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Project BABYLON: REBOOT!


Tada

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9 hours ago, TheEpicSquared said:

Hey guys, so me and @Oliverm001x are thinking of trying something like this, but on a bigger scale. We're trying to emulate real life in KSP, and we're wondering if you have some tips on how to keep it organized when sharing save files around, etc. 

Oh, if this isn't the correct place to ask, sorry. :) 

 

Hey guys, So @TheEpicSquared and @Oliverm001x, there is no proper way to handle it, I suggest a private cloud account, however me and my friends have used just private file share, for example Skype and also Mega. 

GL, Hope I was helpful, Kenji :cool: 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have the save now. I will launch Brotoro station to Laythe, two exploration planes, and also a surprise.

EDIT: Actually, sending Brotoro Station, three exploration planes, a klaw tug, and maybe a surprise.

Another edit: Saving surprise for later, don't have time. Instead sending Low Jool Orbit probe.

Edit 3: The transfer burn for the Brotoro will take a whole hour. At 6fps. And it collapses under physics warp. And I just accidentally burnt out of the SOI early, meaning I'll need a huge correction burn down the line. Luckily, I have an excuse to stay up tonight: The Soyuz launch!

Edit 4: Three planes are landed, polar sat is on its way, and station/tug car are still in transit. But Someone previously grabbed the wrong save and my Battleship, SSTO's, and Vall base are missing. As soon as I am done with my transfers, I will put them back. (Via HE, I already piloted them once, and it's not my fault they're gone.)

Edited by Ultimate Steve
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Oof, that was waaaaay more work (and time) than I expected. I need to get a life sometime.

To sum it up in four pictures:

zVObVIN.png

2 of the 3 exploration planes. They have cool lights, and enough fuel to circumnavigate Kerbin. Fully fueled, they work as submarines. All three are currently parked next to the Laythe Base.

YmMm8zd.png

The Klaw rover - designed to connect the planes to the base so they can be refueled. I got it to Laythe in a capsule style fairing/heat shied. Shown here are the wings that I was supposed to detach, but I left them on. Part of me wonders if I can attach this to one of the SSTO's and drop it again, just for lols.

b6jR88z.png

Extremely low Joolian orbiter - orbiting in a polar orbit. Can be used as a probe in emergencies, has 10km/s of Delta Vee. The lowest point of the orbit is two meters above the atmosphere. Also Known as the Revenge of the Noodle (Because the lifter was a single super tall 1.25m stack).

B5S2zNl.png

And the biggie - Laythe Station Brotoro. Named in honor of @Brotoro

*Stops typing to watch Soyuz launch*

Where was I? Oh, yes! @Brotoro, the man behind the infamous "Long term on Laythe" mission report! The station boasts more solar panels than anyone could ever need, more docking ports than anyone could ever need, and two large fuselages of Liquid fuel, and two large tanks of LFO, as well as a heavy duty space tug.

Also, I HyperEdited in my Battlecruiser, SSTO's, and Vall Base that I had launched previously. Someone must have grabbed the wrong save at some point.

 

Speaking of that, the new save is up, the one marked 4/20/17 BABYLON (Ultimate Steve).

BTW I am never launching anything as big as that station again for a long time.

Spoiler

The launch ran at about 10% of the normal speed.

The transfer stages were two nuclear stages with burn times of an hour each. The game ran at 50% normal speed and physics warp would explode the ship. It required juggling of the autostruts after staging to ensure it wouldn't kraken. It took a few hours total for those burns. So, next time I decide to launch something this huge, remind me not to use Nukes!

 

 

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Is there any need for a launch pad on laythe, because I'm experimenting with a mobile design so that reusable rocket and vertically landing ships could land and refuel. Also in the works is a mobile city that will either float or drive on land (haven't decided yet). BTW cool station @Ultimate Steve :cool:

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Wow, so many cool things have been added! I'm looking forward to reading through it all and hauling out a bunch of the recent contributions (and Jeb federation's originals finally as well). Right now though, there's a Laythe based challenge I've been wanting to bring back to life for nearly half a year, and now's finally the time! It should go perfectly with Project Babylon, so I figure I'll start it here and bring it across once done. Also, luckily, the host of the challenge is still around and happy to take on new entrants.

