[1.10.0] Final Frontier - kerbal individual merits 1.10.0-3485

[Nereid]

KSP-AVC support is ready (by choice of the user; without an installed KSP-AVC plugin no checks for updates are done). The mission summary window is movable now (it wont overlap with the stock summary after dragging it and maybe I will add some resolution dependent default locations). Custom ribbons from SmarterThanMe and Wyrmshadow are added. The Stock toolbar can be used and blizzy toolbar is an option. Compiled against KSP 0.25. Some minor bugs fixed.

I will test this build tomorrow and release it then.

[AetherGoddess]

[...] if you know the price for two days development, you will surely agree [...]

For those of you that don't, my company employs a lot of outsourced development work: for GOOD developers in western countries that can do complex development like this, the correct range is "hundreds of (US dollars/Euros/Pounds Sterling) per hour" .

[Nereid]

Final Frontier 0.5.7-92 is online

Changes:

• KSP-AVC support
  
• Version scheme changed (KSP-AVC scheme)
  
• Dragable mission summary
  
• Optional stock toolbar button
  

Download FinalFrontier

[SmarterThanMe]

For those of you that don't, my company employs a lot of outsourced development work: for GOOD developers in western countries that can do complex development like this, the correct range is "hundreds of (US dollars/Euros/Pounds Sterling) per hour" .

Which is why, and I'm sure that we don't say it enough, we're all incredibly grateful, Nereid.

[Nereid]

Which is why, and I'm sure that we don't say it enough, we're all incredibly grateful, Nereid.

Well, thank you. But I only wanted to say, that I have choosen this technical approach for a reason. That's not true for all my approaches in FF. Many of them are just done because someday I was experimenting and there was an outcome like "hey! this works"

All modders invest quite an amount of time for their mods. Especially in the first few weeks, when you are just trying to understand how this all fits together. I don't know how many hours I have spent. 200? 400? more? I really don't know. So, feel free to criticize, but respect a decision from a dev if he takes one.

I'm still trying to integrate custom celestial bodies in FF...

Edited October 13, 2014 by Nereid

[Maars]

Dude, firstly, this mod rocks and Kerbal is almost worthless without it. (just kidding squad!).... sort of

Secondly.... I need help, and not with drugs or alcohol but your awesome mod. This is the 3rd time it's happened... my save crashes and I revert to an old save with an older date but all my kerbanaut data disappears! In other words, all my HALLOFFAME data gets scrubbed for some weird reason - all the backup files are just blank. So, I kept a backup this time round and eventually my 4th game breaking crash came (I don't care - 64 bit for ever!), but this time I was ready and copied the backup HALLOFFAME back in to my current save. Now I have the number of missions registered with my Kerbals but no ribbons/merits displaying, the roster is completely devoid of ribbons. Is there any way I can get my ribbons back manually? I use Kerbal Construction Time and am on my sixth career year with literally hundreds of hours of painstaking, pedantic, passion filled hours put in. My kerbals have personalities by now, I know the lil bastards personally and it's sad to think that they've lost their flavour and life because THERE'S NO MORE RIBBONS SHOWING!

Richwig Kerman is my current & talented test pilot. Bill's dead, so is Bob with Amongst The Stars Ribbons, Jebediah has over 50 missions and your beautiful ribbons need to reflect that! just in case you would be kind enough to lend a helping hand (or eyes) I have my HALLFOFFAME files ready.

Sorry to trouble you with this as I'm sure not the only one with requests but your mod is like the butter on the bread and Kerbal is really a lot more devoid of soul without it. It's actually making me sad! (ridiculous, I know, but that's what I get when i spend more time with Kerbals than with Humans)

[Nereid]

Sorry to hear this Maars.

The strange thing is, that I have never experienced this myself. I had corrupted saves (prior to FF) with non-functioning vessels (below surface, completely wrong position/orientation,...) but that were only a few and KSP still works fine. In my games I have never experiences empty halloffames.ksp yet. But if KSP (or FF) crashes it may corrupt the halloffame.ksp of course.

I will add a switch, that changes the frequency of the backup files. I need an "every save" option for development, but most users would prefer one backup per hour/day. This should solve most issues with lost ribbons because of game crashes.

