Pontiac

Kethane is the only reason I played KSP. I love the whole thing about building a ship to gather resources, to make gas stations to get a ship out to the furthest planets. I've never successfully landed on Moho only because of fuel. Once I get something in orbit I can refuel, then I can finally get a ship down.

I just went there, and I noticed that FF provides me with extra headers, CSS, and all that. It basically looks like a normal web page with the latest version tag. Is your code specifically looking for that particular line in all the extra crap Google is giving, or, is Google trying to be smart and providing your app exactly what you need?

Try relaunching KSP, go into your save, launch your ship, get MJ to do something, abort the launch, close the game, then check the size of the file. Don't play for a long time, just long enough to possibly generate some files. Also go into your debug menu and watch the log screen to see if errors start showing up. IIRC (Been a while) ALT-F12? 25mb seems a bit high and could be due to the game running for a while.

The thing I do with my top-heavy-liable-to-roll-forward-when-braking rovers is I disable the forward brakes. Time and distance to stop is longer, but zero chance of sending the cruiser into an unintended cartwheel.

Why not turn the brakes off on the front tires? It'll decrease your stopping capabilities significantly, however, your rover won't flip.. You could also perhaps setup an action group to enable/disable/toggle the different pairs of brakes. That way if you have to go backwards, you hit a button and the front wheels are brakes while your rear wheels are free to turn, and another button will do the reverse. Then if you want to lock all four up, use the brake button on the UI to turn them all on or off.

Good read (Only on paragraph one, but only due to work constraints at this moment ... yeah.. I'm busy, can't ya tell? ), but why did you write this?

- Kethane has the ability to store a planets resources values within the save file, so theoretically, a port COULD be named. How the code does it, I've no clue, but its there. I do know that every time a part is loaded, it is given a new internal ID, which is useless, however, certain attributes to each part are carried across. A name value possibly could be stored. - You could limit the list of entries to be docked at by comparing what part you're controlling the active space craft from and seeing what parts are available on the targeted entity. Basically, you show the list of small docking ports only if the "controlled from here" object is a small docking port. - I personally like the layout of Targetron, in which a list of items are selectable, and highlights what you're going to target on the receiving vessel.

No news is good news. When i do play, I rely on this much more than anything else. Also with a rebind of my I and K keys (Swapped 'em for their responsibilities) I feel like an idiot sending up a LARGE RCS tank instead of a couple of smaller ones. Saves me THAT much fuel compared to MJ.

@sarbian> I don't know how far you'll get with that considering Steam by default installs to a particular "Program Files" directory. I can't recall if you can specify what directory a particular game is installed to, however, you'd be asking the entire steam KSP user base to change their installation methods. It may be a one-off deal to install to a different directory, but, some people just don't know.

*cracks his knuckles* My desired wish list; - "Confirmed working with v0.x of KSP" - Developer assigns the tag as what version of KSP the code was written for - Users vote that it works which ups the ante for search results. Removing a site admin to manage the version numbers issued by SQUAD, this could be user definable. - Ability to link dependencies for 3rd party mods and mark them as "Required" or "Optional" with a link to the other mod -- The 3rd party mods will have a list indicating what depends on them (Thinking of Toolbar). 3rd party mod author can optionally allow all links immediately, authorize each requested link, deny links, or whatever else may be deemed necessary. -- My thoughts on that are that the mod author can link to the 3rd party mod by ID of the 3rd party mod. The ID would indicate what version of the mod it was last confirmed working with. The user would have an interface to look at the most recent version of the 3rd party mod, as well as the last known good copy. The links would be for local lookups only, not external sites. If files are not hosted locally, then only the "most recent" probably would be valid. - Comments are AVAILABLE, however, to make a comment a user must be [A] Registered with appropriate confirmed email address on file allowed to enter only ONE comment per mod (Think of it as a review) but DOES have the ability to modify and delete their own comment. Mod Author has ability to hide, but not delete or edit notes from other users. Basically, end users will be able to see a "Hidden Comments" field and have to click to view them. Possibility of allowing registered users to up/down vote other user comments. - Historical view of previous releases if files are mirrored or hosted locally. - Third party download site support (GitHub pages) with optional mirroring to the server. -- A link to a publicly accessible "read.me" file on GitHub (Or any other text file on the net) for version information. The server only downloads text file version history when the mod author chooses, which would eliminate duplication for them (They update on GitHub, or their personal wiki, or a file in their DropBox, the server would download the text file and update). Back end code on the server would strip out non ASCII characters. On the fence about HTML/JAVASCRIPT, but probably HTML Encode that as well. Could potentially scrape the OP of the forum, but if Squad changes the forum, scraping would suck. - Forced to use a certain subset of visual styles and colors. Similar to basic Wiki syntax. Embedding images (Hosted locally or remotely) and videos supported. Can't use flashing red huge letters or automatically play music. - Notification of mod updates as an instant notification, daily, weekly, or monthly digests. -- I'll have to look into it, but notifications via push services like "Notify My Android" as well as whatever the Apple equivalent is. I know with NMA there is a certain limit that a site can push. Its cheap to get a pro account though. - Mod Author can 'email in' Mod Updates, but prior to being published to the public, the author must log into the site to authorize the upload and assign appropriate requirements. I've had issues in the past with uploading larger files via a web interface. (Even in the lower megabyte range) *** - Mod Author definable link to support pages (Points to Original Post) and most recent post announcing new release - Mod Author definable link to development pages (Points to Original Post) and most recent post announcing new release -- The above two would be restricted to point to forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com based on the thread ID and post number. (For example, this thread would be 71133) Both are optional additions. I'm 90% interested in coding something like this. Just a matter of finding the time. I love doing database projects.

