[WEB] KSP Ribbon Generator [v2.0, Dec 22, 2014] Over 7 Million Served!

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

The ships I see in the official Ribbons release from Unistrut are:

• Aircraft
  
• Capsule
  
• Lander
  
• Probe Lander
  
• Probe Rover
  
• Probe
  
• Rover
  

If any of those are missing from our generator, then of course I'll fix that. Otherwise, we should take it up with Unistrut.

The GTS file does include a multi-part ship (as "New Layer"), and more generally, it doesn't make sense to me to say that some kinds of craft devices are okay for including on a planet/moon/asteroid ribbon but can't go on a grand tour. I don't want to quibble over the "rules" of these ribbons, but the wording of the suggestions ("The craft used on the Grand Tour is indicated in the center.") doesn't seem to indicate any limitation either.

I was going to say that it would be reasonable to exclude Extreme EVA, but then I remembered that Scott Manley got a Kerbal home from Gilly with EVA alone:

Oh yeah -- the geosynchronous pip should also be available for all bodies. I get that some bodies' SOI is smaller than their synchronous orbit radius, but putting up a satellite network with constant visibility to a particular point also counts ("If geosynchronous orbits are not possible, may also be awarded for placing a constellation of satellites so as to allow continuous overwatch of a point on the surface.").

I thought long and hard on how to do this in the most intuitive way. I like the fade idea, and I could hide the checkbox completely, if you think that will help.

Or make the Kerbol variant the default selected when I click the checkbox.

Save should be working perfectly as of last night (Nov 19) - can you please try to reproduce this? In the future, if you can remember and post the exact wording of any errors encountered, that would be awesome.

However, Generate is not nearly done (like it says on the page ), so you'll always either get a FATAL ERROR, or some jacked up image - that's to be expected until it's done.

The save error was something like "FATAL ERROR: Cannot write data" (or "store" or "access" or something). It's not happened again (I've tried saving all sorts of wonky ribbon boards since then). I'll be sure to save the exact message if I do get it again.

Somehow, I missed the text at the top of the page saying that the "Generate" function is still a work-in-progress. In my defense, that shiny new grand tour shield distracted me.

[Ezriilc]

The GTS file does include a multi-part ship (as "New Layer")...

I believe I'm waiting for Unistrut to send me the latest version of this graphic. The latest .zip doesn't have it.

EDIT: Fixed!

Oh yeah -- the geosynchronous pip should also be available for all bodies. I get that some bodies' SOI is smaller than their synchronous orbit radius, but putting up a satellite network with constant visibility to a particular point also counts ("If geosynchronous orbits are not possible, may also be awarded for placing a constellation of satellites so as to allow continuous overwatch of a point on the surface.").

I tend to agree with this, but it's Unistrut's call.

EDIT: Fixed!

Or make the Kerbol variant the default selected when I click the checkbox.

The plan is that no choices be made automatically, other than those absolutely required for the thing to work.

The save error was something like "FATAL ERROR: Cannot write data" (or "store" or "access" or something). It's not happened again (I've tried saving all sorts of wonky ribbon boards since then). I'll be sure to save the exact message if I do get it again.

Random errors are always a possibility on my cheap shared host, but I might could do some tweaking to make that more robust - if it becomes a problem. Edited November 20, 2014 by Ezriilc

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

I tend to agree with this, but it's Unistrut's call.

Who did you think I was quoting? (See Section 2.1., subheading "Geosynchronous". )

[Ezriilc]

Who did you think I was quoting? (See Section 2.1., subheading "Geosynchronous". )

Oh, I get it (I can be a bit thick sometimes).

I think the original generator that I inherited didn't have them but for some, so I had fixated on that as a "rule" - mistakenly. FIXED!

EDIT: Or, I may have just invented this all on my own, now that I think on it.

Edited November 20, 2014 by Ezriilc

[Thunderous Echo]

Problem Report: The Ribbon Generator caps out at 16 orbits/landings.

There are 2 problems with this.

1) Jool and Kerbol(Sun) cannot be reasonably landed on, so landings should cap out at 14, if anything.

2) What if you land on the same planet twice? Or three times? (I realize the design becomes iffy if you go above 36 landings/orbits, so maybe that should be the cap).

EDIT: Diregard #2, spikes are awarded per world, not per landing/orbit.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Thunderous Echo

[Ezriilc]

Problem Report: The Ribbon Generator caps out at 16 orbits/landings.

There are 2 problems with this.

1) Jool and Kerbol(Sun) cannot be reasonably landed on, so landings should cap out at 14, if anything.

2) What if you land on the same planet twice? Or three times? (I realize the design becomes iffy if you go above 36 landings/orbits, so maybe that should be the cap).

Interestingly enough, mathematically the maximum is 24, due to the number of pip slots, and the fact that the first is separately represented by the central planet device.