The good news: You can recreate the old situation in some way. Not in the same it was, but you can manually assign ribbons by editing the halloffame.ksp yourself. The general systax of the file is (per line):

<Timestamp> <Code> <Name of Kerbal>

An example of a line in the halloffame.ksp is:

5272.39445558762 O1:Kerbin Gusrigh Kerman

At 5272.39445558762 (seconds after game start) the kerbal Gusrigh Kerman was awarded with the ribbon First-Kerbin-Orbit (Code O1:Kerbin).

Most codes follow the composition rule <Ribbon-Code>[1]:<Celestial Body>. The "1" marks a first lend ribbon.

Other codes are found in this lines:

4869.26000001361 L+ Gusrigh Kerman

10857.1101807002 M+ Gusrigh Kerman

At 4869.26000001361Gusrigh Kerman was a crew member in a launch that starts a mission and at 10857.1101807002 the vessel he was in was recovered. The M+ that follows an L+ later will increase the mission count and mission time.

You can get a list of all Codes in the configuration window (Button "Browse Ribbon Codes").

I hope this helps.

EDIT: please make sure that the lines are ordered by time!

And please remember: make a backup every few days. Perhaps I will write a plugin some day that will create backups at a given interval, because its a bit cumbersome doing it by hand.

Edited October 15, 2014 by Nereid

[Maars]

you sir, are a gentleman and a scholar, thanks for your tolerance with a noob like me. especially cos I'm going to annoy you just a little bit more and really hope you don't mind.

I know you have a lot of info on the way your mod works already but I'm a code-ignorant (at least compared to the standard KSP player) photographer who couldn't make heads or tails of the 'timestamp' section..... trust me, I tried as i like doing things myself before being forced to ask for hand holding but here's the thing : first HALLOFFAME files were scrubbed mysteriously, so I adapted and copied them as backups on my desktop, ready to slip into my active savegame and rescue those poor, ribbonless kerbals. HOWEVER, now I have a HALLOFFAME file with all the old ribbons registered but no graphical ribbons showing in the roster.

EXAMPLE : Richwig Kerman, 20 missions...... NO RIBBONS SHOWING

and if i do whatever with him, it's treated as if he is doing the action for the first time (first to plant flag on kerbin, dangerous eva etc etc), despite the HALLOFFAME being full of registered ribbons from my whole career game. and on top of this, it's actually adding new ribbon registries despite these Kerbals already having them.

CHECK IT OUT, these are the last few registries copy and pasted :

BEFORE DEATH CRASH

48912596.9577543 B+ Jedner Kerman

48915841.838235 M+ Jedner Kerman

48915841.838235 M+ Richwig Kerman

48915841.838235 M+ Gerley Kerman

48915841.838235 M+ Rouki Kerman

AFTER DEATH CRASH.. still registering yet no flags show up

49034337.2339829 R1:Kerbin Bill Kerman Jnr

49034337.473983 L1:Kerbin Bill Kerman Jnr

49034568.0108779 MT:432000 Bill Kerman Jnr

49034568.0108779 M:5 Bill Kerman Jnr

49237246.1522069 EX+ Richwig Kerman

49237246.1522069 DE Richwig Kerman

49237290.9922143 F1:Kerbin Richwig Kerman

49237300.1322158 MT:1728000 Richwig Kerman

49237300.1322158 M:20 Richwig Kerman

........ you k

[Maars]

btw. come to think of it, i installed Active Texture Management and this all started happening after i removed it (my game actually plays better without it, despite the interstellar loading times). i dont know how this could affect Final Frontier because all the flag files are still there and intact and uncompressed but that's when it started happening, this invisible flag business.

ahh screw it! you know what Nereid, instead of bothering you i'll just start a new career (AGAIN) and carry my precious craft files over...... but before I do i'll stick a screenshot of the FF ROSTER so you can see the invisible magic. just waiting for ksp to load, which it might by tomorrow morning

thanks again for your wonderful mod and for the time and effort you give people,

wish me luck with the 64bit DEATH CRASHES!

[Drew Kerman]

I will add a switch, that changes the frequency of the backup files. I need an "every save" option for development, but most users would prefer one backup per hour/day. This should solve most issues with lost ribbons because of game crashes.

