Deadweasel

Very much this. While your decision to protest is absolutely yours to make, there's no difference from Squad's perspective if you simply choose your own host instead. You're not providing Squad with content; you're enriching the player experience. Now, perhaps it's your point of view that even doing that is further supporting the game -and by proxy Squad itself- and that's what you're really trying to stop. If that's the case, again, it's absolutely your own prerogative and right, but you should know that most players won't understand that. They know mods come from fellow players, and all they'll really take away from the event is that one of their favorite mods has fallen away. In the end, they'll adapt to playing without it, and Squad will continue on as they will, because hey, let's face it: unless the majority of modders follow your lead, nothing about their vision will be changed. You'll have honored the demand of your conscience, but unfortunately the method you're choosing is only going to deprive your fans of sharing in the beautiful results of your work. I get your frustration at seeing Spaceport go away, but from a technical standpoint there's no way to translate it to another system, and it cannot stay live. Seriously, it's running on Wordpress, and really close to vanilla install, at that. It's not using ANY of the necessary security practices or plugins, and is standing wide-open to anybody with the experience and motivation. At least one of the plugins it uses to modify post organization and display is vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To top it off, there's a massive botnet currently attacking Wordpress sites, stepping into the admin mode within minutes of focusing on a host. In Spaceport's case, it'd probably take that botnet about two minutes to hammer out the admin password. Why? Because one of the security practices is to remove the "admin" named account, and Spaceport hasn't done it! There's another plugin to blacklist IPs committing brute-force attacks on the login, and Spaceport doesn't have it. These are only two of many big security holes existing on the site. Usability, stability and actual overall content quality are barely worth mentioning in light of them. Bottom line: if I didn't care about the community and the game, I could almost literally walk into that admin panel, install a database viewer plugin, and copy the whole shebang down to my system. From there it'll take my local network only a few days to start breaking password hashes. From there, I'm only a few cups of coffee away from walking onto peoples' email accounts, because you know darned well they use the same username and password for them, too. I get that you don't want to see the whole thing just vaporize into obscurity and lose all the useful parts of the content, and efforts are underway to preserve it for preservation's sake, but we can't expect Squad to shoulder the costs of continuing to host it. From a business standpoint, there's no use in maintaining it and spreading out points of access. Given the vulnerable state of the site, there's also some risk involved in continuing to keep it public, in that there could easily be malicious links posted there. It's not moderated, so who's been there to see if that's true or not? Also, thanks to Wordpress' horrid database structure, it can't simply be converted for use with another file host (unless they too are using Wordpress, in which case what's the point of changing at all?) and no respectable host running their own dedicated software would be willing to assume the work, responsibility and risk of converting a Wordpress database to conform to their own system's structure. So again, I'm joining among the voices imploring you to just choose your own host instead. You'll still be satisfying your choice to protest Squad's decision, while at the same time keeping your efforts firmly ensconced in our game through every update, and protecting your fans from the pains of bad security practices and/or seemingly-blind marketing decisions.

Meh. RCS was just for the inertial kick. They were totally using capsule torque baby!

Absolutely! I'm excited to see what becomes of the B9 pack (I can't believe he'd just dump and vanish after all the effort he's put into that), but what you're doing just doubles the awesome!

The results of which make you, I believe, a KSP god among men. Bless you for taking on the task of expanding on those efficiency aspects that B9 started but (so far) hasn't progressed with otherwise. So I'm just going to sit here, bouncing with mild impatience in my chair while you do your thing.

To be perfectly candid, if it's true, it is dangerous, because it demonstrates a disconnection from reality.

Hmmm... Apologies, it just looks to me like the B9 surface is moving, but the flap at the rear is the component that's sitting there static. That's what led to my interpretation. I'm not in front of the machine at the moment, but I'll try to see what it does for me tonight. Maybe I can offer something in the way of help (if you haven't already figured it out by then). EDIT: D'oh! How did I miss that he was actually trying to develop honest-to-Jeb flaps, not just control surfaces that... you know, flap? >_< I'm not above taking my own advice and doing a little remedial reading, which I shall now continue over my lunch of piping hot crow.

