KerbalX.com - Craft & Mission Sharing

[BudgetHedgehog]

When I do that, would those of you who have uploaded part-maps mind if I email you and ask if you could re-upload your partmaps?

Not at all, go for it

Also, I just remembered - some people might've used TweakableEverything in their crafts. Would it be worth checking for those PartModules as well?

Also, love the fact it now recognises FAR and Tweakscale as used mods. Pretty awesome

[katateochi]

Ok, so... New version of the PartMapper (0.3.0) is released.

The main problem with the previous one was it was identifying some things as parts when they where not. Things like Agency definitions, certain resources from mods and modules where being considered parts. The new PartMapper is more strict about what is considered a part.

It also allows you to set some mods to be ignored (ie your own customized mods, or things you are developing); you can now put an ignore_mods.txt file next to the PartMapper and list the mod dirs (from the root of GameData) that you want to ignore. There is an example ignore_mods.txt in the zip with the PartMapper.

Because the previous version had uploaded things that are not parts I've done a fairly major reset of the knowledge base (something I hope I'll never need to do again!).

Basically all parts that where not associated with a craft have been removed and any mods that where then without parts have been removed too. So craft that have already been uploaded are unaffected, but it does mean that the knowledge base is a bit more ignorant now. But once as few new part maps have been uploaded it will be back up to speed.

If you'd uploaded a part-map before, it would be really helpful if you could upload it again using the new part-mapper.

The server will reject uploads from the previous PartMapper and will return a "426" error code (just incase you're seeing that).

[katateochi]

I've just posted a demo vid about the site;

[ShadowFoust]

hey i seen this thread about a week ago and the you could upload a craft then have mods removed from said craft and re download it how do i do that now

[katateochi]

hey i seen this thread about a week ago and the you could upload a craft then have mods removed from said craft and re download it how do i do that now

I'm not sure what you mean by having the mods removed? That was never a feature (or even a bug!), the craft files are only read from, it doesn't make any changes to them. Removing any part (unless its an isolated radial part) is a difficult thing to do without totally messing up the craft, not something I plan to add.

[Wanderfound]

BTW: are you aware that although you can browse the site with an iOS device, you can't upload craft from one? The upload option takes you to the Photos app, and it isn't possible to place a craft file in there.

Is it possible to give it an iOS Safari compatible "download from URL" option? That would allow Dropbox, Google Docs, etc.

[katateochi]

BTW: are you aware that although you can browse the site with an iOS device, you can't upload craft from one? The upload option takes you to the Photos app, and it isn't possible to place a craft file in there.

Is it possible to give it an iOS Safari compatible "download from URL" option? That would allow Dropbox, Google Docs, etc.

I'd not thought about people wanting to upload from an iOS device. I shall look into that. I'm not experienced with making stuff for iOS so bear with me on this.

Wow, nice website. I uploaded a test run I had on Dropbox, it was stock but made for NEAR. It detected FAR but I suppose that is fine. I'm impressed.

Thanks man!

I've not added specific NEAR support in yet, just FAR. Actually, would it be possible for you to send me that craft so I can use it to do some tests? Though I'm a bit worried as it detected it as FAR that if they use the same MODULE name I won't be able to distinguish between them. Hopefully there will be some difference I can look for.

Edited October 6, 2014 by katateochi

[goldenpeach]

Just a quick question: can I use this to detect mods on my crafts without the intent to upload them?

The 0.25 is coming fast so I want to start removing modded parts from my crafts so I can use them before the mods get updated.

[Wanderfound]

From a "will this craft work?" POV, FAR and NEAR are almost identical. Pretty much anything designed in FAR should fly in NEAR and vice-versa. I wouldn't worry too much about picking the difference.

[katateochi]

hmmm, so some people have posted craft that don't have pics and aside from anything else its not pretty!! Wondering about a solution to this. Any ideas?

I'm thinking that I may restrict craft that don't have pictures from appearing on the front page. You could still post a link to a craft that doesn't have a pic so peps can download it, it just won't appear on the main search.

Also wondering about limiting uploads, so that you can't upload another craft until you've put pics on the previous one. Is that too harsh/controlling?