I'll edit in a proper explanation and photos from the trip as it happens... Right now, I'm itching to get off the ground! (assuming I get off the ground :D )

Edit 1: Prelaunch Jitters

Spoiler

 

image.jpg

A pair of planes sit atop the xferX, a high part, low stress launcher designed to bring even the unwieldiest of payloads to Laythe. I must have done this a dozen times- surely I can get the staging right by now! ... We'll have to see :) .

 

 

Edit 2: The launch was easy breezy, but something was missing from the checklist.

Spoiler

Despite these planes having an enormous combined wing area on mk1 frames, the craft passed max Q without incident. The SAS wanted to wander off and check out some decidedly non-prograde directions, but the occasional poke kept it on track. The stages separated calmly, gently, and without incident. It totally didn't feel like one of my launches!

As a reward, we got to enjoy a beautiful sunrise....

And realize we left all the Kerbals at home. Ah, I knew I was forgetting something! :rolleyes:

image.jpg

image.jpg

image.jpg

image.jpg

image.jpg

Those little Kerbals sure look worried... Do they know something I don't?

 

 

Edit 3: The long haul

Spoiler

Apparently they realized I was going to get distracted and leave "Radial Out" SAS on. This setting is the most wonderful thing for vertical launches- the SAS keeps you right on track, but it suddenly flips out at 40km when the direction that is "radial out" changes from the navigation switching from surface to orbit. Calamity invariably ensues, but in this case, I've packed enough deltaV it should work out fine. I scrimped a bit by asparagus staging some tanks I normally just dump all at once, and should be back on track.

I toodled on out to Laythe and noticed fuel wasn't feeding correctly for some reason, though the priorities and crossfeeds were all set to their standards. I can't imagine what's up, but I only noticed the problem while right in the middle of the capture burn, so lots of highspeed clicking ensued to keep the huge reservoir on the capture stage from going to waste while the little deorbit stages gobbled up their reserves. All that training from speedrunning finally paid off though, because I managed to keep the fuel flowing around while not destabilizing the craft. The day was won, we made it to Laythe! Step 1 complete.

image.jpg

image.jpg

Let's see if we can get one of those planes to land!

 

 

 

Edit 4: Touchdown~ :lol:

Spoiler

 

The deorbit stage worked perfectly! And it only took 50 tons of LFO to make it work :) . After reentering, the deorbit stage had plenty of fuel to push the plane forward to a comfortable flying speed and release the plane into a steady flight. This plane doesn't really need the courtesy- it's maneuverable and lifty enough to be landed on the VAB, so a hard drop would have worked fine, too. That said, I had loaded the plane up with a few too many flags, which made it heavy, and even worse very draggy. I decided to drop about half of them and rely on the backup plane still in orbit to follow up and finish the mission later. A bit too bad, but also not too surprising. I'm quite pleased with the start!

10b.jpg

11b.jpg

13b.jpg

 

15b.jpg

16b.jpg

 

 

 

What's the mission? The Earhart Challenge by @Flamingo, which challenges you to put a 4 kerbal plane on Laythe (hyperedit ok) and fly to any/all of 9 different islands with flags to help navigation. The original flag file was made with hyperedit and didn't update to v1.2, so I figured I could finally run the challenge and make a new flag file all in one shot! It's made for a very draggy plane, but it's a nice addition to the challenge.

 

image.jpg

14b.jpg

 

I'll be continuing the journey soon, but I've reuploaded to the repository in case anyone had plans for tomorrow. Cheers!

Edited by Cunjo Carl
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On 4/4/2017 at 5:56 AM, TheEpicSquared said:

Hey guys, so me and @Oliverm001x are thinking of trying something like this, but on a bigger scale. We're trying to emulate real life in KSP, and we're wondering if you have some tips on how to keep it organized when sharing save files around, etc. 

