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Portable Rover Components. New project from ASET. (up 29/07/14)

alexustas

By alexustas
in KSP1 Mod Development

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rasta013

rasta013

Posted
Posted
On 4/20/2016 at 10:22 PM, Table said:

He's temporarily "frozen" his mods.

I honestly don't know why.

Because of the massive level of changes to several critical pieces that are affected by Unity 5.  Specifically, huge changes to the wheel modules and meshes that were going to throw everything he was working on for a loop.  Instead, he decided to freeze development and wait to see what was coming rather than put in many hours only to have to redo everything.

Side note Alex, great work on everything you do and just knowing that you're working on updating your mods to 1.1 leaves me with a nice warm, fuzzy feeling.

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Synthesis

Synthesis

Posted
Posted
On 4/26/2016 at 0:38 PM, rasta013 said:

Because of the massive level of changes to several critical pieces that are affected by Unity 5.  Specifically, huge changes to the wheel modules and meshes that were going to throw everything he was working on for a loop.  Instead, he decided to freeze development and wait to see what was coming rather than put in many hours only to have to redo everything.

Side note Alex, great work on everything you do and just knowing that you're working on updating your mods to 1.1 leaves me with a nice warm, fuzzy feeling.

Agreed--I can't describe what a relief it is to hear you'll be updating the PRC for 1.1. ALCOR is by far my preferred lander chassis, but there are alternatives--on the other hand, PRC pretty much stands alone for portable/assembly-capable rover parts. 

Thank you very much!

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Deimos Rast

Deimos Rast

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, V8jester said:

Absolutely! Yes Please! Looks like you have 1.1.x compatibility going.

1.1.3 actually. I managed to get the wheels working by dumb luck this morning and I've since broken and fixed them twice over since then.:D

I also redid the entire pack, converting from the old KASModuleGrab to the current KISModules, and converting to ModuleAnimateGeneric instead of AdvancedAnimator. I'm not sure why AA was used to begin with, but MAG seems to have all the basic functionality necessary and it's one less dependency (the old stuff is still in the files, just commented out). It's possible that AA can animate nodes, but I don't think so.

I know you probably have a fair amount of experience with KIS from your BDArmouryFPS mod, would you mind terribly taking a peak at the KIS patch I whipped up? I'm pretty sure everything is working right, as I've successfully built a PRC rover in the field, but KIS is being weird and not even letting me click buttons (not related to this mod), so I can't test it as well as I'd like. It all started when I folded up a Kerbal in the command seat (for science), which it turns out causes the game to freak out.......I'm not joking.:mellow:

Anyway, I have one or two more things to tweak, but it's pretty much a done deal. I'll shoot Alex a message and probably post it sometime tomorrow.

Here is a video of me tooling around with Jeb. It mainly highlights the currently existing bugs (which are largely cosmetic), but it also shows some of the features. It's...admittedly bad (the video, not the mod).

And before anyone asks, those are my "private reserva" version wheels in the video, with extra crash resistance/traction/slip control etc. You'll be getting a version closer (if not identical) to the Tan RoveMax Model M1.

--

The main issues with the wheel has to do with the radius value of the wheel, I believe. If I set it to 0.378, the value of the M1, the wheel locks; 0.58 and we get it extending out beyond the mesh and it looks like it hovers off the ground. At least, that's my theory (I really should emphasis the dumb part of the dumb luck approach to all this:rolleyes:), but I just un-broke these and I don't want to touch it any more.

The other issue is when you retract the wheels, the collider doesn't retract with it. So again, you engage in hovering. Nodes also don't retract with the other parts (not featured in the video).

If you pay attention to the part where I switch to Bob, you'll see me successfully detach and reattach a wheel on EVA. Pretend I do that for the entire rover.

That about summarizes it. Pretty much everything is pegged to stock parts exactly, or left at the existing values.

If anyone has any suggestions or ideas, let me know.

Cheers.

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Deimos Rast

Deimos Rast

Posted
Posted (edited)

Update:

I decided to tackle the "Hovering" issue head on. If you know anything about how wheels work, this means converting them over to the "ModuleWheelDeployment" module, frequently seen on retractable landing gear for instance. The issue is it requires additional information usually not supplied in the configs (besides animation name) and finding those transforms out, or rather which they are, is an exercise in frustration.