I agree with the logic, so yea, I'll change it. EDIT: FIXED!

Edited November 19, 2014 by Ezriilc

[Ezriilc]

I hate to tempt fate, but I think I'm done!

I want to hold off for a while before we take down the old one. In the meantime, please test this well and find the bugs!

[Thunderous Echo]

Pip slots? Aren't there 7?

7 silver spike slots * 5 golden spikes per silver spike + 1 Central Device=

35 golden spikes + 1 Central Device =

36 landings/orbits.

Theoretically, this system could accommodate 36 landings an 36 orbits with 7 silver spikes on each side of the badge.

In actuality, however:

...and then an arrow is awarded for each subsequent world orbited / landed on...

The exact wording is one spike per world​, not landing, so yes, you wouldn't need more than 14.

[Ezriilc]

Pip slots? Aren't there 7?

7 silver spike slots * 5 golden spikes per silver spike + 1 Central Device=

35 golden spikes + 1 Central Device =

36 landings/orbits.

Theoretically, this system could accommodate 36 landings an 36 orbits with 7 silver spikes on each side of the badge.

In actuality, however:

The exact wording is one spike per world​, not landing, so yes, you wouldn't need more than 14.

Of course, your logic is flawless, theoretically. In practice, 24 is the highest sequential number that can be represented, because of that odd-man out - the single first one. In Chrome, you can use your up/down arrow keys on the select boxes to see the pips change (I love JQuery), to see this in action. I actually still find this simple-yet-complicated math fascinating for some reason.

Regardless, I've made a command decision and changed Landings to a limit of 14.

What's left?

[Thunderous Echo]

Bug Report! (ish)

If you somehow set your orbits or landings to a number greater than the cap, the drop-down menu will display 0, but the badge preview will display that number of spikes.

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

Fate has been tempted -- the "rules" link tries to go to "http://ribbons.kerbaltek.com/TESTING/forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25188?p=307673&viewfull=1#post307673".

[Ezriilc]

Fate has been tempted -- the "rules" link tries to go to "http://ribbons.kerbaltek.com/TESTING/forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25188?p=307673&viewfull=1#post307673".

[looks around to see who noticed...]

Looks fine to me...

[Unistrut]

Any chance of asteroid devices for the moons, or do you think it would make the ribbon too busy and confusing? (Shameless self interest wanting to record my [REDACTED] recreation).

I'd just use an Asteroid - Duna ribbon and add an ABD to it. You'd need to use a graphic editor, but if you can recreate the [REDACTED] I'm sure you can handle that. The problem with doing ribbons for all the asteroid / moon combinations is that A: the colour bars start getting very small and B: that's a lot more options to dump on Ezriilc.

Now, regarding other requests:

The problem with an asteroid craft device is that, well, it looks like a potato. I made one while trying to figure out what to do about asteroids.

Potato.

Very potato.

Boat. Huh. That's a good point. People have created boats. I'll get to sketching.

Sorry I've been a bit absent recently, between work, two year old and wife expecting second child things have been super busy. I haven't even really had a chance to use my fancy control panel beyond testing that it works.

[Ezriilc]

People have created boats. I'll get to sketching.

Well..., YEA! I'm very passionate about boats in KSP, and I've built some beautiful craft.

Sorry I've been a bit absent recently, between work, two year old and wife expecting second child things have been super busy. I haven't even really had a chance to use my fancy control panel beyond testing that it works.

No apologies necessary, for your return has been triumphant!

Enjoy those early years - little ones are big fun, and they're never that cute again. Besides, they need you more than we do.

[Ezriilc]

Bug Report! (ish)

If you somehow set your orbits or landings to a number greater than the cap, the drop-down menu will display 0, but the badge preview will display that number of spikes.

Sorry, I dunno why I missed this post.

Are you talking about editing the HTML or JavaScript prior to submitting the form? I'll admit that I've not put much consideration into flattening the inputs other than for security.

[Ezriilc]

Yay! I finally got my Grand Tour Shield using Kolsys 8, my favorite ship ever. What a ride.

[Ezriilc]

Whew! I've been working on the new site for some time and now it's ready!

It should be much faster and more reliable, and registered users are now recognized across the entire site (not just the Ribbon Generator), opening the door for lots of cool features. As always, please try it out and report any trouble - thanks!

I'm afraid all your old ribbon sets have been stuffed into Bill Kerman's old gym bag, and there's no way I'm going back in there. Actually, there was no good way to transfer them to the new one - sorry.

However, the new generator seems to be working well in its new permanent home, so fingers crossed!

[VITAS]

Is direct hosting and the resultin load more of a bandwidth or cpu problem. because i might be able to help out

[Ezriilc]

VITAS said:

Is direct hosting and the resultin load more of a bandwidth or cpu problem. because i might be able to help out

I'm always open to ideas. Tell me your thoughts.

