KerbalX.com - Craft & Mission Sharing

[katateochi]

I'm having some domain-name related issues right now.

But you can still get to the site via https://kerbalx.herokuapp.com/

Should be back to normal shortly.

edit - apparently my domain name provider has just had a very large DDoS attack and fell over. They're working to fix it, all I can do is twiddle my thumbs and wait, shouldn't be long thou, they're usually very quick at resolving issues. You can see their status page here http://dnsimplestatus.com/

Edited December 1, 2014 by katateochi

[John FX]

I've also been thinking about an "auto forum page" feature. That will basically take what you've entered in the craft page and generate the text with BB code formatting that you can just paste into a new thread when posting your craft on the forums. So you'll have the pictures, main text, action groups etc all ready and you won't have to write it out again. Still pondering the details of how it would work, but I think it should be possible.

That sounds AWESOME for craft release threads.

your GameData folder is called "Gamedata" and the code is looking for "GameData". the case of the 'd', that's all it is, grrr, I shall update PartMapper to not care about case! My fault for assuming that capital D was standard, doh!

Meanwhile, could you rename your folder to have the capital D and see if that works?

Ah, that would do it.

I`ll give it a go and report back.

Sorry to hear about your DDOS, hopefully all will be back to normal soon.

EDIT : Capital `D` worked fine. mods found and indexed.

EDIT 2 : Except for `error 500, no such host is known` which I suspect is due to your DDOS attack...

I`ll try again when the site is back up.

EDIT 3: But on the good side, Jebretary now can see my craft, parts and mods.

Edited December 1, 2014 by John FX

[katateochi]

OK DNS servers are back up so the site is accessible again. Sigh, why do people do these attacks, lame.

[katateochi]

That sounds AWESOME for craft release threads.

Ah, that would do it.

I`ll give it a go and report back.

Sorry to hear about your DDOS, hopefully all will be back to normal soon.

EDIT : Capital `D` worked fine. mods found and indexed.

EDIT 2 : Except for `error 500, no such host is known` which I suspect is due to your DDOS attack...

I`ll try again when the site is back up.

EDIT 3: But on the good side, Jebretary now can see my craft, parts and mods.

Ah excellent. so the "D" issue was also what was upsetting Jebretary.

Yeah the attacks on the DNS server would be causing that 500. Seems to have just gone back up in the last 15-20 mins so it should work ok now.

Work has been hell these last few weeks so not got anything like as much done on KX as I wanted. When I get time thou I shall sort that case issue out thou in the PartMapper and then I really MUST spend some time on Jebretary and incorporate the KX PartMapper into it.

Thanks for the feedback, I really couldn't understand what was up with Jebretary, but it makes sense now.

[John FX]

Looking at their status page they say the attacks are ramping up again and I couldn`t connect to KerbalX just now. Hope they get this sorted out.

[katateochi]

Looking at their status page they say the attacks are ramping up again and I couldn`t connect to KerbalX just now. Hope they get this sorted out.

gah, I was asleep so didn't see that happen (I did dream I was getting status alerts! guess that was my phone pinging away next to my ear!).

They're showing All Systems Operational now so I hope they found a more robust solution. I've been really happy with DNSimple so far but that was a pretty major outage, lets hope that doesn't happen again or I might need to look at alternatives.

[John FX]

They did seem to be on the ball and they were giving hourly reports so that is good.

[katateochi]

They did seem to be on the ball and they were giving hourly reports so that is good.

yeah, and it was a very heavy attack from what I've heard, so I'll forgive them!

I deployed a bunch of bug fixes to the site yesterday and some changes to speed some bits up. Unfortunately I've done something and the site seems to be going really slow right now. Not 100% if that's just my code or something to do with my host. I'm looking into it.

[katateochi]

seems like the speed issues have been resolved and I think it was something to do with the host. Here's a graph if anyone's interested, shows the response time in ms for requests, broken down into four main phases Queuing and Middleware (which are mostly host related things), Ruby (the main code base) and Database (which is what I've been trying to optimize).