*ahem* The very post before yours.

That "signal to noise" aspect is probably the best way to describe it. Too many little idiots posting pages of nothing useful to anybody. In fact, I discovered one set of five "crafts" whose "preview image" was nothing more than a ripoff from one of those custom blueprint images I'd posted months ago of my ship design! Cheeky little sucker... And I don't care how many people can describe to me how to game the search system; it simply does not work intuitively. At all. In fact, you know your site's search functionality is broken beyond hope when visitors take the time to use Google to search the site instead (much as I already do with these forums). I'm hopeful that the move will result in a cleaner collection, and since there's been no evidence of moderation of any sort on SpacePort, I'm really looking forward to a properly-moderated submissions system. When I go looking for a mod, gorram it I want to be able to find it without navigating dozens of pages of useless "lookit me I'm on the internet" crap.​

I know this feeling very well! What it felt like to know VB6 inside-out: "Behold my godlike powers!" and after .NET was released: "Uhh... What?"

Yeah, that would be nice, but it's not ready for its first release yet, sooo.....

Well, while that's true, it's also more work that the game has to do on loading. The idea is to remove as much work as possible beforehand, so load times are quicker, RAM load is lighter, and performance is faster. Active Texture Management does work, but it's just a bandage, not a final solution. Currently, it does the compression every time you load the game, so it actually freezes for a minute or so while it does that. Now, if all of the textures were already compressed, (and if the game were prepared to work with them natively), that wait would be completely removed. Also, .dds and .dxt aren't "odd" formats. Those are the compressed and graphics card-native formats I've been talking about all along, and there are tools out there to let designers pre-compile their textures. As already mentioned, nVidia offers a free Photoshop plugin that allows it to read/write the .dds format.

I'm fairly sure that's a certainty. I got in on the game well before the modding scene really got going, and was even playing for months before I even considered checking any mods out. During that time I was easily as active in these forums as now.

Well, to be fair, and from what I'm seeing with this little project, there's no way on Jeb's green head that Squad could realistically convert the content over to another host. Also, the way Spaceport is now, you really don't want it to keep running. Seriously, it's Wordpress, and it's not up to date. There are a few critical security practices they are not following for WP, and they're running a version that is well-known to be vulnerable to wide ranging (and still ongoing) brute force attacks. To fix the issues, Squad would need to put a lot of time and effort into hardening the whole system, not to mention change platforms entirely to get away from the server crashes. From a business standpoint, it's just not worth trying to keep it going. I actually appreciate the fact that Squad is making big noise about the change, because it gives modders the time and opportunity to do what they feel is necessary to protect their projects. So essentially, either we acknowledge Squad is trying to correct a mistake that has been allowed to run for too long, and take it upon ourselves to save and move the content we want to keep, or some script kiddie/bot is going to eventually remove the option altogether anyway. If nothing else, I'm hoping my efforts currently underway will be of use to somebody. Of course I can't expect to have access to the core database, so it's all static, but it does include the downloadable archives so far. Heh, at least this will help correct the madness that came from all the mouth-breathers submitting a stock capsule sitting on a wing as a "mod" or "part".

LOL wow.. the coincidental timing is incredible... So I'm working on trying to find a way to backup Spaceport. I'm idly rummaging through the various things coming down, and one of them is YOUR entry for your Zoid. I *just* finished watching the video for that (amazing work btw!), and then come back to see you've posted. It's like you knew.... *checks room for hidden cameras*

Heh, I'm currently endeavoring to download every Spaceport mod... full stop. >_>

Except the question was regarding why KSP seems to be so wasteful with the resources, not how it can be circumvented and ignored by accessing more RAM. You're right: the whole 64-bit question has been beaten to death by now, but the OP asked about why everything needs to load into memory from the get-go, as well as why the resources are so heavy when they do. 64-bit is not a cure-all, and it certainly doesn't address other issues that come with a game as complex as KSP has become, using uncompressed assets. Personally, I have to wonder what could be done on that front, too. I'd wager that if the game required compressed textures, there'd be very little negative effects seen in actively loading/unloading assets to/from RAM on-the-fly. As it stands, using .png files as-is for textures is never going to be tame-able where RAM consumption is concerned.