A melted one.

@calisker> Everyone else is wrong about your rocket. The problem is that you built the rocket UPSIDE DOWN... Yeesh.

Ahhhh yeah... Dynamic Data Exchange. DDE. That was what I was playing with. Must have blocked that outta my memory or something. But yes, this is a Windows Only thing. The only other thing that could possibly work on *Nix systems is to create a FIFO file and stream the data in and out. You'd probably need two files though, one for client->Server and another Server->Client. I don't think FIFOs are two way capable.

@Dio> Maybe I misinterpreted the order you had listed as a "list of things that should be in" versus "priorities of what should be considered". The lack of authentication AND having a window come up and say "Hey, is this connection from this other device OK?" was NEVER thought of to be taken off the table for this mod, but, there are exploits that get around authentication entirely, depending on the program. The other thing is, at a hardware level, encryption might not be done at the NIC level, but at the CPU level. Some NICs are extremely dumb devices, meaning, they receive information from the CPU, which determines everything about the package (Except headers and such) and out it goes, which is where my concern is about the encryption. The CPU still needs to handle it, and on a multi-proc, multi-threaded CPU system not a big deal. But only if it is outside of KSP. There are some NICs where you tell the driver "Use this key with this protocol, and everything will be zen" and the CPU just pumps the raw data to the NIC and the NIC handles everything. Even if a separate application were to be running that would do the encryption/decryption and keep network communication limited to LOCALHOST for unencrypted traffic, while, anything out on the network goes through encryption, OK, I'm fine with that. But it'd need to be a completely different program, outside of KSP. @Nuke> I THOUGHT about named pipes as well, but the drawback on that is, as you mentioned, but its not all that fun to play with. Windows also has an inter-process communication protocol as well, that isn't named pipes, works on a client/server kind of concept, sits 100% local to the machine, but for the life of me, I just can't freak'n think of it. I was playing with it it back in the Win 9x days and after my experience with it, I gave up with it. LOCALHOST for default listening should be the way to go. With the third-party app I mentioned above if you want to be security conscious, go for it. But if you want the plain text, the option to listen to a physical NIC on a real IP, then it should be allowed as well. @All> I'm glad no one has battered me with "What the hell is up with that long post?" or I get that post reported... At least people took notice. YAY!

The problem with any vessel in KSP is that once it gets 'unloaded' from view, it sits on rails. If you have the accelerator turned up while on a ground based vehicle, you can't switch to another location. Since this happens, the next best step would be to find a tool that will do the driving for you, and I think the most recent dev version of MechJeb will let you set waypoints. It isn't perfect, as the rover does seem to forget it is being controlled by AP and just stops dead in its tracks, but, it at least gets things going.

Meh. Don't be sorry. I put off a few customers to write that. Wuz fun. Look forward to reading your reply, or, if the OP wants to boot this, we could possibly move the convo over to another forum.