[katateochi]

Just a quick question: can I use this to detect mods on my crafts without the intent to upload them?

The 0.25 is coming fast so I want to start removing modded parts from my crafts so I can use them before the mods get updated.

I'd rather you didn't (ab)use the site like that, although there is nothing to stop you doing that, yet. Account verification will be added soon and then there will be some restrictions and if people do this a lot I will lock it down.

You can use Jebretary to do what you want to do (it basically has the same part detection logic, but it runs on your local machine and has access to your parts so it will always detect all the parts). It will scan all your craft in one go so you don't have to upload each one. You can also just modify the craft and it will straight away show the part list in your browser, so really its a better tool for that job.

From a "will this craft work?" POV, FAR and NEAR are almost identical. Pretty much anything designed in FAR should fly in NEAR and vice-versa. I wouldn't worry too much about picking the difference.

Thanks good to know. I will still try to distinguish between them, but I'm working on getting comments, votes and a few other bits added currently.

[tetryds]

hmmm, so some people have posted craft that don't have pics and aside from anything else its not pretty!! Wondering about a solution to this. Any ideas?

I'm thinking that I may restrict craft that don't have pictures from appearing on the front page. You could still post a link to a craft that doesn't have a pic so peps can download it, it just won't appear on the main search.

Also wondering about limiting uploads, so that you can't upload another craft until you've put pics on the previous one. Is that too harsh/controlling?

I agree that they shouldn't show on the main search at all, and be on a "private" state where only people with the link can access it.

And also allow users to set their craft that way, for whatever reason they would want.

But I don't think that uploads should be blocked because of the lack of pictures, people can use KerbalX as a cloud storage for their personal crafts.

[katateochi]

I agree that they shouldn't show on the main search at all, and be on a "private" state where only people with the link can access it.

And also allow users to set their craft that way, for whatever reason they would want.

But I don't think that uploads should be blocked because of the lack of pictures, people can use KerbalX as a cloud storage for their personal crafts.

Yeah I am going to do that (hide picture-less craft from the main search). Re the private craft thou, I'm going to be like github (only a bit friendlier). Githubs philosophy is if you put something up in the public domain you can do so for free, if you want it private you have to pay. They make you pay for even a single private repo (long ago you got 2 private repos for free, not anymore thou).

So I'm going to allow 5 private craft per user and that will include the craft that lack pictures. Then later there will be a subscription service that will unlock more private storage space. Ultimately space is the main resource I have to pay for, so if people feel they can just chuck up their entire space program and use it as a free backup then it will start costing me more and also not benefiting anyone else. It won't be much but it will enable me to afford more space and to scale the heroku platform and get more power for the site.

[TranceaddicT]

Yeah I am going to do that (hide picture-less craft from the main search). Re the private craft thou, I'm going to be like github (only a bit friendlier). Githubs philosophy is if you put something up in the public domain you can do so for free, if you want it private you have to pay. They make you pay for even a single private repo (long ago you got 2 private repos for free, not anymore thou).

So I'm going to allow 5 private craft per user and that will include the craft that lack pictures. Then later there will be a subscription service that will unlock more private storage space. Ultimately space is the main resource I have to pay for, so if people feel they can just chuck up their entire space program and use it as a free backup then it will start costing me more and also not benefiting anyone else. It won't be much but it will enable me to afford more space and to scale the heroku platform and get more power for the site.

I agree with your concept on the private v. public nature. (GitHub should go back to, at the very least, a single private repository. But, such is the nature of commercial enterprises.) You're putting KerbalX out there as a sharing site; not a personal repository. I believe your balancing of including the "picture-less" uploads as part of a private craft repository is more than an acceptable balance. I can't imagine a craft taking more than 1Mb. (Yet, someone somewhere, I'm sure, will create just such a behemoth to prove me wrong. Though I doubt it's ability to reach orbit.) Heck, the Endeavour from CSS just crosses 300Kb. If someone doesn't have the storage capacity for even a moderately complex craft (on their own system they really need to spend some $$ on some decent storage options. (1Tb drives run less than $50 now-a-days.)

