[PLUGIN, PART, 0.17] Bigtrak KSP Edition v.30 Liltrak

[chickenplucker]

Bigtrak KSP Edition v.30 Liltrak

Based on the toy, I present to you the Bigtrak KSP Edition! This is what happens when your R&D team runs out of ideas and starts scaleing up toys. The rover is powered by Tosh's awesome Cart plugin and features four wheel steering, six wheel drive, and has three attachment nodes on it. This version comes with just a Bigtrak model that is a Cart/Command Pod, the new Liltrak 2 Kerbal Rover and also a tweaked version of Tosh's 1.33 Cart Plugin. More will be added later as I work through the old parts.

Includes:

Bigtrak

Liltrak

Cart Plugin v1.33

http://www.rustedjunk.com/crap/KSP_Bigtrak_v.30.zip

Want to make your own Bigtrak related parts or learn how these parts are setup in game? Ever curious how the Cart plugin works (still kind of the same but v1.33 is a lil bit diffrent now there are .mu files)? Grab the sources to a few parts of the Bigtrak, fire up Blender and start making things:P!

http://www.rustedjunk.com/crap/Bigtrack_Sources.zip

Other stuff:

Iffy's neat lighted Crew Windows powered by Tosh's Cart Plugin

http://www.rustedjunk.com/crap/CP_Bigtrak_crew_window.zip

Tosh's awesome Cart plugin and other cool vehicles can be found here:

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=8431.0

Also a huge thanks to Tosh for not only the great plugin, but also for helping me troubleshoot the model, you rock Tosh!

Old version of KSP Bigtrak Edition can be found here: http://www.rustedjunk.com/crap/KSP_Bigtrak_v.23.zip

Edited October 1, 2012 by chickenplucker

[Evolution]

Absolutely beautiful.

Now to attach large armaments.

EDIT: ....And done!

Come at me bro.

Firing.

[Monkthespy]

OOH, DAYUM.

[chickenplucker]

Now to attach large armaments.

EDIT: ....And done!

Hahaha, that didn\'t take long.

Oh, and heres a preview of the blade that I\'m working on for it. I\'m going to try and rig it up like the landing legs so you can pivot it up and down. Not sure if it will just break off when you bump things or how it will end up working but we will cross that bridge later.

[Jesus KerBeard]

Lookin good. I think the blade might be better if it was a little bigger vertically though.

Setting the connection strength high should keep it from breaking off while pushing stuff around.

[semininja]

One way to increase the connection strength is to increase the surface area of the connection, i.e. make the base of the blade a plate that the joints are built into, and surface-attach the plate to the vehicle.

RE: the current version, where are the headlights? Pressing \'H\' doesn\'t seem to do anything...

[chickenplucker]

Haven\'t had a chance to add the headlights yet, its on the list More an issue of getting comfortable with blender.

[madmat]

Oooh this is the one,,Here i come baby,,Chickenplucker you ARE the man(i assume,otherwise i apologise)

[Tosh]

Congratulations on first release :thumbup:

P.S. Please specify [v0.14+] in the topic subject. Attempts to use this part with free KSP demo will definitely fail))

[chickenplucker]

Thanks Tosh! I updated the subject, forgot about adding the req. game version

[trbinsc]

Finally, someone is working on a bulldozer! I can finally push all of the debris out of the way of the community mun base!

[Nomad]

O cool! if you don\'t mind me asking, are those toys the ones that scoop up the balls and with a wired controller you move the car around and then you can dump it off in some other location?

[madmat]

Those 3 attach points are a terrific idea for adding our own 'STUFF',,this works great btw,,,,,Thanks heaps

[chickenplucker]

Glad you guys like it

are those toys the ones that scoop up the balls and with a wired controller

They have a keypad on the back that allow you to program basic commands and then carry them out. Programs usally look like 'move forward 3 units, turn 45 degrees, travel 1 unit forward, stop.' They had diffrent addons like a pull behind cart, dart shooter, and the new ones are going to have a built in webcam that will stream to your smartphone and allow you to drive it. The Bigtrak Jr. I have and the larger ones that I\'ve seen don\'t have a control wire that I know of.