TL;DR: You're looking at the wrong end of the telescope for system security. Encryption isn't going to solve the payload problem. TL;DR#2: Default to listening on the LOCALHOST/127.0.0.1 interface only. ZERO physical network activity will happen. Full-on text, and its one hell of a wall: The thing is, once the connection is made, via encryption or not, you're in. Once you're passed my proposed HELO, you're in. Beyond that, you're at the mercy of whatever can be done, desired or undesired, based on what SQUAD has permitted the application to do TO or WITH the filesystem, or what the mod is permitted to do. I know sandboxing, I know encapsulation, I know user virtualization, I know home directory isolation, and I know a few other techniques of hiding and protecting information, but none of that has *ANYTHING* to do with encryption (Well, you can encrypt files at the platter level, but we're not talking that here). Encryption has NOTHING to do with what the contents of the payload is. Encryption CAN defer things like "Man in the middle" or whatever, but, beyond that, once a valid connection is made, you're at the mercy of what is being communicated, and what the communication is between the two end points are is entirely subject to what the software handling the eventual unencrypted communication can do, again desired or undesired. That encrypted information has to be decrypted for the program to do something valuable, which is what the payload is. Basically, if I've somehow allowed myself to get onto your computer, via encrypted methods or not, "yer skrewed", and I can do whatever I want within the confines of what the software and OS is going to let me do, exploits or not. Is sandboxing going to help? Yeah, of course. Whatever the software is asking the OS to do is going to be accepted or denied based on what the contents of the sandbox has or allows, but, it this isn't encryption. Does KSP act as a sandbox? Nope, but encryption has nothing to do with that either. Looking at this from a coders point of view, and this gives me the biggest knot in my stomach (And no its not the Tuna), with encryption turned on, now every future tool out there has to start laying down their own security models within their application which is going to become a burden on the developer, both for this mod and me who wants to turn his tablet into a flight tracking device, a MechJeb controller, or a web interface, etc. Crap-tonnes of code out there to get it done in whatever language you want, but its an extra layer of complication and additional requirements that need to be supported, and for those that want the simple stuff (Me being one of them), this is just way over the top. The encryption is going to do well to hide the in-transit package details from point A to point B at the communication layer (Specifically layers 1-4 of the OSI model), and no one is going to be able to sniff up (with ease anyways) what you're two end points are talking about, but once the application gets the information decrypted, and starts ACTING on it, communication back for whatever the payload is requesting is STILL going to be encrypted on its way back to the origin, with whatever information was supposed to go back. Is unencrypted information between two devices a private affair? Depends on your network setup, first off. With a network hub, absolutely not. EVERY packet is broadcast to EVERY port on the device. Network Switch? Depends, but probably not, and it depends on how many switches you have between point A and B. I have two GigE switches between my main desktop and my router, three between my main rig and wifes machines on another level in the house, and four switches between my rig and the kids machine[1]. As for the browser thing, yeah, it does it all the time, but not as quickly as you'd think. Any data being transmitted from, say, your bank site, is only a few hundred kilobytes of information at most. MAYBE a megabyte if you're looking at a years worth of transactions. The point is, you as the user, see the data show up "relatively" quickly. But I'd bet my last dollar that sitting on that servers LAN with browsing my 20+year bank history, comparing speed differences between the HTTP protocol and HTTPS, HTTP would be easily 25-50% faster.) But what happens is, your computer does its handshake and dance (CPU time) and encrypts the request. The request is sent down through the OSI levels, out the pipe to your provider, out to the net, out to your bank site, to which then the bank server has to decrypt that information based on another key. (Lets not forget that some points between you and the bank re-encrypt your encrypted data, so more CPU time, but, not included in my thoughts since its out of this mods control). So more handshakes and dances (More CPU time) is spent handling the encrypted data before the request can be worked on. The decrypted request gets completed, yet ANOTHER dance happens (More CPU time) to encrypt the data, which is then transmitted and sent down the wire, then decrypted (More CPU time) to get the job done. My big issue is on the CPU side of things. Encryption HAS come a long way, and HAS become more efficient. The biggest issue I've got is that in an already overburdened single-threaded game that deals with physics, graphics, and other processing, you're introducing just another thing to be handled, but instead of a short blurb of a request and answer session, you're now potentially STREAMING this encrypted data back and forth, and depending on the events, every physics iteration, or screen refresh, or if you're going to get smart, delay the transaction for a few frames or a full second or whatever. This, of course, depends entirely on what the application in question is supposed to do with what KSP is providing the outside device. We also shouldn't forget that people are playing this game on low end machines and barely surviving as is. Myself, I've got a quad-core (8-thread) first get i7 (960) with a 12gig of DDR3, and running my OS off of a pair of 256meg SATA-3 SSD drives in RAID-0 and a GTX570 running along side a GTX8800 as a secondary card for my quad-monitor setup. My system is not a slouch, but there are times this game already burdened with my near 700 part station. If I start throwing a lot of data at compression algos, I might as well just down the station and do something else. I'm no where *NEAR* saying that encryption isn't important. It absolutely, without a question, has its place. I'm just very against taxing the game for something that has little benefit. Considering that I doubt anyone is going to open up their router to play KSP on a machine remotely via a web interface without being able to keep score on how many Kerbals got killed, or, can't see what is on the screen, etc. I feel that this kind of mod is going to rely purely on a LAN style of configuration instead of an internet based configuration. That all said, there ARE OPTIONS. Move the encrypting calculations somewhere else. Another CPU thread, another machine, a router, or whatever. Keep it out of the mod. If you're hard set on external connections, get a VPN going. You remove encryption calculations from the mod and your system. The external device/software will still need to do the proper calculations if running on the same machine, BUT, it isn't in the game causing speed issues. --- *1 - I have an insane network setup. Literally two wireless routers (One wireless disabled due to old speed) and an access point. My machine plugs directly into a 5-port wired switch, which then connects to another switch which sits about 10 feet away from my router/server. The switch from my desk to the second switch is about 15 feet away. The second switch is an 8-port GigE with a few broken ports due to storms. From the second switch, I run a very long wire up to the wifes office which hooks into another GigE switch (8 port) which then feeds her 2 computers, as well as a line out to the living room to a 5 port switch which feeds my PS3, TV, and Wii. From the wifes 8-port switch, I feed the first wireless router (Demoted to a switch) and it acts as an access point for the living room and upstairs bedrooms, as well as wires to two network printers. From the same wired network switch in the wifes room, I run yet another long wire into the kitchen into a 5-port switch, which feeds the kids computer and a notebook that is being used as a "home resource center". The last access point that allows us to use our phones, tablets, and notebooks (Yes, all plural) out on our front yard. All this said, from my basement computer, I won't see traffic from my kids machine on the switch on my desk while they watch YouTube. So I cannot sniff their traffic unless I'm between the router and the switch directly connected. [[after staring at this for about 3 hours (I'm at work) I give up on this wall. ]]