However, I preserved. It took a long time, but with the handy dandy mod DebugStuff I was able to convert the the wheels over to "ModuleWheelDeployment" completely. Did it fix the problem? NOPE. I'm at a loss. In the pictures below, you can clearly see the yellow square flat on the ground when everything else is elevated/retracted (ignore the red circles), which causes hovering. I've checked the landing gear, and they act as you would expect.

Another issue is I seem to have broken the motor in all this hoopala. Less than happy about that. Pretty sure I know why it's borked, just not sure how it happened.

To recap: I have succeeded in converting over to 1.1 wheel standards the:

  • Suspension
  • WheelBase
  • Damage (presumably)
  • Motor
  • Steering
  • Brakes
  • Deployment

That's everything. Just...not all at the same time.:P

The only other thing left to do, (assuming I don't just give up on the issue for now) which I'm rather embarrassed to admit, is...figure out which axis to rotate the bumper around. Yeah. It should be a simple double rotation, but, eh. I think I've been staring at this too long.:huh:

I did take a break to look at ALCOR and ERS and made some solid progress with those, so that's something.

So that's the news.

 

ErVZojU.png?1

Edited by Deimos Rast
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mikerl

mikerl

Posted
Posted

@Deimos Rast, I watched the vid and that's a whole lot better than current behaviour.  You might have a look at Roverdude's mods Karibou or Malemute as they both have deploying wheels.  The karibou does not lock the motor, and the malemute one does.  Roverdude might even be able to help sort this.  I still have this mod installed, but have only been using the seat since 1.1, seriously this is the only mod with a folding command seat.  I would love to see it working again.  Did any other parts have collider issues?

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Deimos Rast

Deimos Rast

Posted
Posted
36 minutes ago, mikerl said:

@Deimos Rast, I watched the vid and that's a whole lot better than current behaviour.  You might have a look at Roverdude's mods Karibou or Malemute as they both have deploying wheels.  The karibou does not lock the motor, and the malemute one does.  Roverdude might even be able to help sort this.  I still have this mod installed, but have only been using the seat since 1.1, seriously this is the only mod with a folding command seat.  I would love to see it working again.  Did any other parts have collider issues?

Yeah, I was using RoverDude's Karibou wheel as a model, then it occurred to me to use the stock landing gear. I'd ask RoverDude, but he's, as you know, super busy, and this is my Don Quixote Wind Mill moment.:D

The only issue really (and this probably would require a plugin) is that when you fold in the platform, the nodes stay extended. Oh, I had to redo all the nodes, but you can now, as a work around, attach Malemute Mini wheels (which have nodes) to the chassis of this mod. A minor KIS issue with "backpack" parts and the stupid bumper rotating wrong, but otherwise, nope. No collider issues.

I should add the ERS Rover wheels have similar type issues, but slightly different. Those ones rotate, but without traction. In that case, I think it's a matter of the collider being too small. In this case, I think it's a matter of the collider being offset.

Anyway, I'm taking a day off or so. Getting the deployment animation working was...a bit grueling, and to have it not make a difference was insult to injury. But I shall press on (I just released a couple patches for ALCOR as a break).

Cheers.

p.s. surprised you actually watched the video; should have added in some explosions with post processing:P

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mikerl

mikerl

Posted
Posted

Admittedly, Yes Roverdude is super busy with Squad and all the mods he maintains, and he is making another one, he does sometimes stop and offer advice to other people.  I'd say ask anyway and don't take it personally if he does not respond.  It could give him a break from the other work he does.  I don't know how familiar he is with alex's work, but he does make mods too.

The motor on the Karibou wheel runs in both positions, while the one on the Malemute is disabled when retracted, so it might be a better example.  I asked about colliders because the rover in the video used the rovemate instead of the body, and blocked wheels don't work.  If you want something hilarious to add to your video, you could show what happens if using the wheels without any changes.  Since it is a demo video, I didn't expect it to be awesome at all.  It shows the performance capabilities you've fixed, and could be an alpha release since there are major bugs to be worked out, but useable.

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mikerl

mikerl

Posted
Posted

As for the Bumper I've been using this MM patch for a long time: 

@PART[ASET_PRC_Bumper]:AFTER[ASET]
{
	@node_stack_ToPlatform = 0.0, -0.02101165, -0.230, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0
}

That might help figure out how to fix its node.

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RedParadize

RedParadize

Posted
Posted (edited)

@Deimos RastPersonatly, I don't see the non-deployed wheel problem as a big issue. In fact, if you can repear the part to the point where everything works exept deployment, it would be a perfectly accepteable interim solution for me.

Edited by RedParadize
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