I released some alternate skins for AviationLights!

Ha! Thanks a bunch! Also, I have updated the pack to include an all white glass lens variant (for those folks who loves them some realism)!

So it's now finally up and available for the world to see. BigNose, it's at http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79341-023-x-DeadSkins-v1-1-for-AviationLights?p=1147807#post1147807 Thanks a bunch, and I'm always open to more ideas for these things! Love 'em!

[TABLE=width: 800] [TR] [TD] presents: DeadSkins v1.3 for AviationLights These are high-res (512x512) skins that are double the resolution of the stock AviationLights. These are skins only; if you don't have the AviationLights mod yet, what area you waiting for? Get it now! (New skins also include super handy, ultra-futuristic system for quickly finding the light you want from your undoubtedly massive collection of parts!) *************** UPDATE *************** That's right, I've just added another set to the collection! Thanks to Bill, these all have the same white glass lens on the front. The only way to tell them apart is by the color coding sticker on the back, and of course when you actually turn them on. *************** UPDATE v1.3 *************** Now takes advantage of Firespitter and ModuleManager to provide texture switching capability in the VAB/SPH! Firespitter and ModuleManager required Players not using FS or MM please continue to use v1.2; there is no difference in actual skin content between the versions DOWNLOADS DeadSkins v1.3 for AviationLights (10.1MB, via Google Drive) DeadSkins v1.2 for AviationLights (8.1MB, via Google Drive) AviationLights INSTALLATION Merge the GameData folder in the archive with your existing installation. This will add a "DeadSkins" directory to your AviationLights folder. v1.3 users stop here, that's all you need to do! Inside, you will find folders for each skin variant. Select all of the images in the variant you want to use, and overwrite the stock images in the directory %KSP_ROOT%/GameData/AviationLights/Parts/lights/ (don't worry, the original skins were included with the DeadSkins download too!) Load/re-load Kerbal Space Program v1.2: AviationLights will load with your chosen texture. v1.3: AviationLights textures can be cycled by right-clicking on part in VAB/SPH CHANGELOG [B]v1.3 - 07/24/2014:[/B] * Added Firespitter texture switching (via ModuleManager) [B] v1.2 - 05/09/2014:[/B] * Added white glass lens variant [B]v1.1 - 05/09/2014:[/B] * Added clear lens LED skin variant * Added super futuristic id stickers for easy selection [B]v1.0 - 05/08/2014:[/B] * Created DeadSkin lights! * Added pyramid skin variant * Added square LED variant <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>.[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE]

LOL Just wait, I'm working on screenshots for what I came up with. VERY kerbal-ish, I must say! EDIT: So kerbal, they might as well all be green!

A colored dot is a great idea for the interim! As for tweakables, I agree it would be pretty cool, but perhaps limited to a singular special light instead. After all, we have tweakable color lights already, and I for one am not prepared to start having to manually set the color for every light I put down. I use them a LOT, and wouldn't like having to play with sliders all day long. Maybe if there were button presets for the standard colors along with the sliders, that could be a decent compromise. Now, off to add those aforementioned dots.

Yeah, I had noticed that one too. It's annoying, and I'm surprised it hasn't been called out before.

Isn't that actually more like the passenger shuttle instead?

So I've been playing with AviationLights for some time now, and there's one aspect about them that has been bothering me: their static previews are all backward, so all you can see of them is the backs of the housings. This is kind of a bugger, since there are seven lights (shut your lying mouth, Picard!) and the most visual difference between them -their colored lenses- are out of view until you mouse over one and wait for it to rotate around. Is there a method in the .cfg file to set their initial rotation, or is that something that has to be done before final export on the dev side?