However, I would hold back on the search part. You can automatically flag an upload as a private craft file if it doesn't include a picture. Then restrict that craft from the main page display by simply referencing the flag. This would avoid the gaping holes in presentation which can detract from the aesthetics of the site. But, don't take them out of the search presentation. If I'm looking for a rover, I'd like to find roverS. I might even then be inclined to as the author to upload a picture.

Once an individual reaches your 5 craft limit you could add a notification:

You have reached your personal repository limit.

Any further uploads require a picture of the actual craft created.

(Remember: No pics. No clicks.)

The required picture gets added for uploaded (you probably should include some auto-resizing if you don't already) or the upload fails.

[tetryds]

Yeah I am going to do that (hide picture-less craft from the main search). Re the private craft thou, I'm going to be like github (only a bit friendlier). Githubs philosophy is if you put something up in the public domain you can do so for free, if you want it private you have to pay. They make you pay for even a single private repo (long ago you got 2 private repos for free, not anymore thou).

So I'm going to allow 5 private craft per user and that will include the craft that lack pictures. Then later there will be a subscription service that will unlock more private storage space. Ultimately space is the main resource I have to pay for, so if people feel they can just chuck up their entire space program and use it as a free backup then it will start costing me more and also not benefiting anyone else. It won't be much but it will enable me to afford more space and to scale the heroku platform and get more power for the site.

Yes I agree with both ideas, BUT be careful, don't charge for anything related to KSP unless you have permission directly from SQUAD.

Thus you must talk to Rowsdower before doing anything like this.

Btw, a plugin that allows me to have all my save games on the cloud would be interesting for some people.

Edited October 1, 2014 by tetryds

[Fizban]

Good one

My two bits:

It would be nice if the Mods on the modlist of each craft were clickable(link to forumpost of said Mod)

Also on the site it says Remaming results instead of Remaining (a typo i guess)

Sorry if these were told before i must confess i didnt read the whole thread :/

[katateochi]

*snip

However, I would hold back on the search part. You can automatically flag an upload as a private craft file if it doesn't include a picture. Then restrict that craft from the main page display by simply referencing the flag. This would avoid the gaping holes in presentation which can detract from the aesthetics of the site. But, don't take them out of the search presentation. If I'm looking for a rover, I'd like to find roverS. I might even then be inclined to as the author to upload a picture.

yes I agree, thou it won't be straight forward as the whole thing is driven by the search, including the craft you see when you first hit the site. oh wait, not its ez, if their are no search terms then hide picture-less craft, otherwise include them. that should work.

On the subject of searches, the next time I deploy (prob later today) it will include the ability to put search terms in the url (so you can make links that take you to a particular search result).

So you could make a link like this;

http://kerbalx.com/?search=~kas ~remotetech2

or more correctly;

http://kerbalx.com/?search=~kas%20~remotetech2

the ~ does the same thing as the + in the searches (just + is a reserved char in urls). or you can use %2b (which is + encoded)

http://kerbalx.com/?search=%2bkas%20%2bremotetech2

The idea for that is so that a mod developer can put a link on their mod thread that will take people to find craft that use their mod.

You can go as detailed as you would with the search interface, but I'm prob going to need to write up a manual for that. I've not even really explained the text driven search ability (you can do most things by typing commands preceded by a + into the main search text field) ie type "+mod +sph +rover foo" => find mod rovers from sph with foo in their name or #tags. (for those that prefer to keyboard)

Once an individual reaches your 5 craft limit you could add a notification:

You have reached your personal repository limit.

Any further uploads require a picture of the actual craft created.

(Remember: No pics. No clicks.)

The required picture gets added for uploaded (you probably should include some auto-resizing if you don't already) or the upload fails.

indeed. it will be something like that.

Re pic scaling, if the pic is from imgur then I can dynamically select the different resolutions that imgur provides, and that happens in the main search lists. On craft pages it uses the highest res one available (and yeah, I will also have a option to click on the pic and have the original open in a new tab. I also need to add something like the imgur selecting for pics from other common image hosts. (oh my days, so many details to add!)

oh and imgur album support, that's planned to!

Realistically it doesn't matter. You could just change it to read "FAR or NEAR" instead of just FAR and it would be fine. If it flies in one, it will fly in the other, we don't need to know specifically which one.