You can see before that horizontal marker that everything was taking way too long to respond which was quite disheartening as I'd been expecting to see a drop in response time with my latest update. Then suddenly it snaps back to serving requests in under 100ms about an hour after I deployed the update.

And just in time too! Shortly after it sorted itself out the Kerbal boating association descended on the site!! So we've got lots of boats on there now!

[Hodo]

Just one thing, I am not sure about that plugin to detect what mods a craft is using if the site doesnt reconize it. I haven't run it yet on the one craft it is having issues with. I just posted the link in the comments for those parts. Retrofuture is truely an awesome mod for parts.

[katateochi]

Just one thing, I am not sure about that plugin to detect what mods a craft is using if the site doesnt reconize it. I haven't run it yet on the one craft it is having issues with. I just posted the link in the comments for those parts. Retrofuture is truely an awesome mod for parts.

Hi Hodo, The PartMapper tool isn't a plugin for KSP, its just a stand-alone program that looks in your GameData folder and sends a list of all the parts you have installed and what mod they belong to up to the site. It doesn't send any other data, just a list of part names and mod names (and I've now had it verified by Symantec so it's on their white-list of safe programs) .

It doesn't apply to any one craft in particular, what it does is to "teach" the site about parts and which mods they belong to. By running the tool you help make the site better for everyone; so, in your case if you ran it the site will then know about RetroFuture. Then if someone else uploads a craft with those parts it will then be able to identify them as well as making it identify your crafts parts.

But as it happens, someone else who also had RetroFuture installed has recently run the PartMapper and taught the site about it. So now your craft has all its parts identified. That's kinda the idea with the PartMapper; the person who uploaded the part-map that contained RetroFuture didn't have any RetroFuture parts in their craft, but it's helped complete the mod list for your craft. If you run the PartMapper you might help complete the mod list on another user's craft or at the very least you'll strengthen the associations in the knowledge base.

[MK3424]

I feel like nobody understands your website: my crafts are being downloaded at a mild pace. But i haven't received any up or downvotes...

By the way... there is somebody else busy with an alternative form of Kerbalx:http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/102518-Early-Alpha-Plugin-0-25-Kerbal-Recorder

[katateochi]

I feel like nobody understands your website: my crafts are being downloaded at a mild pace. But i haven't received any up or downvotes...

By the way... there is somebody else busy with an alternative form of Kerbalx:http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/102518-Early-Alpha-Plugin-0-25-Kerbal-Recorder

yeah I've noticed that hardly anything gets voted on. Any ideas? Do you think the interface confusing?

Thanks for letting me know about the other site. Doesn't seem to have the mod detection or search aspects that KX has. but we shall see, hope we don't contest too much after the hours I've sunk into this project!

[John FX]

To be honest I don`t have a memory of seeing upvote buttons. Maybe make then big green arrows and show the number of upvotes for each craft on the main page to highlight the system?

[MK3424]

To be honest I don`t have a memory of seeing upvote buttons. Maybe make then big green arrows and show the number of upvotes for each craft on the main page to highlight the system?

They are on the page: right above the "Upload craft" tab on the page.

Like, i just gave your Gumdrop a +1 on KerbalX.

It loks really good.

[katateochi]

To be honest I don`t have a memory of seeing upvote buttons. Maybe make then big green arrows and show the number of upvotes for each craft on the main page to highlight the system?

The up/down vote links are in the part of the header that always remains at the top of the page, so when you're on a craft's page they are always visible. But I guess that's not where people expect to find them! I used Imgur's icons as the basis for KS's icons, made them from scratch so as not to be stealing anything, but they're pretty much the same. Would you more expect to find them at the bottom of the craft's page, which is more like the imgur style?

EDIT

on the main search page, you can use the sort-by options and select "points" to have them sorted by votes. I think (at the risk of completely ripping off imgur) that I should add little up/down arrows on the thumbnails in the search results too. That might make it more apparent there is a voting system.

*snip

Like, i just gave your Gumdrop a +1 on KerbalX.

It loks really good.

