[1.1] BDArmory v0.11.0.1 (+compatibility, fixes) - Apr 23

[sumghai]

Here's a vid of the rocket launcher. It holds rockets as PartResources, so I could use my AnimatedContainer partmodule to make it show how many rockets are left in the pod.

That, good sir, is awesomeness in cupcake form. Bravo!

Here's a FAS.org document on the Hydra rocket pod system, with page 20 describing the order the rockets are fired (outermost ring first followed by inner rings, rockets from opposing sides of the pod are fired first)

[King_komodo93]

^ Contradicting yourself there. Physics won't 'take it from there' if its out of physics range. Also if the target's physics aren't loaded, nothing will happen if it gets hit, even if the bullet gets all the way there without unloading itself.

Ok thank you for replying, great mod by the way, I knew I forgot something my thought process includes the fact that the slug/projectile would be counted by the game as at least debris so wouldn't it follow it's path as the games physics determine much like a stage off of a rocket you take to the Mun if you turn on the debris in the tracking station even the stages that you've fired off in mid orbit are still there 40 years after you've sent the rocket back home and are sending other craft to Dres and back. So since the game would treat the projectile that way, or at least you could trick the game into thinking that way but I get it if it's a lot of work for little gain, it wouldn't unload till it makes contact and destroys itself from the impact with the ground. Now of course this idea would really work best from an orbital or ground platform. My point is if debris can stay around forever without being noticed till you push a button couldn't you use that to your advantage since the projectile will disappear after hitting the ground anyways. Short of it is if you launch an empty Mk. 1 cockpit at the ground from space it will continue on that path even outside of load range until it hit's the ground or water so why wouldn't a projectile. Also as a case in point the cruise missiles from the Lazor mod (last ones I tried anyway) were able to leave the solar system and go interstellar from KSC whether you were focused on them or not.

[BahamutoD]

That, good sir, is awesomeness in cupcake form. Bravo!

Here's a FAS.org document on the Hydra rocket pod system, with page 20 describing the order the rockets are fired (outermost ring first followed by inner rings, rockets from opposing sides of the pod are fired first)

Thanks, and doh! I guess I'll reanimate it to fire in the right sequence.

Ok thank you for replying, great mod by the way, I knew I forgot something my thought process includes the fact that the slug/projectile would be counted by the game as at least debris so wouldn't it follow it's path as the games physics determine much like a stage off of a rocket you take to the Mun if you turn on the debris in the tracking station even the stages that you've fired off in mid orbit are still there 40 years after you've sent the rocket back home and are sending other craft to Dres and back. So since the game would treat the projectile that way, or at least you could trick the game into thinking that way but I get it if it's a lot of work for little gain, it wouldn't unload till it makes contact and destroys itself from the impact with the ground. Now of course this idea would really work best from an orbital or ground platform. My point is if debris can stay around forever without being noticed till you push a button couldn't you use that to your advantage since the projectile will disappear after hitting the ground anyways. Short of it is if you launch an empty Mk. 1 cockpit at the ground from space it will continue on that path even outside of load range until it hit's the ground or water so why wouldn't a projectile. Also as a case in point the cruise missiles from the Lazor mod (last ones I tried anyway) were able to leave the solar system and go interstellar from KSC whether you were focused on them or not.

Oh, I see what you mean. It still seems like it would be so unlikely to hit what you're trying to hit if you manually aim it, so you would need to let it auto-aim some how, which would be boring either way. If/when I make a rail gun, I'll probably just try to make it interesting to use in closer range. My idea for making it stand apart from the existing cannons (besides giving it a huge muzzle velocity) is make it so the projectile doesn't despawn on impact, and penetrates through everything, destroying all parts along the way.

A question for any modders: Do you know what may cause Kerbin to be destroyed? While working on stuff recently, sometimes when a missile or a vessel crashes into Kerbin really hard, the planet gets destroyed. This didn't happen before, so I'm trying to figure out what I did to cause this.