The craft is here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9097777/Falcon%20R2.craft

It's a simple Rescue Contract SSTO (has a cockpit & probe).

I deleted it from your site because I want to add a few improvements (better action groups, some nice flavor text, etc) but I will be re-uploading along with my whole catalog (see imgur in sig) after 0.25 comes out and I rebuild them.

Nice 1 thanks that will help.

(err should perhaps mention, that some of craft from you guys have be incorporated into the test suite (I do Test Driven Development). Hope no-one minds that!

Yes I agree with both ideas, BUT be careful, don't charge for anything related to KSP unless you have permission directly from SQUAD.

Thus you must talk to Rowsdower before doing anything like this.

Btw, a plugin that allows me to have all my save games on the cloud would be interesting for some people.

Roger that!

Yeah save and scenario hosting would be a cool thing to have at some point. I think that'll go in the "could have" pile for the moment till I get the main crafty stuff locked down.

If you charge people to download the craft, that would be charging for KSP and would break TOS, but that is not the case. katateochi would be charging people for storage on his server to put crafts. That is completely legit, your not paying for Squad's property, your paying to put Squad's property online which in the case of craft files is permitted. It would be no different than if I paid GoDaddy to host my craft files, and I can't blame someone for wanting to recoup the cost of the service, especially since "private" crafts defeats the intent of craft sharing.

Yeah I certainly won't have charges for downloading anything. Currently you don't even have to be logged in just to download and I don't plan to change that.

Good one

My two bits:

It would be nice if the Mods on the modlist of each craft were clickable(link to forumpost of said Mod)

Also on the site it says Remaming results instead of Remaining (a typo i guess)

Sorry if these were told before i must confess i didnt read the whole thread :/

The plan for mods is that you guys will be able to add links to them and the best links will get voted up.

Last night I found that RockyTV has written a Ruby gem to interface with KerbalStuff and as KerbalX is written in Ruby that's taken care of me needing to write a Ruby interface for it. With that I should be able to have the site search KerbalStuff and automatically find mods and set the link. May not be perfect as some of the names differ a bit from how they are in GameData but with some trickery I think it will work at least for most of the KerbalStuff mods. Everything else can have links set by users.

ah "Remaming" lol. well spotted, I'd not noticed that. I'm slightly dyslexic so I'm sure that won't be the last typo in there!

....

Right that's fixed. deploying.....

(that includes that url search feature and some other little fixes)

[katateochi]

Sorry its been a bit quiet from me this week, work keep getting in the way!

I've just deployed 0.4.0 which includes a comment system with up and down votes for comments.

You can write comments of 10-500 chars long and they support (some) BBcode and github markup. You can also edit comments once you've posted them and you can deleted them too.

(I've got a better BBcode parser in the pipes so more BBcode style will be supported soon).

re deleting; if there aren't any replies to your comment then it will be destroyed (as in completely removed from the database). If there are replies it will just be marked as deleted but will still be present, but no one will be able to read it or see who posted it.If later the replies have been destroyed then you can destroy the comment permanently.

The comments don't support KerbDown and they also don't support images and video posting. I've allowed links for now, but if people start putting spamy things in them I'll disable links.

You can also report comments that are inappropriate. currently I'll deal with any reported comments.

The vote system is being trailed with the comments and then I will implement it for craft. I'm thinking that for craft in order to down-vote a craft, it will cost you say 3 of your own points. puts a slight restriction on new users down voting and adds a disincentive. Really intending down-voting craft to be for cases where the craft is not the one pictured and things like that, rather than just "I don't like it".

One suggestion I've had is to not have down-votes at all for craft.

What say you?

RE the PartMapper tool. If anyone has had issues with Norton anti virus complaining, that should now be sorted. The nice folk at Symantec have added it to the safe white-list, so it should be fine once your AV definitions update.

If anyone is having issues with other AV programs do let me know so I can talk to those companies too.

Also what do you think of this (pic in sig) as a potential logo? (ignore the next on the right, that's just for my sig (and is lame))

[Mitchz95]

How have I not heard pf this until now? This is amazing!

[katateochi]

well 0.25.0 coming out has rather slowed development on this!! But I've got some new features added now.