Yeah! I thought that was a really cool lander too! The side mounted lander can is a v cunning idea! (actually meant to comment on it on the site, and then I got side tracked!)

Edited December 12, 2014 by katateochi

[hakan]

Doesn't seem to have the mod detection or search aspects that KX has. but we shall see, hope we don't contest too much after the hours I've sunk into this project!

I played with the "other project" for a bit yesterday. KerbalX is by far the better craft hosting site, but the addon Gameframer has allows uploading craft from inside the game... Which I found to be a very nice thing

[MK3424]

I played with the "other project" for a bit yesterday. KerbalX is by far the better craft hosting site, but the addon Gameframer has allows uploading craft from inside the game... Which I found to be a very nice thing

Not to mention that it's using vesselviewer to make a screenshot from the craft inside ksp and sends it with the craft file.

[John FX]

The up/down vote links are in the part of the header that always remains at the top of the page, so when you're on a craft's page they are always visible. But I guess that's not where people expect to find them! I used Imgur's icons as the basis for KS's icons, made them from scratch so as not to be stealing anything, but they're pretty much the same. Would you more expect to find them at the bottom of the craft's page, which is more like the imgur style?

EDIT

on the main search page, you can use the sort-by options and select "points" to have them sorted by votes. I think (at the risk of completely ripping off imgur) that I should add little up/down arrows on the thumbnails in the search results too. That might make it more apparent there is a voting system.

Yeah! I thought that was a really cool lander too! The side mounted lander can is a v cunning idea! (actually meant to comment on it on the site, and then I got side tracked!)

Ah, that may explain it. I have not looked at many other craft and they are not on craft you have posted yourself.

The arrow is indeed green and there is a red one too.

Apologies.

I like the idea of putting the arrows in more places, especially the home screen, this will show off the system nicely. Is there a way of restricting a single user to vote only once on a particular craft to stop one user from giving many good/bad votes and messing up the system?

EDIT : Just had a thought, how easy would it be to allow IMGUR albums to show on the craft page? Then you could have the large window be that and maybe the thumbnail could be a user selection from the other images?

The mod that allows uploading ingame sounds very good but then you`d need to go out of the game to edit the craft page anyway so overall I`m not too sure if it helps that much. (sorry if that is confusing)

Edited December 12, 2014 by John FX
idea

[katateochi]

Not to mention that it's using vesselviewer to make a screenshot from the craft inside ksp and sends it with the craft file.

I've had a chat with bigorangemachine about ways to incorporate extra data along with KVV images (so they encode craft stats dV, TWR etc). But there are quite a few hurdles to get over. One of the issues is I don't want to make KerbalX into an image hosting site. That will get expensive to run pretty quickly. The other option is to enable people to sign in with imgur accounts and have the site basically forward their images to imgur. There's a few worms in that can too! And once the images are on imgur, any extra info inserted into the images gets stripped out by imgur.

I'd like to do something like that in the future, but as its just me working on it, I feel that the mod based stuff is what I need to focus on first.

I do like the idea of a plugin that can interface with the site and upload and update craft. But I've no experience in KSP mod development so if any of you guys have the time and know-how to develop that component that would be awesome and would really help me.

*snip

I like the idea of putting the arrows in more places, especially the home screen, this will show off the system nicely. Is there a way of restricting a single user to vote only once on a particular craft to stop one user from giving many good/bad votes and messing up the system?

EDIT : Just had a thought, how easy would it be to allow IMGUR albums to show on the craft page? Then you could have the large window be that and maybe the thumbnail could be a user selection from the other images?

The mod that allows uploading ingame sounds very good but then you`d need to go out of the game to edit the craft page anyway so overall I`m not too sure if it helps that much. (sorry if that is confusing)

yeah, that is one of the issues with an ingame plugin, how to yo edit the craft's page. If the plugin also sends images then it can just give you a default layout, but them I'm back to dealing with hosting or managing images. So I'll have to ponder this.