Check the source for Persistent File Backup Generator, which only creates a new SFS file when you load it. Might be able to use the same calls to do a halloffame backup at the same time and be done with it.

[Nereid]

Check the source for Persistent File Backup Generator, which only creates a new SFS file when you load it. Might be able to use the same calls to do a halloffame backup at the same time and be done with it.

Well, I don't like this approach. I have some other in mind that copies the whole savegame folder to another place on disk (or whereever the user wants). But I need a few days (or maybe weeks ).

[Maars]

instead of tweaking this persistent backup mod for FF as you suggest Gaiiden, I've been simply backing up my savegame folder to the desktop every few hours throughout the whole career game. still doesn't make any difference - healthy savegame, healthy config file and seemingly healthy HALLOFFAME, despite still not showing ribbons.

i'd also like to show a screenshot of the whole debacle but.............. crazy, i can work a shoot with a canon 5d and photoshop to produce high end advertising images, yet i don't understand the FAQ in the KSP forum when it comes to links and attachments.. i think i'm autistic, and not the suave, card counting type either

[Nereid]

instead of tweaking this persistent backup mod for FF as you suggest Gaiiden, I've been simply backing up my savegame folder to the desktop every few hours throughout the whole career game. still doesn't make any difference - healthy savegame, healthy config file and seemingly healthy HALLOFFAME, despite still not showing ribbons.

I will send you an email address to send the jpg by a private message. And I didn't forget you, but I was a bit busy implementing the new backup strategy in FF. In the next release one can manually revert the halloffame 9 days back by default.

If time allows I will try to find out what happened to your save and halloffame.ksp. maybe I need the KSP.log, but I don't know yet. Until then: Make a backup of your current game (the whole savegame folder) and keep it safe.

BTW: FF saves the halloffame multiple times, because the save method triggers several times triggered by the OnGameStateSaved event in KSP. So 9 backup files will not make sure that one can revert after 9 saves. And there are quite a few situations which are triggering that event...

[Maars]

ok, files have been sent.

i'm in no hurry so if you ever get around to it then awesome.

my savegame is now in stasis again on the desktop, awaiting resurrection... kind of like jesus...... huh! A kerbal jesus - imagine that!

[Nereid]

i'm in no hurry so if you ever get around to it then awesome.

First I will have to understand what the real problem is.

But's is already late for me. So it could take a day or two.

[Nereid]

ok, files have been sent.

Just a quick check and a short question: Have you renamed the kerbals? FF won't like that, because it identifies Kerbals by their name. I'm asking because I found rather strange entries for "Bill Kerman Jnr" and "Bill Kerman" is missing since that point.

If you have renamed the kerbals, just do the same in the halloffame.ksp and all should be fine.

[Maars]

No, no name changes. I wish it were that simple.

Bill Kerman Jnr was created using the lovely mod Crew Manifest. He's Bills protege son who appeared after Bill underwent spontaneous unplanned dissassembly during a 30G+ Kerbal atmospheric re-entry

[Nereid]

Well, I'm rather clueless. But there are quite a lot EVAs and Mission-Recovers in the halloffame but no corresponding ribbons. So I have an idea what could have happened:

You have installed FF directly in the GameData directory for a while. In the current version FF will not crash, but if won't find its ribbon graphics. All ribbons without graphics are disabled, so they will not awarded. And if FF was installed correctly and moved back to Nereid/FinalFrontier afterwards, all disabled ribbons are removed from any kerbal who owns it. At a later and correct installation, only new ribbons would appear. If this is true, some ribbons could be awarded manually by editing the halloffame.ksp. But most ribbons are lost. If you have any older backups, you can try to recover most ribbons as possible by merging the halloffames.ksp together.

I may be wrong, of course, but the new feature that allows disabling some ribbons may have caused this.

A note for me: I should add a warning dialog if no ribbon graphics are found and I will disable any save operations then, because this is some kind of error in 99,99% of all cases.

A well done backup plugin could really help to avoid this. And the next version of FF will help, too.

Edited October 15, 2014 by Nereid

[Nereid]

Final Frontier 0.5.9-177 is online

Changes:

• configurable backup interval (default one backup per day)
  

Download FinalFrontier

---

download recommended to avoid loss of data

Edited October 15, 2014 by Nereid

[Maars]

Difficult. But I will think about it. They were supposed to work as an award for flying level in a plane and not for reentry. Question is: in what way differs a reentry from a normal level flight?