[Shad0wCatcher]

Youtuber Danny2462 turned planet-destroying into an art form. If you search any of his videos you can get some ideas about what causes planet-busting to occur. Far as I can tell though the most reliable way is to take a physics-disabled object and ram a planet really hard.

[King_komodo93]

Oh, I see what you mean. It still seems like it would be so unlikely to hit what you're trying to hit if you manually aim it, so you would need to let it auto-aim some how, which would be boring either way. If/when I make a rail gun, I'll probably just try to make it interesting to use in closer range. My idea for making it stand apart from the existing cannons (besides giving it a huge muzzle velocity) is make it so the projectile doesn't despawn on impact, and penetrates through everything, destroying all parts along the way.

This is where the other part of my wall of text from before comes in where when you toggle the turret on or off you see the navball display as if you had stuck a probe body or capsule onto the top/back/side of it. You would then have the current missile guidance system to show you where to point the barrel using a marker of some kind on the navball but doesn't turn the barrel or fire it or guide it, so you can fire it off the wall if you want and completely miss or line up the shot carefully and obliterate what ever it was you were aiming for in order to keep as much fun factor as possible.

As for the penetration I can see a problem there being that if it's impact tolerance is too high it will break the game/kerbin and awake the kraken if it hits nothing except the ground, but on the other side of the coin too low and you won't achieve the desired effect as it will disappear o contact. So I say take to where you do break the game and then work down from there.

[Kiwibear]

I think the only viable way for a railgun to work at really long range like everyone wants it to is if the projectile is able to be switched to and tracked like someone mentioned earlier.

To be honest I think it'd just be simpler to fire missiles down from orbit or something, trying to get a projectile weapon like a railgun to hit its target reliably from orbit would probably be ridiculously involved. Though, I'd enjoy some crazy orbital MAC or something as much as everyone else lol

[Eclipse842]

^ Contradicting yourself there. Physics won't 'take it from there' if its out of physics range. Also if the target's physics aren't loaded, nothing will happen if it gets hit, even if the bullet gets all the way there without unloading itself.

Anyways, today, I did some rewriting of the weapon manager to be able to use different types of weapons. For now, I added a new weapon type "RocketLauncher" for the unguided rocket launcher pods. Later, I'll add turrets and guns to the weapon manager and let you use the primary fire key you assign for firing any weapon with the weapon manager.

Here's a vid of the rocket launcher. It holds rockets as PartResources, so I could use my AnimatedContainer partmodule to make it show how many rockets are left in the pod.

Also wrote in some new stuff for explosions that give them a chance to decouple and/or destroy parts in their radius depending on the distance of the part from the explosion center. This makes rockets/missiles/bombs more likely to fragment a craft instead of sending the whole thing flying.

We need this now. NOW

Seriously this is awesome keep up the good work

[Eclipse842]

Are the countermeasures linked to weapon manager?

[ryanedward]

Here's a vid of the rocket launcher. It holds rockets as PartResources, so I could use my AnimatedContainer partmodule to make it show how many rockets are left in the pod.

-snip-

Astronaut Complex stronk building. Best building in the game.

[Quiznos323]

Hey Baha, I'm interested in making a few mod pieces and I was wondering where you learned to use blender and unity so well! I've read some threads on the forums but they don't go too much into the detail that I'm looking for. Any good resourses that you could point me to that would help with KSP modeling and texturing tips in particular? Thanks!

[Themorris]

Learning how to use blender isn't that hard, but it takes time. If you want to learn how to model with blender, I can recommend watching this series:

Thats a good way to start. Then give yourself some easy modeling tasks to get familiar with the software, so you can develop a workflow.

But note that some of Baha's models are animated, and some of the animations are plugin-driven(which is a completely different story)

For myself I found that the hardest part to learn was the UV-unwrapping and texturing. I've been using Blender since 6 years now, and I'm still learning.