Craft can now be upvoted and downvoted, although it will cost you a whopping 5 of your own points to downvote. You can gain points by your craft and comments being upvoted, but you don't get any points for just posting a comment (although it shows as 1 point on the comment). (basically your points has the number of comments you've made subtracted from it).

You can also gain points by uploaded part-maps to the knowledge base. 2 points per mod added and between 1 and 5 points for parts added (depending on how many). You also get 1 point for uploading a part-map, even if it doesn't add any parts.

So you stand to gain more points from contributing to the knowledge base. Points will be hard to gain and will eventually open up more options to the user. Currently you just need to have 5 points to downvote a craft, but I plan to have more point related functionality ie earning "editor" status after reaching x points and then being able to do some basic moderation things like fix peoples typos etc.

There is also a notification system in place now so you will get in site alerts when things happen, ie; replies to comments, new comments on your craft and also alerts for upvotes/downvotes, downloads of your craft. You can set what you get notified about in your settings page. (there are options for email notifications but that's not hooked up yet, when it is default will be no emails).

I got fed up with not remembering to update the current and planed development page, so I've just opened up my PivotalTracker project for this to public view. Never done that before! It's read only but you can see what I'm currently working on and what's in the immediate pipe line, anyway, just if you're interested - https://www.pivotaltracker.com/s/projects/1179006

[katateochi]

I had an issue with it detecting mods I didn't use but had installed, specifically TweakScale. I uploaded a plane that did not use any scaled parts but it said it required TweakScale just because I had it installed. I don't feel that should be the case any more than having it say I needed B9 because I had that installed too.

That is really high on my list of things to fix. I should be able to do the same thing I do with kerbpaint and check if its actually applied.

Currently the site is also detecting stock craft as using space plane plus. This is because it has not yet learned about the change in 0.25.0 and it needs more people to upload part maps that show the new configuration. It needs about 7 people to upload a partmap and then it will realise that those parts are now stock.

[BudgetHedgehog]

Well, seeing as TweakScale automatically applies itself to everything, whether you use it or not is hard to read from a craft file. IIRC, kat was looking to see if it's possible to check against what it SHOULD be (maybe with the rescaleFactor? I don't know how TweakScale embiggens things), but I don't know if there was any progress on that. Same issue with TweakableEverything - it'll detect it and the problem comes when comparing if it's been used or not, rather that just being present.

[Vanamonde]

I was telling Katateochi that when I first go to the site, the craft pictures are replaced by blue, green, or brown fields, and then the pictures display if I reload the page. Is anyone else seeing that? It might just be a Chrome thing, since I've been getting errors from other sites lately as well, though this picture problem is something I've only seen on KerbalX.

[katateochi]

Well, seeing as TweakScale automatically applies itself to everything, whether you use it or not is hard to read from a craft file. IIRC, kat was looking to see if it's possible to check against what it SHOULD be (maybe with the rescaleFactor? I don't know how TweakScale embiggens things), but I don't know if there was any progress on that. Same issue with TweakableEverything - it'll detect it and the problem comes when comparing if it's been used or not, rather that just being present.

I think with TS it will actually be pretty easy. On the Modules it has values for tweakscale, currentscale, and defaultscale. So I just need to check if defaultscale is different to which ever one is the one that changes when scaled (I'm guessing currentscale).

I was telling Katateochi that when I first go to the site, the craft pictures are replaced by blue, green, or brown fields, and then the pictures display if I reload the page. Is anyone else seeing that? It might just be a Chrome thing, since I've been getting errors from other sites lately as well, though this picture problem is something I've only seen on KerbalX.

I think there is something odd in the way I load the images, I see a issue to do with images not being correctly scaled when the page first loads, then on reload (or running a search) they get fixed.

I think that maybe you've also got a specific browser issue going on and perhaps it's particularly effected by the images on KerbalX. Not sure thou, its a weird one!

[katateochi]

I would do it, but I don't like tea.

Not like Tea!?! I'm afraid I'm going to have to delete your account now......

Just kidding, I'll do it when I get home.

oh good, I thought we where going to have a problem there.

That would be grand. That will also help test if you get points for doing that. You should get some points for your upload (you can see a total on your profile page, I'll add a breakdown of points later).