Oh, if this isn't the correct place to ask, sorry. :) 

 

I know this is a bit late, but if you're still working on this my favorite way of handling file management with distributed teams has been TortoiseHg , It's a bit of a trick to install, but it allows you to push, pull and branch right from your desktop file explorer. Alternatively, using google drive seems to be working well here, because all's you need to do is share the link once and then zip, upload and you're ready to go.

Each craft in the universe of KSP is simply a block of text in the persistant file. It looks like this V  V
 

Spoiler

    FLIGHTSTATE
    {
        version = 1.2.2
        UT = 59655.36207439725
        activeVessel = 0
        mapViewFiltering = -1026
        commNetUIModeTracking = Network
        commNetUIModeFlight = Path
        VESSEL
        {
            pid = 0c166acfe0624b6d9bd4eeccfec1cd69
            name = Untitled Space Craft6 v6
            type = Ship
            sit = ESCAPING
            landed = False
            landedAt =
            splashed = False
            met = 31737.989999996065
            lct = 18444.68207443241
            lastUT = 50182.672074428476
            root = 0
            lat = 12.029454295740685
            lon = -97.31908898065636
            alt = 1098466.8523924008
            hgt = -1
            nrm = 0.795474231,-0.50421226,0.336141109
            rot = -0.345801443,0.665533543,0.606669307,0.263512731
            CoM = 7.55786896E-05,-4.61305285,-0.00167274475
            stg = 3
            prst = False
            ref = 0
            ctrl = True
            cPch =
            cHdg =
            cMod = 0
            ORBIT
            {
                SMA = 10623444.121955795
                ECC = 0.69382173628208299
                INC = 12.495539901107749
                LPE = 318.99792059131585
                LAN = 54.123646850322473
                MNA = -0.81249997976409383
                EPH = 58806.418101915049
                REF = 1
            }
            PART
            {
                name = mk1pod
                cid = 4285860766
                uid = 339890860
                mid = 2091303815
                launchID = 5
                parent = 0
                position = 0,0,0
                rotation = 0,0,0,1
                mirror = 1,1,1
                symMethod = Radial
                istg = -1
                resPri = 0
                dstg = 0
                sqor = -1
                sepI = -1
                sidx = -1
                attm = 0
                srfN = , -1
                attN = bottom, 6
                attN = top, 1
                mass = 0.800000012
                shielded = False
                temp = 215.32376798018547
                tempExt = 214.95910318495658
                tempExtUnexp = 4
                expt = 0.5
                state = 0
                attached = True
                autostrutMode = Heaviest
                rigidAttachment = True
                flag = Squad/Flags/default
                rTrf = mk1pod (Untitled Space Craft6 v6)
                modCost = 0
                crew = Jebediah Kerman
                EVENTS
                {
                }
                ACTIONS
                {
                }
                PARTDATA
                {
                }
                MODULE
                {
                    name = ModuleCommand
                    isEnabled = True
                    hibernation = False
                    hibernateOnWarp = False
                    stagingEnabled = True
                    EVENTS
                    {
                    }
                    ACTIONS
                    {
                        HibernateToggle
                        {
                            actionGroup = None
                            active = False
                        }
                    }
                    UPGRADESAPPLIED
                    {
                    }
                }
                MODULE
                {
                    name = ModuleReactionWheel
                    isEnabled = True
                    actuatorModeCycle = 0
                    authorityLimiter = 100
                    stateString = Running
                    stagingEnabled = True
                    WheelState = Active
                    EVENTS
                    {
                    }
                    ACTIONS
                    {
                        CycleAction
                        {
                            actionGroup = None
                        }
                        Activate
                        {
                            actionGroup = None
                        }
                        Deactivate
                        {
                            actionGroup = None
                        }
                        Toggle
                        {
                            actionGroup = None
                        }
                    }
                    UPGRADESAPPLIED
                    {
                    }
                }
                MODULE
                {
                    name = ModuleColorChanger
                    isEnabled = True
                    animState = False
                    stagingEnabled = True
                    EVENTS
                    {
                    }
                    ACTIONS
                    {
                        ToggleAction
                        {
                            actionGroup = Light
                        }
                    }
                    UPGRADESAPPLIED
                    {
                    }
                }
                MODULE
                {
                    name = ModuleScienceExperiment
                    isEnabled = True
                    Deployed = False
                    Inoperable = False
                    cooldownToGo = 0
                    stagingEnabled = True
                    EVENTS
                    {
                    }
                    ACTIONS
                    {
                        DeployAction
                        {
                            actionGroup = None
                        }
                        ResetAction
                        {
                            actionGroup = None
                        }
                    }
                    UPGRADESAPPLIED
                    {
                    }
                }

.........

