened, but overall it was a success. No one will miss that intern anyway.

Jeb looks a bit nervous to me in that picture. That's saying a lot considering Jeb will grin like an idiot when strapped with duct-tape to half a dozen boosters aimed at something hard like... the ground.

Edited October 30, 2014 by Gaalidas

[Madrias]

Jeb was the pilot for the first flight where I didn't have any struts. The thing shook apart and collapsed the VAB when the pod hit it. Without parachutes.

[Gaalidas]

So he has good reason to be a bit nervous.

[lo-fi]

Gotta love a bit of VAB destruction. Surely Jeb was looking around for snacks?

PART
{
name = KFroverWheel2
module = Part
author = Squad & Kerbal Foundries


mesh = model.mu
scale = 1
rescaleFactor = 1


node_attach = 0.2233052, 0.5248517, 0.00, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1


TechRequired = fieldScience
entryCost = 3100


cost = 300
category = Utility
subcategory = 0
title = KF RoveMax Model S2
manufacturer = Kerbal Motion LLC & Kerbal Foundries
description = Seeing an untapped market for a smaller design of rover wheel, Kerbal Motion quickly pounced upon this opportunity with the Model 2 - designed for robotic vehicles or smaller crewed vehicles.


attachRules = 0,1,0,1,0


mass = 0.05
dragModelType = default
maximum_drag = 0.3
minimum_drag = 0.2
angularDrag = 1
crashTolerance = 7
maxTemp = 3600


crashTolerance = 20
breakingForce = 20
breakingTorque = 20
MODULE
{
name = ObjectDestroy
objectName = bustedwheel
}


MODULE
{
name = OverrideWheelCollider
susTravName = suspensionTraverse
moveCollider = true
moveColliderBy = 0.05
suspensionDistance = 0.2
spring = 1
damper = 0.05
mass = 0.25
targetPosition = 0
}


MODULE
{
name = ModuleTrack
raycastError = -0.015
springRate = 0.8
damperRate = 0.05
smoothSpeed = 8
chargeConsumptionRate = 0.2
hasSteering = true
torqueCurve
{
key = 0 60 0 0
key = 2 60 0 0
key = 6 30 0 0
key = 12 0 0 0
}

steeringCurve
{
key = 0 30 0 0
key = 6 10 0 0
key = 12 5 0 0

}

torqueSteeringCurve
{
key = 0 0 0 0
}
brakeSteeringCurve
{

key = 0 0 0 0
}
brakingTorque = 70
rollingResistance = 0
maxRPM = 600
}


MODULE
{
name = TrackWheel
wheelName = wheel
colliderName = wheelCollider
sustravName = suspensionTraverse
steeringName = lateral
isIdler = false
isSprocket = false


smoothSpeed = 40
wheelRotationX = 0
wheelRotationY = 1
wheelRotationZ = 0
susTravAxis = Y
steeringAxis = Y
}


MODULE
{
name = FXModuleLookAtConstraint
CONSTRAINLOOKFX
{
targetName = susp1
rotatorsName = susp2
}


CONSTRAINLOOKFX
{
targetName = susp2
rotatorsName = susp1
}
}


EFFECTS
{
WheelEffect
{
AUDIO
{
channel = Ship
clip = KerbalFoundries/Sounds/wheel
volume = 0.0 0.0
volume = 0.1 0.2
volume = 1.0 1.0
pitch = 0.0 0.6
pitch = 1.0 1.5
loop = true
}
}
}




}

PART
{
name = KFwheelMed
module = Part
author = Squad & Kerbal Foundries


mesh = model.mu
scale = 1
rescaleFactor = 1


node_attach = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0


TechRequired = advancedMotors
entryCost = 6000


cost = 580
category = Utility
subcategory = 0
title = KF TR-2L Ruggedized Vehicular Wheel
manufacturer = Kerbal Motion LLC & Kerbal Foundries
description = The TR-2L is an extremely tough wheel made for mobilizing medium sized vehicles across a large variety of terrain. The extremely high traction tread ensures firm grip on any surface, providing reliability and reducing the chances of being used for high-speed tomfoolery.


attachRules = 0,1,0,1,0


mass = 0.15
dragModelType = default
maximum_drag = 0.3
minimum_drag = 0.2
angularDrag = 1
crashTolerance = 7
maxTemp = 3600


crashTolerance = 100
breakingForce = 80
breakingTorque = 80


CoMOffset = -0.75, 0, 0


MODULE
{
name = ObjectDestroy
objectName = bustedwheel
}


MODULE
{
name = OverrideWheelCollider
susTravName = suspensionTraverse
moveCollider = true
moveColliderBy = 0
suspensionDistance = 0.15
spring = 1
damper = 0.05
mass = 0.6
targetPosition = 0
}


MODULE
{
name = ModuleTrack
raycastError = -0.015
springRate = 0.8
damperRate = 0.05
smoothSpeed = 8
chargeConsumptionRate = 0.2
hasSteering = true
torqueCurve
{
key = 0 60 0 0
key = 5 60 0 0
key = 10 30 0 0
key = 20 0 0 0
}

steeringCurve
{
key = 0 20 0 0
key = 6 10 0 0
key = 12 5 0 0

}

torqueSteeringCurve
{
key = 0 0 0 0
}
brakeSteeringCurve
{

key = 0 0 0 0
}
brakingTorque = 70
rollingResistance = 0
maxRPM = 300
}


MODULE
{
name = TrackWheel
wheelName = wheel
colliderName = wheelCollider
sustravName = suspensionTraverse
steeringName = trackSteering
isIdler = false
isSprocket = false


smoothSpeed = 40
wheelRotationX = 1
wheelRotationY = 0
wheelRotationZ = 0
susTravAxis = Y
steeringAxis = Y
}




EFFECTS
{
WheelEffect
{
AUDIO
{
channel = Ship
clip = KerbalFoundries/Sounds/wheel
volume = 0.0 0.0
volume = 0.1 0.2
volume = 1.0 1.0
pitch = 0.0 0.6
pitch = 1.0 1.5
loop = true
}
}
}






}

Edited October 30, 2014 by lo-fi

[Madrias]

Still messing around with the DSR2, and about the only thing I can really think of that would be really nice to have is a matching design of science lab. Well, that, and some method to mount it that doesn't block up the rear door. I know, I know, you're not supposed to drag science labs with you while using a rover, but I always want to do things like that.

[Gaalidas]

We could rig some sort of truss mount so you could carry the thing on the roof. Yeah, it'd be really top heavy and hard to use, but I'm sure you could find some way of making it work, right? After all, Kerbals do things the hard way because... well... Science! And physics... and all that crazy stuff.

Just got those two new configs set up as patches. I realized that if you wanted to simply add new parts made out of stock models, you wouldn't need to use a patch to do it really. So, I'm focusing on replacement patches. Still haven't had a chance to do any personal testing of things since my major fail earlier. I guess that'll have to wait for tomorrow.

Edited October 30, 2014 by Gaalidas

[AccidentalDisassembly]

I've tried tweakscaling various tracks and whatnot, and had a question. Sorry if this has already been addressed. Thinking of the alpha tracks or mole tracks as an example:

- Scaled up (like to 200 or 400%), the force of the tracks seems to increase way more than it should - at 400% and mashing W for forward, they're powerful enough to fling a 20,000-ton ship up off the ground (4 pairs, 8 total tracks). Is there some tweakscale exponent controlling this that can be adjusted? Didn't see one in the scaleexponents cfg...

- Same is more or less true for the springiness of the tracks - they tend to be pretty bouncy for their apparent size.

Any others experience this?