How about this : a plane flies forward through the atmosphere and the other hurtles backwards. Would it be possible to detect which direction the command part would be facing during?

[Nereid]

How about this : a plane flies forward through the atmosphere and the other hurtles backwards. Would it be possible to detect which direction the command part would be facing during?

The question is then: What is "the other"? There is only one chance: detect an entry by checking atmDensity every second. If it goes from 0.0 to >0 then we have entered atmosphere. FF already checks this, but it's a single point in time when it changes.

EDIT, an idea: We could set some kind of timer (after entering the atmopshere), that goes down for an amount of time. If its not 0:00 and if the vessel has not gained altitude it's an atmosphere entry. Not a simple approach, but doable.

Currently FF uses the ingame events to do most of the checks. And some could only be done by checking the situation in a given interval (some kind of custom events).

All achievements/ribbons have a few check methods, so the events don't know nothing about ribbons and when to award them. The will check every ribbon every time and the ribbon decides. Currently the state of the vessel and the actual halloffame-entry (mission time, EVA time,...) are checked. And all checks are done per vessel/crewmember. Its not that easy to change it for checks that span multiple vessels. Because of this approach FF should use not that much CPU and the classes could kept simple.

Edited October 15, 2014 by Nereid

[PhilTact]

Is adding the ability to change the hard coded alt-f command, or disable it, on the future features list? Configurable keys are cool! I love the ribbons but I rarely feel the need to look at them in flight scene.

[Maars]

Nereid said "Well, I'm rather clueless. But there are quite a lot EVAs and Mission-Recovers in the halloffame but no corresponding ribbons. So I have an idea what could have happened:

You have installed FF directly in the GameData directory for a while. In the current version FF will not crash, but if won't find its ribbon graphics. All ribbons without graphics are disabled, so they will not awarded. And if FF was installed correctly and moved back to Nereid/FinalFrontier afterwards, all disabled ribbons are removed from any kerbal who owns it. At a later and correct installation, only new ribbons would appear. If this is true, some ribbons could be awarded manually by editing the halloffame.ksp. But most ribbons are lost. If you have any older backups, you can try to recover most ribbons as possible by merging the halloffames.ksp together.

I may be wrong, of course, but the new feature that allows disabling some ribbons may have caused this.

A note for me: I should add a warning dialog if no ribbon graphics are found and I will disable any save operations then, because this is some kind of error in 99,99% of all cases."

so what you're saying is that there was a period where mod location was moved from GameData/Nereid to somewhere else and now it's confused or, something like that?might have been after crashing after my removal of active texture management when I proceeded to 'alt tab' into desktop and directly copy the backup HALLOFFAME into it's folder while KSP was still operating. i broke it. Like a little kid i broke it.

it's late here in Warsaw and my eyes are half shut so I'll send you my files tomorrow.

It's a shame I have not 1 skill with which I could contribute to the KSP community or help you out in return. but if you ever need a high-end photograph of your car or other 2wheeled vehicles I'll be happy to help

Edited October 15, 2014 by Maars
better to add quote i was referring to

[Nereid]

Is adding the ability to change the hard coded alt-f command, or disable it, on the future features list? Configurable keys are cool! I love the ribbons but I rarely feel the need to look at them in flight scene.

You can disable alt-f in the config.

[Nereid]

so what you're saying is that there was a period where mod location was moved from GameData/Nereid to somewhere else and now it's confused or, something like that?

This would explain the missing ribbons.

might have been after crashing after my removal of active texture management when I proceeded to 'alt tab' into desktop and directly copy the backup HALLOFFAME into it's folder while KSP was still operating. i broke it. Like a little kid i broke it.

I don't think so. Copying the halloffame.ksp while KSP is still running should not do to much harm. If you didn't change the install path, then there might be a very strange bug in FF. Or KSP couldn't load the ribbon graphics for some reason.

If you have some backups I should be able to recover most but not all ribbons. The latest version of FF will keep backups of the halloffame for the last 9 days (maybe longer if KSP wasn't started daily). This should avoid most ribbon losses.