Yes imgur albums are planned. Just putting an album in is v easy, the problem I have atm is how to select the image to use as the thumbnail for the craft. Currently the thumbnail is the first image used on the craft page (which is pretty basic and I do want to change that). With an imgur album I don't know how to resolve the url of its images and get say the first one. I'm sure its do-able thou, I just have to poke imgur a bit and see what I can find.

OK! updates!

mostly back-stage stuff to reduce the memory footprint of the site so nothing really to see there. But I've reached a point where I'm feeling pretty happy with the core code in terms of stability and efficiency. So that means I can now focus on more usable features. Links to mods is going to be next, with a voting system to allow users to suggest links and have the best link voted up.

I also think I may be able to auto-discover some of the links by interfacing directly with KerbalStuff, but I need to study it's API a bit more.

I've also implemented the suggestion of having the up/down votes links shown on the thumbnails in the search results (main page, users/craft page, and mod pages).

The other change is that all craft now start with a single point (they started with 0 before), like it is on imgur, you automatically up-vote your own craft when you post it. All existing craft have been upvoted 1 point to bring them up to spec.

RE limits to votes. You can only give 1 up or down vote to a given craft. Once you've upvoted a craft, if you click the up arrow again, that removes your upvote (and same for downvotes). The difference with downvotes is it costs you 5 of your own points to downvote. This is an experimental idea to limit aggressive down-voters. You need to have gained some rep first, either by posting craft, contributing to the knowledge base (most lucrative way of getting points!) or by having your craft and comments upvoted. When you downvote you will loose 5 points, but you get them back if you withdraw your downvote or if that craft gets deleted. So you can't go on a down-voting spree! I feel this is a different environment to imgur, and people of all skill levels will be posting craft and will have prob put a lot of effort into them. So down voting is really intended for craft that are really really awful, or craft that con you (with a nice pic, but when you get the craft its not as show), and that sort of thing.

Anyway I must go lunch (and I should prob do some of that "work" stuff too, but I hope to get a bunch more done on the site this weekend.)

Thanks for the support and feedback guys! Let me know of any more improvements you can think of for the voting system!

[John FX]

I like the idea of the mod list being a list of links too. Then if you see a craft you like you could just click all the mods and download them.

very handy

[DuoDex]

Need an update for mods using 0.90 parts!

[BudgetHedgehog]

You can help with that yourself - download and run the PartMapper to teach KX about the Mk3 parts.

[katateochi]

Need an update for mods using 0.90 parts!

The site should be all set to take 0.90 craft. I've taught it about the new parts as have a couple other users.

Have you had problems uploading a craft? If so can I have the craft file to figure out why.

I've tested craft with stock 0.90 parts in my dev environment and things work fine. I've not uploaded one to the site myself cos I kinda want to see someone else do it first and plus, nothing I've made in 0.90 is worthy of being shared (verging on being more embarrassing that share worthy really!)

Unless there has been a massive change in mod part names then things should still be ok for mod detection. And even if there has then as ObsessedWithKSP said, run the PartMapper and teach KX about the new things.

[katateochi]

Just deployed an update (new feature and database changes so we're now 0.6.0) I meant to have this out on Wed but, well, you know....0.90 happened!

Main thing is that you can now suggest download links for mods.

If a mod does not yet have a link, then where it appears in a craft's mod list it will have "suggest DL link" next to it. Click that and paste in a URL, job done.

Once a url has been suggested there will be a "get mod" link and also a "edit/rate link" option. If you find that someone has suggested the wrong link or if the existing link is no longer valid you can click that and then suggest a new link. When you click rate/edit it will first ask you if the current link is correct. If you say yes, then you'll have voted that link up and that's that. If you say No you'll have down-voted the link and then it will change to show you other links that have been suggested so you can vote them up or down or put in a completely new link.

You can give 1 down vote to each link on a mod, so if you want to down vote all the suggested links you can. But you can only give an up-vote to one of the links. If you've upvoted one link already, but then click up-vote on another one, it will remove your upvote from the first one and give it to the one you just clicked on.

Links can only be given for a certain set of domains on a white list. That list is currently kerbalstuff.com, github.com, forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com, curse.com, dropbox.com. Can you think of any other domains that I should add to the white list?