It does also help to decompile some models with the addon for blender and take a look at the work of other artists:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/43513-Blender-mu-import-export-addon

Using Unity just for importing models to ksp isn't that hard. Everything else related to Unity and modding KSP can be found here:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25013-Compilation-of-modding-information-links-for-0-19-20-21-22-23-Last-update-24th-Jan

AAAAAND... ...bring patience!

greetings,

Themorris

[BahamutoD]

Blender Cookie, as Themorris said, is a good place to learn. I also learned a lot from Andrew Price from BlenderGuru (also on youtube).

Aside from that, its just alot of practice. You probably won't find one place where you can learn everything you need to know to make unique KSP parts. You just have to try things on your own. When you get past making simple stuff like fuel tanks and variations of stock parts and you want to make new stuff, the Unity manual and scripting API is extremely helpful. http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/index.html

I'm still learning too! Almost everything is trial and error..

A random tip for making textures: Learn how to bake ambient occlusion in Blender. It makes everything look better. Alot of the textures for my models are just an ambient occlusion layer with multiply blending, and colors for the different parts underneath. Sometimes I'll throw in some scratches/wear'n'tear and some text/decals, and thats it. With some practice, you'll figure out how to UV unwrap stuff to make texturing alot easier.

Are the countermeasures linked to weapon manager?

I'm keeping them separate, just using action groups so you don't have to switch to them with the weapon manager.

Edited August 15, 2014 by BahamutoD

[sumghai]

Are the countermeasures linked to weapon manager?

I'm keeping them separate, just using action groups so you don't have to switch to them with the weapon manager.

I'm definitely liking the sound of this - it's perfectly possible (and realistic) for a craft to need to fire countermeasures and weapons simultaneously, and forcibly tying countermeasures into the Weapons Manager would mean a split-second delay in tactical response (i.e. less convenient).

[Quiznos323]

Thanks Themorris and BahamutoD for the responses! I'll take a look at both Blender Cookie and Blender Guru.

Themorris: Yeah I tried modeling a cockpit (which doesn't look half bad) but the UV unwrapping/texturing is still difficult for me and looks crappy lol. I don't know what image editing software you both use, and I unfortunately don't have photoshop and use GIMP 2 at the moment. And yes, animations will come way down the line for me, gotta learn the basics first haha.

Baha: I'll look into the ambient occlusion baking too, I've heard about it and want to make my stuff look as good as possible! Thanks for all the great mods btw, guys like you keep me coming back for more KSP!

Just one more question: Do you guys have any experience with modeling and integrating IVAs into cockpits? I haven't been able to find much on that either... I'd love to eventually be able to make them.

Thanks again for the help!

[manni01]

Just a little idea of mine: flares for deflecting the missiles. Idk seems like a cool idea

[sumghai]

Just a little idea of mine: flares for deflecting the missiles. Idk seems like a cool idea

If you had read up on earlier posts, BahamutoD's already working on those:

Here's some footage of countermeasures testing:

[Themorris]

Thanks Themorris and BahamutoD for the responses! I'll take a look at both Blender Cookie and Blender Guru.

Themorris: Yeah I tried modeling a cockpit (which doesn't look half bad) but the UV unwrapping/texturing is still difficult for me and looks crappy lol. I don't know what image editing software you both use, and I unfortunately don't have photoshop and use GIMP 2 at the moment. And yes, animations will come way down the line for me, gotta learn the basics first haha.

Baha: I'll look into the ambient occlusion baking too, I've heard about it and want to make my stuff look as good as possible! Thanks for all the great mods btw, guys like you keep me coming back for more KSP!

Just one more question: Do you guys have any experience with modeling and integrating IVAs into cockpits? I haven't been able to find much on that either... I'd love to eventually be able to make them.

Thanks again for the help!

