Hacking Asteroids

[Whirligig Girl]

I thought ModuleAsteroid gives it the ability to have a procedural generated shape.

Apparently it just makes all parts asteroids, with the gray rocky texture, and random shape. In the VAB, the Nuclear Motor I used to test the part had shrouds on and engine effects coming from the bottom. When I tested it, everything exploded, because Nuclear Egnines, Fuel Tanks, and Command Pods don't have high impact resistence to suddenly changing size.

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And there's still an engine working on it. Also, the shape of the asteroid seems to be different every time, like you'd expect, but I'm not sure if the size actually changes.

And it seems the model of the nuke and whatever part it was attached to still reside inside the asteroid's model.

And now it turns out that asteroids already have a base model, probably something made during testing. it's just a lumpy plain-grey blob in the vab, and it radially attaches to parts in it's center, so it covers up the command pod it's placed over. Like the Nuke, it gets a random shape and size-class at launch.

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Download the placeable PotatoRoid. (Place PotatoRoid folder in Gamedata/NASAMission/Parts)

So then I decided to put them together. Aside from a jump at launch due to colliding with the launchpad, they actually work quite well. they sort of wobble around a lot, but the joints don't break. Also, turns out PotatoRoids can be placed alone without another root part.

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Edited July 2, 2014 by GregroxMun

[dryer_lint]

I have no idea what just happened,

but this is some cool hacking anyways

[RocketPilot573]

I wonder... Is there a property somewhere that decides how large a roid is?

[Whirligig Girl]

No. They're all randomly generated upon the part loading for the first time.

[magnemoe]

No. They're all randomly generated upon the part loading for the first time.

So you have to try and try until you get a size you need

[RocketPilot573]

No. They're all randomly generated upon the part loading for the first time.

Hmm, this part of the persistence file looks interesting:

SCENARIO

{

name = ScenarioDiscoverableObjects

scene = 7, 8, 5

= 331286397

sizeCurve

{

key = 0 0 1.5 1.5

key = 0.3 0.45 0.875 0.875

key = 0.7 0.55 0.875 0.875

key = 1 1 1.5 1.5

Size curve? That probably just chooses how often the different size classes appear, but maybe...

[Whirligig Girl]

Yeah, that's what it does. It just determines how often a size class spawns.