KerbalX.com - Craft & Mission Sharing

[katateochi]

12 hours ago, MrMeeb said:

the problem with my crafts are that they're made for films...they're hardly practical at all!

Then they'll be right at home along with some of the other, not practical but totally awesome craft that are up there....like this flying whale or this dragon or the restaurant at the end of the universe  and of course bender, to name a few.  
I love seeing the things you guys upload!

 

Minor Update

23 hours ago, rudi1291 said:

Some days ago i started using KerbalX, and so far i think its a great site! Because i already uploaded some crafts, and i dont want to be notified, if any of those gets downloaded, i disabled that notification. All other notification (upvotes etc.) are still enabled. Now, if one of my crafts gets an upvote, the site will tell me, that i have a notification. But that notification window also shows new downloads on crafts, that havn´t gotten any upvote. Would be nice, if it shows only the things, where i want to have a notification.

Also, here are 2 small bugs:
1) The "Upload thing" says "or click here", but you can´t click there. Theres a "no click zone" 
2) If you view your crafts and check "Hide those without picture", it says "excluding ~800", like it does on the main page. 

Thanks for this great sharing solution!

OK, those all should be fixed now. 
The notifications one has some knock on implications - it also controls which things are shown in your "recent activity" on the dashboard. So now, if you disable notifications for say craft downloads, then recent activity in the dashboard will also not highlight recent downloads.  Still shows the current download count, just not the highlighted +X in green.  Think that should be ok though. 
The no click zone one was weird! The clickable area was nowhere near the div that should contain it. So I did what I do with things that confuse me, deleted it and re-built it. 
Count of hidden pictureless craft on user's craft pages is now correct.  btw, as an intentional feature; if you have selected to hide pictureless craft, when you go to a user's craft page, it will ignore that setting.  This is so that when users, who maybe haven't put any pictures on their craft, post a link to their craft page, it will show the same craft (full set) to everyone.  
 

 

On 24/03/2016 at 5:13 PM, castille7 said:

Which ever direction you would like to run with it, my main idea for it is to know when looking at the craft thumb you will see that there is a video available to view. Glad to see you like the idea and adding it to your list!  I look forward to seeing it one day.

Annoyingly this is slightly trickier that I first thought. I'd forgotten, craft don't actually have a concept of having videos (whereas they do have an attr for their thumbnail pic), vids are just markdown embeded things in the craft's page (which is a large text attribute, too big to be loading that during searches or performing logic based on it), so I'll need to add a boolean has_vid? attr and then have that set/unset when the page content is saved.  That bit's easy, the pain is then needing to back process all the existing craft, which is now, with nearly 7000 craft, becoming quite an intensive operation! So I'll prob leave this until a more major update.

 

 

[MrMeeb]

1 hour ago, katateochi said:

Then they'll be right at home along with some of the other, not practical but totally awesome craft that are up there....like this flying whale or this dragon or the restaurant at the end of the universe  and of course bender, to name a few.  
I love seeing the things you guys upload!

Oh my god, Bender is perfect!  

[katateochi]

Well, we reached (and passed) 7000 craft today! woooot! Great going guys, can't wait to see what's going to get uploaded when 1.1 drops!
I've also re-done the OP of this thread, think it's a bit clearer than it was before.

Edited March 29, 2016 by katateochi

[RYU AZUKU99]

So I'm trying to download this craft https://kerbalx.com/ZobrAz/rover-TurboRoller-ST-Mk2. But every time that I try to download it takes me to an error 500 page. Just thought I'd post here to notify you.

So it turns out it just randomly signed me out(but it said i already signed in) and I just needed to sign back in to fix the download.

Edited April 2, 2016 by RYU AZUKU99

[katateochi]

3 minutes ago, RYU AZUKU99 said:

So I'm trying to download this craft https://kerbalx.com/ZobrAz/rover-TurboRoller-ST-Mk2. But every time that I try to download it takes me to an error 500 page. Just thought I'd post here to notify you.

Are you using any kind of download manager? That can cause problems. I'm seeing the errors generated by your attempts to download and they're of the sort which using a download manager would generate. 
 

[swjr-swis]

8 minutes ago, RYU AZUKU99 said:

So I'm trying to download this craft https://kerbalx.com/ZobrAz/rover-TurboRoller-ST-Mk2. But every time that I try to download it takes me to an error 500 page. Just thought I'd post here to notify you.

I just tried the above link, and went straight to the craft page, and then downloaded the craft without issue.

