Bulldozer Blades with Terrian Leveling

[rottielover]

I got to thinking about some older addin's that aren't maintained anymore and realized that the groundwork is probably already been laid for a mod such as this:

Kittopia (sp?) had "terraforming" on a map scale (global scale) and allowed you to edit the terrain. Bobcat (I think) had forklifts.

I would like to see a "bulldozer" mod. Land a rover with the dozer blade and have it level the surrounding area. You could start out pretty basic like land the rover and hit go and poof a 100x100 meter area gets leveled.

In the following versions here are some ideas:

Time- area leveling takes time passing

Resource use- next part could be the scraper (lookup this machine for pics) which using (for example) Rober Dude's regolith addon, could accumulate "dirt" and then you could build a buried habitat dome ala the ESA's proposal for a lunar base IRL

Thoughts?

Edited December 3, 2014 by rottielover

[rottielover]

Another subsequent idea: take on the old catapiller tracks mod for incorporation.

[kerbiloid]

Maybe to avoid a terrain editing, just to put some large plain detail  "Embankment".

There are several mods with such details (btw Kerbin-Side/Kerbal Konstructs have), but they need to either launch it from Kerbin, or to put with an editor.

I.e. bulldozer snip-snap, snip-snap... Then - bang! - an Embankment appears. Which would have a horizontal top and semi-sunken bottom.

[Buzzou]

i've thought about this as well, i hate it that kethane/EPL/ORS etc all extract resources by simply drilling a hole in the ground. Sure this is due to limitations in the game, but goddamnit i want to mine a quarry, not fish for resources like an eskimo on a frozen lake

i think proper mining would be awesome... digging up ore, transporting truckloads of it to a refinery, and then dumping the refuse in pretty pyramids... it might actually give you something to do when you get to a planet - actual end game material!

maybe the procedural terrain that Squad implemented on the mun (and have delayed applying to other bodies) could be tweaked to allow some sort of gameplay like this?

[rottielover]

Strip mining, I love it!

The original thought/idea was to be similar to the real life proposal of the ESA's moon habitat. Buried into the lunar soil to help shield colonists from radiation.

I do like the idea of strip mining though, especially for those of us dedicated to EPL (where vast quantities of ore are needed) and Karbonite.

Anyway between seeing the ESA proposal and then getting a fine print contract for a 12 kerbal surface base (as a TAC Life / MKS user). I realized just finding a base site was going to be a royal pain, even with SCANsat.

[rottielover]

So RoverDude, how much?

[kerbiloid]

Strip mining and burying habitat/technological cylinders inside.

[Engineer of Stuff]

This would be an awesome mod!

[rottielover]

I agree, unfortunately I'm no programmer. The limit of my programming skills was helping to update a perl script for someone by copy pasting and changing a few values around.

I'm pretty sure that the mods to make this a reality already exist (Kittopea in-game terraforming for instance). I'm just not sure how to pull it off.

[jake9039]

I agree with this.

[Greys]

Modding is not a lego process.

Just because mods exist which do things does not mean you can mash them together to create new stuff; and even if you can you shouldn't.

Terrain modification is done via PQSmods. Everything about Kerbin from the topography itself to how the land turns yellow near sealevel is a PQSmod.

If you want to make a dynamic terrain modification mod you're going to need to make and apply a PQSmod dynamically which instructs the PQS to change the altitude of terrain vertices to your desired result.

I can tell you right off the bat that doing terrain modification with a bulldozer will not work the way you think, and will more than likely destroy your ship; this is why you shouldn't legobrick new features out of old mods.

You need to consider how the game works and how you can make a feature that results in what you desire within the game, and how to make it easy and fun.

Terrain modification is a good idea, and it's possible, but it's not easy, it's not something that can be assembled out of other mods, nor is it something that should be; it should be a fully independent project, at most the terrain modification engine could be an API that other mods tap into to power their mechanic.

Now, all us modders are busy with stuff, I know there are some people working on it but that's been true for a year. I count five people in this thread who could try.

Just remember, the only valid excuses for not trying, is lack of time or interest, and alls yalls are interested.

[kerbiloid]

It's definitely clear that a terrain modification is enough hard thing to implement.

As I can understand the topic starter, he means not "terrain modification" as such, but more a "pre-building ground leveling".

I.e. his aim is to get a large, low and flat structure to use it as a basement for a ground base. Some kind of embankment, to say.

Such flat basement would level all buildings and eliminate their mutual slope one to another.

Not only more realistic, but maybe that would also decrease struts and tubes stress caused by different slope angles.

And we can see Kerbal-Side mod where a lot of large structures with flat horizontal surfaces implemented (runways, launchpads, etc).

They are the closest equivalent of such "embankment" and they are created in many places.

Such things are represented by STATIC clause in cfg files as I can see. Not much difference with PART or ship.

Things may appear in a game dynamically  as we can see in Extraplanetary Launchpads, and btw KerbinSide STATICs are also not hard-coded.

So it looks enough good solution to avoid the terrain editing, but to create an embankment STATIC by demand where the bulldozer has finished its work.

Dig-and-bury extension was just a thought, but that could be a replacement of one STATIC with another one, or not be at all.

[rottielover]

My heart hurts that no one picked up this idea and ran with it

[Mecripp]

My heart hurts that no one picked up this idea and ran with it

It pretty much is being worked on MFS http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/107791-0-90-Mobile-Frame-System-MFS-%28v0-3-0%29-04-04-2015 and KMPI http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/101239-WIP-Mining-and-Processing-Extension-KMPI