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[Plugin,Parts] 14.3 Katerpillar-Wheels V0.3

drewmacrae

By drewmacrae
in KSP1 Mod Releases

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Feel free to tell me about your other parts and how you feel the part affects the balance of your ga  

1,946 members have voted

  1. 1. Feel free to tell me about your other parts and how you feel the part affects the balance of your ga

    • I mostly use stock parts and I find the wheels make navigating Kerbin/the Mun too easy
      16
    • I mostly use stock parts and I don't use the wheels because they are too hard to use
      9
    • the balance is just right, or I'm comfortable adjusting the .cfg file until it is
      98
    • I use quite a few mod parts and I find the wheels make navigating Kerbin/the Mun too easy
      20
    • I use quite a few mod parts and I don't use the wheels because they are too hard to use
      26

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drewmacrae

drewmacrae

Posted
Posted

I don\'t mean to brag but... my kerbals just re-invented the wheel...

Or rather, managed to pry one off of Tosh\'s cart and attach it to their rockets. So if you want to make crawlers to move your ships around:

m2xZI.jpg

rovers to explore the mun:

fhlye.png

whether big:

qTTFV.jpg

or small:

L8CSl.jpg

These wheels are the thing for you! Attach them like landing legs, and use \'q\', \'e\', \'j\', \'k\', \'l\', \'i\' and \'n\' to steer your rocket around as if it\'s being pushed by the RCS. The wheels will orient themselves and drive, and an RCS system will even assist if you\'ve got one. I recommend starting off slowly at first and avoiding the edges of the launchpad and the little rut in the center. Whether you want to explore, meetup on the surface of the Mun or just turn your ships on the launchpad1, you\'ll find these are the parts for you.

1: This rotation tends to be more along the lines of yaw and pitch than the intended roll. For the sake of your Kerbals, use broad wheelbases.

Confirmed compatibility with 14.3.

Download

Known issues:


  • [li]When in flight, active and resting against rocket, wheels can clip into other parts ??? S:| ???[/li]

Planned Release 0.3:


  • [li][glow=green,2,300]Parts are activated using toggle key (I don\'t yet know which one) inactive parts have a locked suspension, and 'parking brake' and don\'t perform intensive computation[/glow] Some weirdness here on startup and behavior if landing when off[/li]
    [li][glow=red,2,300]Better omniwheel drawing with more limited suspension[/glow][/li]
    [li][glow=green,2,300]Archive omniwheel part for posterity\'s sake[/glow][/li]
    [li][glow=yellow,2,300]Commands are only recieved by parts on the active (focused?) vessel[/glow]I tested and couldn\'t reproduce this bug.[/li]
    [li][glow=green,2,300]wheels work if mounted sideways[/glow][/li]
    [li][glow=green,2,300]Icons[/glow][/li]

Released Plugin 0.2:


  • [li][glow=green,2,300]Un-hardcoding the controls
Fly-by-wire Code Example[/glow][/li]
[li][glow=green,2,300]Posting source to Github Github repository [/glow][/li]
[li][glow=green,2,300]Exposing wheel friction curves in cfg file[/glow][/li]
[li][glow=green,2,300]Better part.cfg file to access public variables[/glow][/li]
[li][glow=green,2,300]Parameterize steering capabilities[/glow][/li]
[li][glow=green,2,300]Holonomic drive systems[/glow][/li]

Unplanned Future Work:


  • [li]Holonomic drive systems with augers2[/li]
    [li]Add a non-steering caster design[/li]
    [li]Swivel caster design
    [/li][li]Tread[/li]
    [li][glow=red,2,300]fix lagging wheels on takeoff if resting on rocket[/glow][/li]
    [li]further balancing work these may be too heavy, (which makes them safer but a real chore to lug around and rather slow)[/li]

Notes:


  • [li]WheelFriction curves are weird. You have to make a copy of the curve, set the stiffness in the copy and then attach it to the collider.[/li]
    [li]Wheel colliders are sensitive to their orientation. This part will not work sideways. It will just fall till it lands on its collider. That took me a day to figure out.[/li]
    [li]Blender is a real pain to use, but it\'s less of a pain than any other program I\'ve seen, so I\'m gonna stick with it. [/li]
    [li]Please yell at me if there\'s something crazy wrong with my model, my part, my source code, my comments or my plugin and I\'ll try to fix it. If you have trouble understanding the source code feel free to ask. Open source is scary because it means people get to see my code. My style is nowhere near as good as Tosh\'s.[/li]

References and test parts:


  • [li]Thanks so much Tosh for your fine example. I found the code and the models for your cart quite insightful and helpful... also I stole your wheel. Sorry to whoever modded the texture, the old one feels less rubbery and more... lets say 'vacuum compliant'[/li]
    [li]I stole textures from Tosh and HarvesteR. [/li]
    [li]Thanks to Normak for Kosmos, it\'s been fairly good to me. I think I mostly like having lightweight junk to launch or drive about.[/li]
    [li]Thanks to every FIRST robotics team to ever build drive-trains with these units[/li]
    [li]Thanks Bassman and Bourg for the linear algebra[/li]
    [li]
Why I still want to do a holonomic drive[/li]

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drewmacrae

drewmacrae

Posted
  • Author
Posted

What parts are you using in the first picture?

Kosmos RCS booms. They\'re great for turning large things in space, or while they\'re landing. and you can stick things to them so you can build large frames. I\'m a big fan.

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SmiteZero

SmiteZero

Posted
Posted

Perhaps there is a difference between the search bar in the top right and hitting 'Search' at the top left. I\'m going to guess that one only searches the current thread. And that is where I failed humankind.

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Capt'n Skunky

Capt'n Skunky

Posted
Posted

Perhaps there is a difference between the search bar in the top right and hitting 'Search' at the top left. I\'m going to guess that one only searches the current thread. And that is where I failed humankind.

The search feature will search the current forum/topic you\'re in and any of it\'s sub-forums/posts. To search all of the forums and topics, you should be at the very front page.

Cheers!

Capt\'n Skunky

KSP Community Manager

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cutterjohn

cutterjohn

Posted
Posted

Very nice mod.

1 issue I\'ve seen with it so far.. the wheels hang when flying, and will hit things beneath them. Any chance of making them fully retracted until the stage they are in is activated?

Also, making them retractable like the new landing legs would be awesome. Making them wide enough for rover ops looks somewhat klunky.

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drewmacrae

drewmacrae

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Thanks cutterjohn, I\'d seen that error before, and I think it\'s marked as a known issue though perhaps only in the source code. I\'d like to try to fix the reason for the bug first and try to fix it at the source. Perhaps my offset is based on the point where the wheel hits in the previous frame instead of the current frame. I hope I can fix that or compensate for it directly (by subtracting off a single frames worth of travel based on velocity)

As for the deployment action, I really like the idea of keeping each part simple so you have to put them together to make (dys)functional rockets. I\'ll see what I can do to achieve this and allow for something like deployment. The wideness issue exists with all stock rockets and landing legs. I\'d rather see a hinge part allow everyone to solve this themselves than see each part try to solve this on their own.

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