[drewmacrae]

Nomad, The toy you\'re thinking of is Rokenbok. The implementation of which would be a glorious way to break PhysX. It\'d be a silly thing to do in KSP, but probably a reasonable project for Unity. I\'m definitely in favor of silly things.

[cardgame]

This looks great. Will definitely be giving it a try when I get home

[Baneblade]

Nomad, The toy you\'re thinking of is Rokenbok. The implementation of which would be a glorious way to break PhysX. It\'d be a silly thing to do in KSP, but probably a reasonable project for Unity. I\'m definitely in favor of silly things.

Hauling around small red and blue spheres in your cargo hold for no apparent reason?

That is just silly.

Said spheres are actually full of fuel and fissile materials (which are also fuel )?

Now that is very silly.

Having to scoop the spheres off the ground first?

Now THAT is Kerbal. 8)

[chickenplucker]

Updated the zip with a new push blade

It seems to work pretty good and stays attached much better then I was expecting. There have been a few cases where I rammed something and ran over it making it explode, but all in all it works pretty dang good. The larger 2M tanks take a bit of ramming to get them to move while the command pods and smaller bits can be moved pretty easy. Also since its based on landing gear you can raise and lower the blade with the G key.

After looking at the Rokenbok toys I kind of want to make a scoop lift for the front and a dump container for the back now. Landing craft/rover base first though, well... maybe working headlights. Now I\'m not sure what to add next

[Y8]

Is anyone else getting a problem where the wheels slowly creep down your craft as your launching then really screw up the physics, it\'s like the weight of the vehicle is where the wheels are?

[chickenplucker]

How are you mounting it on your rocket? The wheels do have a tendancy to creep and if they are making contact with something solid they may tug at the connection node and throw the center of gravity off. I\'m not sure if there is much I can do to fix that at the moment. I am currently working on a giant cumbersome landing craft/base and nosecone set to help make it easier to attach and launch the Bigtrak or any other large rovers you may have. This is just a rough, the final will be higher poly to get around Unitys chunky shadows.

The center ring objects going to be the base of the lander and will be textured as solar panels. On the eanch side of the Bigtrak shown, about level with the cross beam there will two nodes for attaching two engines. And next to the engines will be some habitat pods and fuel tanks for looks. The structure should work out to: Rocket 1M and 2M adapter to base/ Lander base / The two side crew habitat-engine mounts/ Big center hoop structure / Giant freaking nosecone. Was always a fan of the Estes rockets with the big nose cones that carried eggs

[drewmacrae]

I don\'t actually know how the center of mass is computed, but that wheel creep thing is a real pain. The wheel collider seems to remain well behaved, and I believe it accounts for the wheel mass. The raytrace to compute where to draw the wheel seems to be bad. I\'m pretty sure it would happen to Tosh\'s cart as well but I\'ll be damned if I know how to fix it. Y8, do you have a test case or instrumentation that exposes the center of mass problem? or after the wheels creep down do you just feel that something is wrong?

[Y8]

I figured out what was wrong, i had a solar panel that was intersecting with the cart a little bit. Once i lowered the solar panel a bit so it wasn\'t intersecting, it works perfectly.

I havent had any more problems

edit- When the wheels did creep down the center of mass was off, i decoupled my sections, and the smaller section began swinging with the wheels leading the swing and the wheels were bouncing up and down with the swing to about 40 or so feet in front of the craft-I\'ll try and get some pictures later if you need them

[EeeLee]

Awesome. I was about to try the push blade on my flipped rovers, but the forks look just perfect for the job. If those wont turn a rover back up, probably nothing will.

Big thanks for the work you put into this. I\'ll send a Bigtrak up asap and hopefully get a few of my guys home.

[chickenplucker]

No problem. This is pretty crude as far as loaders go, especially with plugins like Sarkun\'s MultiJointPart Framework 0.4.1 out now . Hopefully it will help and not just flip your rescue rover on its side leaving another crew up there.

[Commander Zoom]

I was lucky enough to own a Big Trak back in the day, and a couple of years ago I scored another off eBay. Seeing this really tickled me, and you\'ve done a great job adding the blade etc. I\'ll be sure to download it.