Unistrut

Yay! Ezriilc has saved us! So yes, go to his site, download the raw image and proceed from there. I have been working on something ribbon related...

Give me a moment to fix the broken link and you'll be able to make your own with the original GIMP file I used to make the Kerbin system ribbons. There's a color layer that's separate from the texture and bevel on the edges, so you just need to pick the two main colors of your planet and bucket fill that layer. If it's a satellite of a planet then you fill the end with the planet colors and then repeat the process with the satellite's major colors.

The only reason ADs were restricted in the original version of the ribbons was that those were the only planets with anomalies. It was even stretching a little to include the Mohole as it wasn't an "extra" object like the other anomalies, but a quirk of planet geometry. However, it was strange and people made a point of visiting it, so I figured why not include it.

I'm awake, I'm awake! There's a monolith on Gilly? Yes, that would be an anomaly. I've been out of the loop for a while (two small children will do that to you) so yes, if there are anomalous objects you should be able to get the dot for it. I'd say the sparkling asteroids dot should go on the asteroid ribbon, but that's just my gut reaction before I've finished my first cup of coffee. As for the Challenge Wreath the reason it's limited is that landing and leaving from Tylo and leaving Eve are just miles away in difficulty from anything else. Circumnavigating a planet without oceans just requires patience. Even SSTOs are actually kind of easy in comparison, but everyone seems so happy when they manage it and it is a unique engineering challenge.

Got bored. Started embroidering. Made a mission patch. I really need to work on my lettering and perspective. Pencil Sketch (where I forgot the ship's name ... sorry CoF). I'm not sure why I mirror-imaged it. I may have been working without the sketch when I did the GIMP mockup. GIMP Mockup

I've updated the first post to point to the new web page! Still haven't finished the boat icon. The second child is harder than the first. You've got all that experience dealing with babies ... but you also still have to keep track of child #1 which more than makes up for it.

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.

That's what it's for. To remember. My band on Laythe is to remind me of a spaceplane pilot I lost while I wan't paying attention.

1 - Yeah, most folks should have one for Kerbol. They just don't think about it since it wasn't the goal of the mission and I'm not going to waste my heartbeats wandering around shaking my fist at them. 2 - The return chevron is just a general "Hey, I managed to get here and get back!" Not necessarily linked to the craft you got back. Yes, it can be a little vague. For the really spectacular returns (Eve and Tylo) there are challenge wreaths.

Sorry, I've been busier than a one legged gentleman in a bottom kicking contest recently (ask Ezriilc about my dropping off the face of the earth for something like two months while he was waiting for an answer)... In general though I'm not too picky about the order of things, so if you've achieved orbit and then landed using only your MMU that's a pretty extreme EVA. I'm not going to quibble that you should have dropped from orbit first. As for the shield I could see making the change to require a second, non-Kerbin planetary SOI. That was the whole point of the original grand tour anyway - visiting multiple planets. As for all the other details ... part of what I refuse to do is get involved in any "well you aren't really playing the game unless you do/do not X" discussions. If someone wants to just do flybys and another person wants to Land On Everything then that's great! Have fun! If you want to refuel a mission go for it! Anyone who says that mid-mission refuelings are "easy mode" hasn't really grasped how much fun it is to meet up with a ship in Joolian orbit and dodge a half dozen moons with a fuel barge. The GTS is designed so that it is possible to get an idea of what you got up to while you were out there, be it landings or orbitings or whatever. EDIT - WRONG BRACKETS