            PART
            {
                name = ScienceBox
                cid = 4285849460
                uid = 3717452728
                mid = 2091303815
                launchID = 5
                parent = 0
                position = 0,1.0423755645751953,0
                rotation = 0,0,0,1
                mirror = 1,1,1
                symMethod = Radial
                istg = -1
                resPri = 0
                dstg = 0
                sqor = -1
                sepI = -1
                sidx = -1
                attm = 0
                srfN = srfAttach, -1
                attN = top, 4
                attN = bottom, 0
                mass = 0.0500000007
                shielded = False
                temp = 214.61727781343112
                tempExt = 213.88577343100005
                tempExtUnexp = 4
                expt = 0.5
                state = 0
                attached = True
                autostrutMode = Off
                rigidAttachment = False
                flag = Squad/Flags/default
                rTrf = ScienceBox
                modCost = 0
                EVENTS
                {
                }
                ACTIONS
                {
                }
                PARTDATA
                {
                }

 

....

And so on for every part and action your ship has

I secretly dream of writing a javascript+Jquery web app which will allow you to drag your local group save file onto a page, and will automatically parse and grab whatever new ships you've added to the persistent. Then, everyone on the team could work at the same time, and grab eachother's works with a few clicks of a download. The text parsing is easy, and server end stuff is manageable, but I can't figure out how to get downloads working... It would be the next best thing to KSP online! Someday, I can dream.

Good luck on your project!

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16 hours ago, Cunjo Carl said:

Wow, so many cool things have been added! I'm looking forward to reading through it all and hauling out a bunch of the recent contributions (and Jeb federation's originals finally as well). Right now though, there's a Laythe based challenge I've been wanting to bring back to life for nearly half a year, and now's finally the time! It should go perfectly with Project Babylon, so I figure I'll start it here and bring it across once done. Also, luckily, the host of the challenge is still around and happy to take on new entrants.

I'll edit in a proper explanation and photos from the trip as it happens... Right now, I'm itching to get off the ground! (assuming I get off the ground :D )

Edit 1: Prelaunch Jitters

  Hide contents

 

image.jpg

A pair of planes sit atop the xferX, a high part, low stress launcher designed to bring even the unwieldiest of payloads to Laythe. I must have done this a dozen times- surely I can get the staging right by now! ... We'll have to see :) .

 

 

Edit 2: The launch was easy breezy, but something was missing from the checklist.

  Hide contents

Despite these planes having an enormous combined wing area on mk1 frames, the craft passed max Q without incident. The SAS wanted to wander off and check out some decidedly non-prograde directions, but the occasional poke kept it on track. The stages separated calmly, gently, and without incident. It totally didn't feel like one of my launches!

As a reward, we got to enjoy a beautiful sunrise....

And realize we left all the Kerbals at home. Ah, I knew I was forgetting something! :rolleyes:

image.jpg

image.jpg

image.jpg

image.jpg

image.jpg

Those little Kerbals sure look worried... Do they know something I don't?

 

 

Edit 3: The long haul

  Reveal hidden contents

Apparently they realized I was going to get distracted and leave "Radial Out" SAS on. This setting is the most wonderful thing for vertical launches- the SAS keeps you right on track, but it suddenly flips out at 40km when the direction that is "radial out" changes from the navigation switching from surface to orbit. Calamity invariably ensues, but in this case, I've packed enough deltaV it should work out fine. I scrimped a bit by asparagus staging some tanks I normally just dump all at once, and should be back on track.

