Gaming The Kerbal Space Program - Version 1.2.x

[krashkart]

About the wobbliness, yeah, it's wobbling more than it should be now... This is a problem that cropped up a while ago, and I'm still not sure what it was that set if off... The ship is supposed to wobble a little, but not as much as it does now. I'll dig around, and see if I can find the source of the problem.

Cheers

I figured the ship was supposed to wobble a bit. I like the feature - it makes liftoff ehm... very interesting under the right circumstances. I hadn't expected to see my first tall rocket bend itself into an arch from the thrust loading. :rofl:

Looking forward to further updates. Great job!

 

[Richy]

It's a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to it.

As a tiny suggestion: What about some guide or a help to place attachements symetrical around a stage. Like some sort of template, to place them in an exact position in a 120°,90°,72°,60°,45° or 30° angle. Just to estimate it by hand is quite tricky and also a bit frustrating. Something for example you can activate be holding shift while placing a part or so.

 

[HarvesteR]

It's a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to it.

As a tiny suggestion: What about some guide or a help to place attachements symetrical around a stage. Like some sort of template, to place them in an exact position in a 120°,90°,72°,60°,45° or 30° angle. Just to estimate it by hand is quite tricky and also a bit frustrating. Something for example you can activate be holding shift while placing a part or so.

Yes, symmetry is a must-have feature now... the problem is that it's not a trivial one, and it will take time to get it working correctly.

But yes, when we do get symmetry in, you'll have to option to use 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 sided radial symmetry

Right now we're focusing on eliminating all bugs and little problems in what we have now, so we're good to keep on building on a stable platform. Symmetry is the next feature to be added though. It's indeed very frustrating to be aligning winglets and SRBs by hand, and we're fully aware of that. But it's more important to have the game work 100% now, than put in a new, possibly also buggy feature onto an already bugful game, so we're tidying up first

Cheers

 

[jangofett287]

Make sure that you add butons to the VAB screen to allow quick changing of which type of symetry to use (2,4,6,8 sided or whatever), so that it doesn't get annoying moving down the stages.

As stages get bigger as you go down, the 3 columns formed by the tri-coupler can get quite, how shall I put it, 'Unstable'. Can we please have a strap or something we can wrap around the lower parts to keep them together?

 

[PeriapsisPrograde]

Yes, symmetry is a must-have feature now... the problem is that it's not a trivial one, and it will take time to get it working correctly.

But yes, when we do get symmetry in, you'll have to option to use 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 sided radial symmetry

Right now we're focusing on eliminating all bugs and little problems in what we have now, so we're good to keep on building on a stable platform. Symmetry is the next feature to be added though. It's indeed very frustrating to be aligning winglets and SRBs by hand, and we're fully aware of that. But it's more important to have the game work 100% now, than put in a new, possibly also buggy feature onto an already bugful game, so we're tidying up first

Cheers

I'm not fluent in C++, or .dae's, but here's my idea on symmetry:

Get "node_collision" group
identify all faces with 4 vertices (sides of the cylinder)
identify the edges of those faces that are flat along y
connect the midpoints of those edges
an attachment can be placed along the created lines

Since the collision mesh is to have 12 faces, wouldn't it be obvious if your pieces are asymmetrical, being 30 degrees off?

 

[Moach]

that would be C#, i think.... unity is based on the MONO framework... (.NET minus M$) - and KSP is based on unity :hmm:

at first i didn't know better, but after i learned C++, i really wish ppl (like the unity devs that went with C#) didn't start from the principle that "C++ is just so hard" and assume something "better/easier" has to be invented... C++ is actually very easy to use, once you get your head around it... lerning takes more effort, tho

 

[C3PO]

I'm still trying to do better measurements of the mass and radius of the planet. This time I entered an orbit, measured the velocity and altitude at periapsis and apoapsis and tried figuring it out from that. I got:
[math]M = 5.285 \times 10^{22} \; kg[/math][math]R = 599.2 \; km[/math]

The mass averaged out at 5.2916E22 kg in my tests.

The apses varied 100+ m while orbiting, so I just used r = 600 km. I used T to get to those mass values.

We really need a MET and time acceleration! This is way too time consuming. :rofl:

I managed to land the capsule in visual distance of the launch site. :thumbup:

If you press pause[Esc] while in orbit, you get a Max G of ~1600! :hmm:

As for using the as an entry level orbiter..... well....
If you can balance this spaghetti into orbit, you should have no trouble launching the stock Atlantis into a stable orbit without instruments. :lol:

This is just so much fun! :tiphat:

 

[HarvesteR]

that would be C#, i think.... unity is based on the MONO framework... (.NET minus M$) - and KSP is based on unity :hmm:

at first i didn't know better, but after i learned C++, i really wish ppl (like the unity devs that went with C#) didn't start from the principle that "C++ is just so hard" and assume something "better/easier" has to be invented... C++ is actually very easy to use, once you get your head around it... lerning takes more effort, tho

I like C#. Yes, it's managed, but it's a managed language done right. You can bypass all the management if you wish, and work as if it were C++, with the pointers and whatnot, just open an 'unsafe' context, and the GC won't go there... Or you can let the GC do it's thing... It's not like Flash, where you constantly run into trouble because of the dumb GC and other stuff... (I've seen your AXIOM Manifesto)...

