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

[Avros]

DL link is dead; anyone know of a mirror or have a clean DL?

[chickenplucker]

My VPS is being a POS, one sec.

Okay its back up. Something got hung up in networking services and ate all the RAM causing everything to take a dive.

[crabstalker]

everytime i download this awesome mod, i try to put it together, but cant.......

for some reason i could never get the pod IN the big trak, then i couldnt build a working pod because my parts didnt seem to work together properly, and NOW these new little thrusters for the puddle jumper just wont fit like the picture.... >

is it possible that someone can do a vid/tutorial with pics on how i actually assemble this crazy little thing?

EDIT: would you believe that after writing this post i gave it one more go and i managed to make everything fit..... now time to abuse er.. i mean treat the kerbals to some low grav moon driving

[maltesh]

There\'s a lot of fuel in the PuddleJumper rocket pack.

Getting back from Minmus is easier, the velocity targets aren\'t as high.

http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/4057920/2/Kerbal%20Space%20Program/BigTrak%20Minmus%20Return?h=0ae2b8

I\'ve been able to get it as high as 55 km on Kerbin before running out of fuel. No chance of making orbit there.

I suspect Jumping from the Munar Surface to Minmus, then to Kerbin is possible.

[TheCardinal]

There\'s a lot of fuel in the PuddleJumper rocket pack.

...

And a lot of thrust! I\'ve built a small probe consisting of two Puddlejumper fuel tanks, the PuddleJumper rocket pack, one small BACE fueltank, a Mun Rover and a MechJeb which is capable of reaching the Mun from Kerbin without any additional engines or fuel AND land. I haven\'t tried yet if a return flight is possible, but it wouldn\'t surprise me if it could be done.

I added a Muon detector to the probe to locate Munoliths.

Craft file: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14923883/MechJeb%20small%20probe.craft

[chickenplucker]

It is a wee bit overpowered. It was set up to be used as a reentry/landing engine for use in atmospheres. That way when you landed there would be around half a tank left for exploring and what not. Now with the atmosphere engines in there can be two versions to keep it from being way cheaty feeling.

That probe is magnificent btw

[chickenplucker]

Here is Kiwi, the new addition to the pack that I\'m working on. Its a bike and really only shares a few parts with the Bigtrak but I\'m adding it in anyways. Comments or criticism on its funky looks welcome, its still very much a work in progress ;D

Hmm... The side view of this thing makes me want to make a high performance Bigtrak now with long travel suspension like a trophy truck.

[SmiteZero]

Front forks need more angle.

[chickenplucker]

The rake on the forks was just left like that cause its easier to rotate verts if they are square to the grid. Trying to grab hold of stuff thats all jumbled together is a pain

So I have given up on trying to slip that command pod into the bike and trashed that design. To much fuggly going on there. Here is the new design:

Much more traditional. This should fit on a standard 1m rocket *knock on wood*

Edit: Added a few more details

[madmat]

That looks awesome. It\'d be pretty funny watching one zap around the Mun. The TNT is a nice touch. Have you thought about making it into a trike down the track?

[chickenplucker]

More pictures! Muwahahaha!

Still needs a lot of work and some permission from prefim to use his Kerbanaut model. Its so tiny! I like to line up about 8 bikes and run them down monster truck style with the Bigtrak. A trike version would be easy to make since it kind of is one already, just need to make the back wheels transparant so they are not visable.

[Blinkin]

Woah! That looks incredible!

[madmat]

If you add the rear wheels it would look like an old Harley davidson police trike. Constable Kerbal reporting.

[Xike]

Whenever I open the fairing for the bigtrak lander, it likes to begin spinning uncontrollably until it rips itself apart. Am I doing something wrong?

[Jebadiah]

YES YES YES YES YES!!! Jeb Approves. Amazing work with this, It looks awesome!

[Volt]

Whenever I open the fairing for the bigtrak lander, it likes to begin spinning uncontrollably until it rips itself apart. Am I doing something wrong?

Did you remove and replace the fairings? If so, very careful placement is required to prevent the collision meshes overlapping.

[chickenplucker]

The bike is not being a happy camper in game so far, there are two issues that I\'m still working on. First is that its so tiny the wheel collision meshes like to fall through the ground all the time. Fairly certain I can get around this by making giant invisible jumbo wheels off to the side for more support. The second thing that bugs me is in that screenshot, that is as far in as the camera can zoom which is still pretty far away from the model which makes all the detail work on it kind of useless. Oh well, I\'ll keep playing with it.

[Baleur]

Would it be possible to edit the vanilla engines to emit light like the floodlight, when active (given throttle)???

It would be awesome to see the engines actually light up the ground.

Perhaps it is even some simple .cfg change one could do himself?

Any ideas?

[chickenplucker]

I think its probably doable but would currently need to be done through Unity or a plugin. It would be really neat to have varying pulses of light flickering off the tail of an engine. I bet at some point that just gets added into the game.

On a side note, if anyone has any hints or suggestions for correctly using/creating .PNG alpha channels in the game let me know. I\'ve spent two days on it so far with no luck and really am starting to get bugged by it. Back in my GTA modding days you would just assign another channel to the texture and pack a bunch of images in a .txd file and be done with it. This binary .png mask stuff is tripping me up :

[madmat]

That\'s what i love about watching this game and Mod developement. I don\'t have a clue about what you just said, but find it fascinating.

[Capt'n Skunky]

On a side note, if anyone has any hints or suggestions for correctly using/creating .PNG alpha channels in the game let me know. I\'ve spent two days on it so far with no luck and really am starting to get bugged by it. Back in my GTA modding days you would just assign another channel to the texture and pack a bunch of images in a .txd file and be done with it. This binary .png mask stuff is tripping me up :

Just make sure you are saving the PNG as a 32bit image. That gives 8 bits each for Red, Green, Blue, and Transparent. A 24bit PNG only has the RGB channels.

If you can\'t explicitly set the bit-depth and your image lacks transparency, just make one pixel in an unused area of the texture transparent and it should save as 32-bit.

Cheers!

Capt\'n Skunky

KSP Community Manager

[Taverius]

Would it be possible to edit the vanilla engines to emit light like the floodlight, when active (given throttle)???

It would be awesome to see the engines actually light up the ground.

Perhaps it is even some simple .cfg change one could do himself?

Any ideas?

The atmospheric engines already do this. Its just the light is dim and so you only see it at night on bits of your plane right next to the engine. (There\'s also some mapping errors in how the light is projected, but its a bit early to complain about that)

[Commander Zoom]

http://youtu.be/6knWot1klu8

Thought this was neat.

THAT\'S GALACTIC DANCING!

[Kreuzung]

Just make sure you are saving the PNG as a 32bit image. That gives 8 bits each for Red, Green, Blue, and Transparent. A 24bit PNG only has the RGB channels.

If you can\'t explicitly set the bit-depth and your image lacks transparency, just make one pixel in an unused area of the texture transparent and it should save as 32-bit.

Cheers!

Capt\'n Skunky

KSP Community Manager

And, you can only have full or no transparency. If you want half-transparency, you have to do that in your modeling program.

[colmo]

I\'m trying to build a Bigtrak capable of rescuing a stranded cockpit (the inline one, so quite a bit bigger than a standard capsule) on the Munar surface, and I\'m finding the forklift attachment is just too small to get under it in testing on Kerbin.

Any ideas on how to do it? Also, any chance of a grab attachment?