I toodled on out to Laythe and noticed fuel wasn't feeding correctly for some reason, though the priorities and crossfeeds were all set to their standards. I can't imagine what's up, but I only noticed the problem while right in the middle of the capture burn, so lots of highspeed clicking ensued to keep the huge reservoir on the capture stage from going to waste while the little deorbit stages gobbled up their reserves. All that training from speedrunning finally paid off though, because I managed to keep the fuel flowing around while not destabilizing the craft. The day was won, we made it to Laythe! Step 1 complete.

image.jpg

image.jpg

Let's see if we can get one of those planes to land!

 

 

 

Edit 4: Touchdown~ :lol:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

The deorbit stage worked perfectly! And it only took 50 tons of LFO to make it work :) . After reentering, the deorbit stage had plenty of fuel to push the plane forward to a comfortable flying speed and release the plane into a steady flight. This plane doesn't really need the courtesy- it's maneuverable and lifty enough to be landed on the VAB, so a hard drop would have worked fine, too. That said, I had loaded the plane up with a few too many flags, which made it heavy, and even worse very draggy. I decided to drop about half of them and rely on the backup plane still in orbit to follow up and finish the mission later. A bit too bad, but also not too surprising. I'm quite pleased with the start!

10b.jpg

11b.jpg

13b.jpg

 

15b.jpg

16b.jpg

 

 

 

What's the mission? The Earhart Challenge by @Flamingo, which challenges you to put a 4 kerbal plane on Laythe (hyperedit ok) and fly to any/all of 9 different islands with flags to help navigation. The original flag file was made with hyperedit and didn't update to v1.2, so I figured I could finally run the challenge and make a new flag file all in one shot! It's made for a very draggy plane, but it's a nice addition to the challenge.

 

image.jpg

14b.jpg

 

I'll be continuing the journey soon, but I've reuploaded to the repository in case anyone had plans for tomorrow. Cheers!

1)Good Work! :D 

2) Additionaly that challange should be of its own, go ahead and make it! :D

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11 hours ago, KenjiKrafts said:

1)Good Work! :D 

2) Additionaly that challange should be of its own, go ahead and make it! :D

Thanks! I don't exactly understand, but my plan is to leave the flags in Project Babylon with names on them so we can finally call those islands by names, and also make a copy of the file and remove all the craft except the flags for @Flamingo to use directly.

I made another update and sent it to the repository. The first 6 flags have been placed, and the first plane wound up with enough extra fuel that it probably could have handled running the whole mission solo after all! Oh well, judgement calls. It also wound up with some COM/COL problems near the end, but it recovers from the occasional flipout admirably. I'll place the final 4 flags tomorrow night, perhaps?

Pictures from today's flight are within. I got some more glamor shots of Jool, a high shot of Three Lake Island "The easy one" (awesome place for a base by the way), and a partial Vall Eclipse! The final plane shot shows it at the end of its mission, on the little spat of sand just off the coast of "Where to Land" island, which I call Flaming Wreck Island after my repeated experiences there during a speedrun. The surface of Laythe is starting to become dotted with little probes! It's hard to see for all the excitement up in orbit though :) .

Spoiler

image.jpg

image.jpg

image.jpg

image.jpg

image.jpg

image.jpg

 

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1 hour ago, Cunjo Carl said:

 

13 hours ago, KenjiKrafts said:

1)Good Work! :D 

2) Additionaly that challange should be of its own, go ahead and make it! :D

Thanks! I don't exactly understand

 

What I mean is that I think this would be a decent mission so you could make this its own thread, so a idea would to be to place all six flags on Laythe, and the quickest time wins, completion via sea, land or air would be ok and you wouldn't have to stop at laythe either :D 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've been working on an airplane platform for delivering @JebFederation's craft to landing sites around Laythe, in prep perhaps for another small land base. Much to my surprise, the plane seems to be working!

Spoiler

image.jpg

It's designed to deliver rovers in 'kneeling' mode. The landing gear is also tall enough that many of @JebFederation's palletized craft can be slung underwing for delivery.

10b.jpg

I'm not sure how it's flying already, but there it is! A little more wiggly than I'd like, but perfectly stable.