So ever since seeing my first custom control setup I wanted to try building one. However, instead of using an Arduino (mine's currently busy being a Morse code trainer) I figured I'd use a USB keyboard encoder like my friends and I used when building a MAME cabinet. It seemed easier. Now of course, I work in theater, so I can't just throw some switches in a box and call it a day. It has to look nice, and possibly period. I had a bunch of push buttons from some random piece of surplus hardware (a SWITCH ASSEMBLY SA-569/APA 90 if anyone cares, they make a really nice chunk-unk when pushed) and bought a bunch of toggle switches and two sticks from Happ controls. I also wanted a throttle. I use an old Saitek Cyborg Evo when I'm playing KSP, mostly for the throttle, and I wanted a nice analog throttle for the control panel. Little did I know just how much f@#$ing harder it was going to make my life. THE PANEL - The initial control layout was done in a piece of scrap cardboard. Easier to change marks on an old keyboard box than move holes drilled in sheet metal. Once I was satisfied I started marking up a piece of scrap aluminum sheet from work. After drilling the holes I gave it a nice layer of Hammer Coat. I bent the sheet using a table edge and some bits of wood clamped to the sheet to keep a nice sharp corner. The next challenge was the ROTATE control. I wanted three axis and only had two. We had used "spinner" joysticks on the MAME cabinet, so I cut and bent another piece of aluminum (this one from an old 1/4" tape reel) and built a bracket to hold two microswitches that were engaged by a lever attached to the joystick. So you can push left/right or up/down and also twist CW/CCW. The twist action is a little stiff though, I should have done some more work sanding that down and smoothing it out before permanently gluing bits of it together. I don't think things through sometimes. About this time I (thought) I'd figured out my throttle issue. I had an ancient wheel and pedal combo (it still used a Gameport connector) and I figured I could scavenge one of the pedals for my throttle. I trimmed out the metal around it, drilled some holes for mounting and made a handle from some bits of dowel, red paint and more hammer coat. It's mounted with long bolts going through copper tube as spacers. THE CASE - I wanted a nice retro look for the case. Most of the wood is scavenged stage flooring, but I wanted the wood grain look, like an old Atari 2600. The TD knew where there was some actual vintage "wood" paneling stuffed in one of the stock rooms and let me make off with it. It looks amazing but the California heat tends to make it peel off. I really need to add some tacks to the edges to keep it from curling as much. I decorated the case with the name plate from the switch box the buttons came from and a North American Aviation property tag I found on a desk that was being thrown out. Sitting on the desk ready to start soldering. Now, I wanted to get the same keyboard encoder we'd used on the MAME cabinet, but it seemed to be out of stock, so I wound up getting an Ultimarc A-Pac instead. This would prove to not be the best choice I made in this project. Don't get me wrong, the A-Pac worked great as an interface for my old Atari joysticks when I was playing around with Stella (Atari emulator) and will probably be useful when I start trying to program the Morse code receiving trainer, but it was not the best choice for this control panel. First off, KSP, probably thanks to Unity, has really wonky joystick support (seriously Unity dudes, you're making a GAME ENGINE, solid joystick support should be higher on your priority list. You will get yelled at again for this later). The A-Pac appears to the PC as two USB joysticks, and KSP was not able to tell them apart. So pressing "Button 1" on the first joystick would also register as a hit on "Button 1" on the second joystick. This did not work, although it produced a rather spectacular surprise launch. "Turn Left" was J1B1 and J2B1 was ... well, "Stage". "Okay, let's test the roll, pitch and yaaaaaaaaaaWWWWW" <FWOOOOSH>. The next problem was the throttle. This one is all Unity. Now, once again, you Unity guys are making a Game Engine. You are charging people money to use it. It should have working JOYSTICKS. The throttle was completely unusable due to Unity's lovely habit of ignoring Windows joystick calibrations. Now, after this little issue I looked a lot harder for the equivalent of what we'd used for MAME. It just appeared to the computer as a keyboard. If I did my programming right I wouldn't even have to change any key bindings in KSP. I finally found it, or at least the newest revision. PoKeys 56U It actually came really quickly considering it was being shipped from Slovenia. After pulling the A-Pac I installed the 56U. Out with the old. In with the new. Look at that "wood" grain. Now, with the PoKeys I didn't have any of the button problems I had with the A-Pac but the throttle was still wonky, once again entirely due to Unity. Luckily, PoKeys has a function where you can take an analog input and have it register as keypresses depending on where the analog input is located - so the throttle currently triggers the "throttle up" key when pushed forward and the "throttle down" key when pulled back. You can also have it press the key faster the farther towards the edge you get. It's not as responsive as a real analog control, but the closest we can really do right now. Mostly it's just buttons and sticks, but it does have two or three neat tricks - the big covered switches enable the STAGE and ABORT functions, so I can have them large and easily accessible, but also not worry about accidentally firing a stage. The SAS and brakes (BRK) use both a toggle switch and a push button. The brakes just use the toggle for a parking brake, but the SAS switch is set up so that you can lock the SAS on or off, and whichever state it's in, pushing the button briefly switches it to the other state. So you can leave it on for docking, but turn it off briefly for a turn, or leave it off to save resources and briefly trigger it when you just want the ship to stop spinning for a second. The white bit in the middle of the top section is actually an acrylic window where you can put an index card reminding you what those action groups do. In this case, the VINNABY ship has solar panels, claw and engine cutoff. Future Plans: The stage and abort enable switches have LEDs in them. They don't currently light up. There are also status lights by the stage and abort buttons. They do not currently light up. I'm working on getting both of those working, but have spend the last few days fighting with the throttle control.

You know that thing where you hit super speed and realize that you forgot to deploy your solar panels just as you run out of charge? I did that so many times I stopped relaunching the mission and started editing the persistence file to give myself enough charge to extend the panels. Now I put one of those little single panels just in case.

I want to see someone make a terrible, terrible plane out of one.

New Version! Currently on Mediafire as I have not yet figured out how to upload things to Curse. I might get around to it, I might not. I decided to go with a ribbon for asteroids, with side decorations indicating what planet said asteroid is in orbit around as trying to make an asteroid device just wound up looking like you had a potato stuck to your ribbon. So you get your asteroid ribbon for getting with 2.2km of an asteroid. You get an orbit dot for hauling the asteroid into orbit around something. You get the various other left hand devices for achieving things with your pet asteroid. My eternal awe to whichever of you FINE PEOPLE first manages to get flight wings on their asteroid ribbon. As always, pick one asteroid mission - your FAVORITE or most AWESOME - and use one ribbon. Unless you want to make a bar of nothing but "places I have dragged asteroids to", which would be mildly entertaining. This pack also includes a single bar for those doing mod work. The original orbit bars are shaded to go under the orbit dot and look terrible without it.

Two potential problems - first off, the Kerbin asteroid ribbon would basically be identical to the Mun ribbon (only so many shades of grey out there) and the second is that you might wind up with dozens of the AEROGELs cluttering up your bar. I guess we could do a striped sidebar and suggest only using one asteroid ribbon using the standard "your FAVORITE or the most AWESOME taking precedence". In your case, you'd use Ike, since recreating the [REDACTED] is very awesome.