Anyhow... About the auto-surface alignment, I think it can be done just by mathematically 'snapping' the part to an angle, so the part is a little more constrained... also, it should be possible to write down the Y position of the first part placed on the surface, and snap subsequent parts to that as well...

That isn't symmetry yet, but it's a massive improvement over just being able to place anything anywhere...

And it won't at all restrain the player's creativity. All creative media are essentially bounded environments... Like LEGOs... you can't place a block in between pins (except the flat ones, those can be inserted sideways between pins), or at oblique angles to other parts, but that never stifled anyone's creativity... it's a bound of the medium, much like snapping to angles will be a bound of the KSP VAB.

Ok, enough rambling, back to work... That UI skin won't build itself

Cheers

 

[HarvesteR]

Well, here's a short update on what's going on:

This update is coming along in an unprecedented speed and efficiency. We're already more than half way through the tasks we predicted would take 3 weeks, and it's only been 3 days :thumbup:

So today I decided to step off the to-do list, and try doing something about the excessive wobbliness on some parts.

The thing about being in a project for this long, is that sometimes you stumble on code that went unnoticed without any updates ever since the very first versions... The bit that made the parts connect to one another was such a piece of code.

So, I rewrote it to use a much more stable joining method, and the wobbliness is under control again!

I didn't get rid of the elasticity between the parts, because I think it's a nice feature to see the rocket bending and flexing under the forces of launch... So this new method just minimizes wobbling down to a controlled amount, which can now even be regulated.

I realize now that hearing me talk about these fixes and new features must be a little awkward, since the downloadable version is still the same bug-ridden version from last week... So I'll tell you what: Since we're going so fast with the planned updates, we'll upload an updated version as soon as we finish the task list on the Dev Forums. This will be version 0.8.0, and at the end of the planned 3 weeks, we'll put up version 0.8.1, which will have a few extra, erm... goodies

Cheers

 

[Turbinator]

 

[jangofett287]

:hesaid:

 

[jedimaster1214]

Quick question, i was excitedly hurrying through the tutorial to play, but i forgot, how do you deploy the parachutes?

 

[jangofett287]

space. same as staging and activating new stages.

 

[jedimaster1214]

ok, thanks!

 

[krashkart]

Will TransX be compatible with KSP?


Looking forward to the next update. :thumbup:

 

[RisingFury]

Quick question, i was excitedly hurrying through the tutorial to play, but i forgot, how do you deploy the parachutes?

Don't forget to add the chute to the top of your capsule...

 

[HarvesteR]

A quick update...

day 4: I'm rewriting the flight camera code from scratch... the old version was a mess of quick patches, fixes and kludges that were piling onto each other since version 0.1...

So out the window it went, and in comes the new camera code.

This one is completely jitter-free. You can orbit to your heart's content and never see the camera jiggle. It's also more fun. It reacts to the angular velocity of the focus object (usually the pod), and twists a little when the pod spins. It's particularly cool when the parachutes deploy... you can feel how violent it is now.

Also, the camera now points not at the command capsule, but at the stack's CoM, so your ship is always centered, and the NavBall doesn't cover it anymore. As stages are ejected, the camera focus point shift itself to the new CoM.

Also changed is the don't-go-into-terrain logic... the previous version was an ugly mess of raycasts and correction moves... now it's a lot simpler. You can't go lower than the angle between the target and the terrain.

So far all I have is the Free-Camera mode... the others will follow shortly. But I think I'm going to merge the FOLLOW and CHASE cam modes, since they're practically the same.

well, this has been my day's work...

Cheers

 

[jedimaster1214]

I have another question, i think this was discussed earlier, but... whatever.

Does stacking two liquid stages together and then one engine on the bottom make it have twice the fuel?

[] <-----Top liquid stage
[] <-----Bottom liquid stage
/\ <-----Engine

^^^^Something like that?

 

[iamwearingpants]

I have another question, i think this was discussed earlier, but... whatever.

Does stacking two liquid stages together and then one engine on the bottom make it have twice the fuel?

[] <-----Top liquid stage
[] <-----Bottom liquid stage
/\ <-----Engine

^^^^Something like that?

That'll be in the next update

 

[jedimaster1214]

Thanks for the reply!

I also have another suggestion, this time for the HUD.

Can we have a little something like this? :


It would definitely help with on-orbit operations, de-orbiting, orbit insertion, etc.