I've also looked towards the iva's sometime ago. Its VERY tricky... I think there is an IVA tutorial by TT. The best way for creating IVA is to model the whole cockpit+ iva into one model, and then seperate them. You can place the cockpit props with unity(it's quite simple).

PS: I'm also using Gimp 2 for my textures

AAAND@BahamutoD

I don't know why, but it seems, that my bomb targeter appears randomly. What is required for it to appear? (was a plane with just one stage)

Edited August 16, 2014 by Themorris
forgot smth.

[AseaHeru]

If you do figure out how to create IVAs is there a chance that the M256 will be remolded to allow a crew within, similar to the Skillful one?

Also, is there a chance of comparability with Skillful?

[Themorris]

hmmm should be possible in theory... but i don't know if the hatchet would work on an animated object...

And again something for Bahamuto: would a cam that points towards the target be possible? Something Similar to the lazor cam, but for RPM?

I'm already using my RPM for targeting... I modified my cam 1 screen to show the hud. when you place a cam near the GAU-8, you can aim with it:

It shoots pretty accurate at the dot in the middle...

[BahamutoD]

I've also looked towards the iva's sometime ago. Its VERY tricky... I think there is an IVA tutorial by TT. The best way for creating IVA is to model the whole cockpit+ iva into one model, and then seperate them. You can place the cockpit props with unity(it's quite simple).

PS: I'm also using Gimp 2 for my textures

AAAND@BahamutoD

I don't know why, but it seems, that my bomb targeter appears randomly. What is required for it to appear? (was a plane with just one stage)

I haven't tried doing IVA's yet.

For the bomb targeter, you have to have at least 200m altitude, and either fly horizontally or in a dive. (vertical v < +10m/s)

If you do figure out how to create IVAs is there a chance that the M256 will be remolded to allow a crew within, similar to the Skillful one?

Also, is there a chance of comparability with Skillful?

I actually don't think I'll be trying to do compatibility with skillful. If its possible to have crew in it then yes, but I probably wont do an IVA..

hmmm should be possible in theory... but i don't know if the hatchet would work on an animated object...

And again something for Bahamuto: would a cam that points towards the target be possible? Something Similar to the lazor cam, but for RPM?

I'm already using my RPM for targeting... I modified my cam 1 screen to show the hud. when you place a cam near the GAU-8, you can aim with it:

http://i.imgur.com/hOI9xKO.jpg

It shoots pretty accurate at the dot in the middle...

I have gotten a target camera to work with RPM. I just need to figure out how to edit the text/overlay.

[Themorris]

Yeah, but are we talking about a physical cam?

[BahamutoD]

I was using the weapon manager as the camera source point.

[nli2work]

hmmm should be possible in theory... but i don't know if the hatchet would work on an animated object...

And again something for Bahamuto: would a cam that points towards the target be possible? Something Similar to the lazor cam, but for RPM?

I'm already using my RPM for targeting... I modified my cam 1 screen to show the hud. when you place a cam near the GAU-8, you can aim with it:

http://i.imgur.com/hOI9xKO.jpg

It shoots pretty accurate at the dot in the middle...

You should be able use JSISteerableCamera on a special RPM page and use muzzleTransform or fireTransform to place the RPM camera. assign couple global buttons allow you to zoom in and out. might even give you mouse tracking from BDA side.

Edited August 16, 2014 by nli2work

[Themorris]

Maybe this is a bit out of scope right now, but shouldn'd it be possible to do a infrared cam? This should be possible using shaders, which are related to the temperature of objects, and since every object has a temperature, why not?

[Eclipse842]

I'm keeping them separate, just using action groups so you don't have to switch to them with the weapon manager.

Maybe copy the fire weapon and cycle weapon on the manager and turn the copy into fire countermeasure and cycle countermeasure?

Also, do the hydra rockets fire with one action group example press ss ss ss ss ss ss ss

or do you have to spam that key example press ss press ss press ss and so on

(Ss represents a missile being fired)

Edited August 17, 2014 by Eclipse842