To be clear, I've not been told that I'm using too much of anything by my host (yet), and I am on an "unlimited" (not really) hosting plan. I think that most if not all of my issues (site randomly down or slow) are because I'm on a shared server rather than a dedicated one. It's a good system as shared ones go, but there are drawbacks to them that can't be avoided without jumping up to something like a VPS, which is a bit more expensive and complicated to run.

Now that I've rebuilt the site and the generator, I have more control over the image output and access. I'd like to figure out a way to at least track who/what is downloading the ribbon sets, and maybe even control it in some way, like access keys or fancy scripting, or... I dunno.

Once I figure a way to track them, then I want to eventually allow direct linking - at least until my host complains or it begins to fail or something. The only problem there being that once folks get used to direct linking, it would be a huge pain to have that fail or end.

In a related story, as traffic increases, so does the potential to exploit that, like with ads or donations. I'll need more feedback on this before doing either.

Edited October 25, 2018 by Ezriilc

[vosechu]

Any chance you'll add the flag generator functionality back in? I don't use the ribbons much, but those flags were simply gorgeous!

Thanks for saving this resource. If you need to get it onto a CDN to save bandwidth let me know; we can figure it out together.

[Ezriilc]

Any chance you'll add the flag generator functionality back in? I don't use the ribbons much, but those flags were simply gorgeous!

Thanks for saving this resource. If you need to get it onto a CDN to save bandwidth let me know; we can figure it out together.

Yes! I do plan to recreate the Flag Generator on the new platform. It was a lot of work to get where it is, so I need a break.

You're very welcome, it's been great fun. I'm still thinking on how to serve static images, and I have some ideas, but I want to proceed cautiously, and learn all I can about the options.

I think I'll do a BETA test, hosting static images with direct links from this forum only, and see how that goes. Who knows? Maybe it will go fine.

Which do you want first? Image hosting or a Flag Generator?

[vosechu]

Personally, I would want the flags first, but I suspect that most would prefer image hosting.

Is it possible to use image spriting for these forums? It would require us to be able to put html in signatures, but it would save a ....ton of bandwidth. You could put the one sprite on imgur or whatever and hotlink to it. But every ribbon would use the same sprite so it would only download once. I just don't know whether we have the ability to do html for these signatures. http://css-tricks.com/css-sprites/

If it's not supported by this forum, it might be something that Squad might be willing to enable for us.

Side note: do you have the source files for the flags? I could make my own in the meantime.

[vosechu]

Nm, looks like spriting is probably not an option without Squad's support to build some custom BBCode. But if you had the ribbons cached individually (instead of one big image like on your signature) at least you'd see a lot more cache hits.

I saw a technique a while ago that might apply nicely for this. The system we were working in would receive a request for an image that looked like `/images/60x60/image_name.png`. First it would check in a folder `/images/60x60` for the file, but if it didn't find it, it would pass along to rails to generate the image, then store the image in the folder as well for next time. That was about image sizing, but this has the same idea that something about the image needs to change just a little bit. Does that make sense? And do you think it would work for you?

It doesn't save on bandwidth, but it would certainly help with cpu load and would set things up nicely for migrating the files to a CDN or some type of cache.

[Ezriilc]

Personally, I would want the flags first, but I suspect that most would prefer image hosting.

Is it possible to use image spriting for these forums? It would require us to be able to put html in signatures, but it would save a ....ton of bandwidth. You could put the one sprite on imgur or whatever and hotlink to it. But every ribbon would use the same sprite so it would only download once. I just don't know whether we have the ability to do html for these signatures. http://css-tricks.com/css-sprites/

If it's not supported by this forum, it might be something that Squad might be willing to enable for us.

Side note: do you have the source files for the flags? I could make my own in the meantime.

Interesting idea, but by my calcs, the required image would be... staggering. Besides I'd much prefer to provide individual images.

[Ezriilc]

Nm, looks like spriting is probably not an option without Squad's support to build some custom BBCode. But if you had the ribbons cached individually (instead of one big image like on your signature) at least you'd see a lot more cache hits.

I saw a technique a while ago that might apply nicely for this. The system we were working in would receive a request for an image that looked like `/images/60x60/image_name.png`. First it would check in a folder `/images/60x60` for the file, but if it didn't find it, it would pass along to rails to generate the image, then store the image in the folder as well for next time. That was about image sizing, but this has the same idea that something about the image needs to change just a little bit. Does that make sense? And do you think it would work for you?

It doesn't save on bandwidth, but it would certainly help with cpu load and would set things up nicely for migrating the files to a CDN or some type of cache.

Creating static images from the generation code is a snap, so I suspect that if/when I do start to have issues, it will be with bandwidth rather than CPU.