They're down, apparently. Looks to be DNS. Unless this is resolved, or Majiir comes back, Kethane may be dead. (Which is why I dislike the license pertaining to redistribution, that being not permitted to redistribute)

Flagged thread for spamming a good ship.. .. flagged? I mean tracking. yeah.. tracking this so I can try this at home later.

Too many hands in the pot? I liked that thread. But then again, I keep up well enough that, with skipping the introductories, the challenges, and the bugs/support forums, I see pretty much everything.

All valid Dio, and who knows what kinds of hacks and vulnerabilities can come up through a game not designed for network traffic as of yet. The encryption thing, we're not talking about banking information, so I'm thinking that putting encryption load is going to be quite the bit overkill considering what you're trying to protect versus the speed of an already overburdened game. The basic authentication system I could accept would be KSP throwing up something on the screen stating that a particular machine wants to establish a connection and "do" something, which would require at least a basic HELO introduction. Unless this HELO introduction isn't sent within a period of time, the connection is dropped. If the proper introductory statement is sent, KSP asks the player if the connection is valid and desired. If so, accept and do whatever is needed. If not, then close the port. The other thing that could be done is just add a white list of IPs to a text file and only allow connections from those IPs.

@Galane> Interesting. I'm not doubting you, but have you got a reference for that? I wonder if a mod could be written to verify that a root part is selected, and if not, find the command pod, and make it active. At least THAT'D be better than a dead stick.

Some things about steam... First, if you use the shortcut on your desktop that Steam puts there, it launches with steam://appid instead of c:\progra~1\steam\steamapps\common\ksp\ksp.exe. If you directly LINK to ksp.exe, you should be good to go. Second, I ran into the "Can't connect" error a couple days ago, while I was streaming netflix, while I was downloading an ISO, and it came up with "Can't connect". So it isn't about network connectivity from my point of interest, but, how busy Steam is that I don't and will not trust. I should change my signature to state "I was burned by the SimCity 2013 release!"

External application control of my ship? Yep... Watching this thread.

KSP stock has no true appeal to me. Yeah, I can get into orbit, I've also figured out how to get into the different planes of planets. I've even gotten myself to orbit around Moho stock before I started mucking with tonnes of mods. Then Kethane came around and that started to interest me because I've enjoyed the 'self improvement' aspect of any game. Kind of RTS. Build my ship, find the gold, refine the gold, refuel a ship, launch to wherever I need to go. Since 0.20, Kethane is pretty much the glue that has kept me interested in KSP. Now with my discovery of the Open Resource System, I might start looking at sharpening my C# skills (See what I did there?), looking into making models, and coming up with my own kind of resource refinement system.