 

Now I've got to test it under load, so we'll see how that goes :) . Also, I have no idea how Jeb federation makes all those rovers! I tried making a little test rover to doublecheck things can drive on wings, but I can't even get it to drive on the tarmac. The wheels just clip through the ground and spin ineffectually. Ironically my test is the part that needs the most testing. Well, the plane will be carrying the real deal soon enough, so trial by fire! My favorite way.

 

We have a mission flag! It's nothing official so no obligation, but @Cratercracker made us a cool flag to hold high as our banner. I may have also enjoyed it enough to crop part for my profile pic :D 

Project_Babylon_Flag.png

Delivering @DoctorDavinci's Can Can 177 is still on the list. I'm looking forward to getting that one up and running.

There's still a ton of craft in Laythe orbit that need delivery to their final destinations- comsats, station parts, submarines. I'm thinking about putting a classified in my sig to attract a pilot. Thoughts?

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On ‎4‎/‎20‎/‎2017 at 3:26 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

Oof, that was waaaaay more work (and time) than I expected. I need to get a life sometime.

To sum it up in four pictures:

zVObVIN.png

2 of the 3 exploration planes. They have cool lights, and enough fuel to circumnavigate Kerbin. Fully fueled, they work as submarines. All three are currently parked next to the Laythe Base.

YmMm8zd.png

The Klaw rover - designed to connect the planes to the base so they can be refueled. I got it to Laythe in a capsule style fairing/heat shied. Shown here are the wings that I was supposed to detach, but I left them on. Part of me wonders if I can attach this to one of the SSTO's and drop it again, just for lols.

b6jR88z.png

Extremely low Joolian orbiter - orbiting in a polar orbit. Can be used as a probe in emergencies, has 10km/s of Delta Vee. The lowest point of the orbit is two meters above the atmosphere. Also Known as the Revenge of the Noodle (Because the lifter was a single super tall 1.25m stack).

B5S2zNl.png

 

Where was I? Oh, yes! @Brotoro, the man behind the infamous "Long term on Laythe" mission report! The station boasts more solar panels than anyone could ever need, more docking ports than anyone could ever need, and two large fuselages of Liquid fuel, and two large tanks of LFO, as well as a heavy duty space tug.

Also, I HyperEdited in my Battlecruiser, SSTO's, and Vall Base that I had launched previously. Someone must have grabbed the wrong save at some point.

  Reveal hidden contents

The launch ran at about 10% of the normal speed.

The transfer stages were two nuclear stages with burn times of an hour each. The game ran at 50% normal speed and physics warp would explode the ship. It required juggling of the autostruts after staging to ensure it wouldn't kraken. It took a few hours total for those burns. So, next time I decide to launch something this huge, remind me not to use Nukes!

 

 

You can never ever have too many docking ports :D.

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  • 4 months later...

Okay, posting here for two reasons.

1. Let's resume! This was a project of epic proportions that sort of stalled...

2. I was making a YouTube KSP montage video and I'm almost done with it. However, I just realized I have accidentally included a short clip of one of the Babylon stations, namely this one:

fZvOyXX.png

A quick stroll through the thread revealed no obvious creator. I thought I'd ask around here to see if I could include this in the video (I could remove it but it would be a pain to get the syncing right at this point, I'd rather not try to do that). To the creator, if you don't want it in the video, that's fine, just say so. If it's fine, also say so.

-Steve.

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On 27/10/2017 at 11:14 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

Okay, posting here for two reasons.

1. Let's resume! This was a project of epic proportions that sort of stalled...

2. I was making a YouTube KSP montage video and I'm almost done with it. However, I just realized I have accidentally included a short clip of one of the Babylon stations, namely this one:

fZvOyXX.png

A quick stroll through the thread revealed no obvious creator. I thought I'd ask around here to see if I could include this in the video (I could remove it but it would be a pain to get the syncing right at this point, I'd rather not try to do that). To the creator, if you don't want it in the video, that's fine, just say so. If it's fine, also say so.

-Steve.

Could be one of mine, I'm not to sure, also yes! Let's resume the thread!

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