Tutorial: Adding Airlocks and Ladders to Parts

Adding Airlocks and Ladders to Parts

This tutorial will teach you how to add airlocks your your Kerbonauts to access, and ladders for them to climb, directly to parts like what is done with the current command modules. This will work for any part, not just command pods.

Specifications

• Length: 10-15 minutes
• Difficulty: Moderate
• For version: 0.16 and above

Steps

Step 1 - Create Ladder and Airlock Boxes

Add a simple box for your Ladders and/or airlocks in a modeling software of your choice.

Step 2 - Set up Unity

Importing the new 0.16 parttools

Load up the unity editor and import the new parttools, then import your model and textures. After this, parent your model to a Gameobject with the KSP parttools components.

Step 3 - Identifying airlocks and ladders

Adding new tags

Select your ladder or airlock mesh and add new tags by going into the TagManager and choosing "Ladder" and "Airlock" tags. In the same menu name one of the User Layers "Part Triggers".

Note on ladders

First, it seems that "Part Triggers" name must be given to layer 21. Otherwise ladders ain't work.

Also, when placing ladders in Unity Editor, keep in mind that Kerbal climbs up the ladder's local Y (green) axis, facing local Z (blue). Note that Unity's "green" and "blue" axes may differ from those in your 3D modelling program.

Step 4 - Adding airlocks and ladders

File:Adding tags.jpg

Setting tags

Select your airlock/ladder mesh and set the Tag to Airlock/Ladder and Layer to Part Triggers. Afterwards, delete the meshrender and make it a mesh collider, just like you would make a node_collider.

Setting tags

Tick the "Is Trigger" tickbox, and write with the parttools component as usual.

Step 5 - Final Touches

Add "CrewCapacity = # to your .cfg to define the total number of crew members that may enter.

And all done!

Now you should be able to use your ladders and airlocks in-game!

Tutorial created by DYJ.