However, I do notice the name of the craft file starts with an exclamation point '!rover TurboRoller ST Mk2.craft'. Maybe that's a source for error with some OS/browser combinations.

[RYU AZUKU99]

1 minute ago, katateochi said:

Are you using any kind of download manager? That can cause problems. I'm seeing the errors generated by your attempts to download and they're of the sort which using a download manager would generate. 
 

None at all.

 

1 minute ago, swjr-swis said:

I just tried the above link, and went straight to the craft page, and then downloaded the craft without issue.

However, I do notice the name of the craft file starts with an exclamation point '!rover TurboRoller ST Mk2.craft'. Maybe that's a source for error with some OS/browser combinations.

It turns out I was in a state of being both signed in and signed out at the same time. I noticed I didn't see my name in the top right tab so I re-signed in and I got a message telling me I was already signed in and the download worked fine from there. I was just in like a limbo style of thing I guess.

[katateochi]

 

2 minutes ago, RYU AZUKU99 said:

It turns out I was in a state of being both signed in and signed out at the same time. I noticed I didn't see my name in the top right tab so I re-signed in and I got a message telling me I was already signed in and the download worked fine from there. I was just in like a limbo style of thing I guess.

oh, that's interesting! but yeah that would also fit the kind of error that was being generated (invalid authenticity token).
well at least it's working, but still kinda odd issue. Had you been signed in for a long time and with multiple tabs open?

 

4 minutes ago, swjr-swis said:

I do notice the name of the craft file starts with an exclamation point

That shouldn't be a problem, KX removes any non-url friendly characters from the craft url (and converts spaces to -). 

 

[swjr-swis]

1 minute ago, RYU AZUKU99 said:

It turns out I was in a state of being both signed in and signed out at the same time. I noticed I didn't see my name in the top right tab so I re-signed in and I got a message telling me I was already signed in and the download worked fine from there. I was just in like a limbo style of thing I guess.

Problem solved.

Could've been a cookie thing, or a CDN interaction... I've had a few times where after already being logged in, a new page load would tell me I wasn't. Since it was easily solved by logging in again I've not really made a report, but I'll be on the lookout for this now. I think I noticed the URL was different, which is what makes me think the cause to be a switch in the CDN, but it'll have to happen to me again to confirm.

[RYU AZUKU99]

Just now, katateochi said:

 

oh, that's interesting! but yeah that would also fit the kind of error that was being generated (invalid authenticity token).
well at least it's working, but still kinda odd issue. Had you been signed in for a long time and with multiple tabs open?

 

Yes I had been, So maybe that was the cause of the error?

[katateochi]

7 minutes ago, RYU AZUKU99 said:

Yes I had been, So maybe that was the cause of the error?

yeah I think so.  one tab must have had an expired authentication token while another tab would have requested a new token, so that would have caused that. 

[Castille7]

Fyi,

Throwing some attention your way!.... I just started this thread and thought you might like it?

 

[katateochi]

1 minute ago, castille7 said:

Fyi,

Throwing some attention your way!.... I just started this thread and thought you might like it?

 

Nice! A sort of hall of fame thread, good idea.
I'm also working on (but been a bit side tracked by work and then the 1.1 pre-release  ) a "most popular" style view for the main search.  The idea is to be able to filter for most "popular" this week, this month and this year.  Popular will be defined by number of downloads, views and upvotes, but I still need to workout how to weight those three criteria. 

Your thread has also given me an idea; to have a hall of fame which would show the most downloaded craft for each month, although as downloads can still increase after the month has passed I'm not sure how to work that.  Simplest would just be craft with most downloads in a given month, but that means a craft could end up on the hall of fame, but then be supplanted by another craft that gets some more downloads later on.  Or maybe I have a cut-off point so once added as x months most popular it gets set in stone as it were. 

[Castille7]

1 hour ago, katateochi said:

Nice! A sort of hall of fame thread, good idea.
I'm also working on (but been a bit side tracked by work and then the 1.1 pre-release  ) a "most popular" style view for the main search.  The idea is to be able to filter for most "popular" this week, this month and this year.  Popular will be defined by number of downloads, views and upvotes, but I still need to workout how to weight those three criteria. 

Your thread has also given me an idea; to have a hall of fame which would show the most downloaded craft for each month, although as downloads can still increase after the month has passed I'm not sure how to work that.  Simplest would just be craft with most downloads in a given month, but that means a craft could end up on the hall of fame, but then be supplanted by another craft that gets some more downloads later on.  Or maybe I have a cut-off point so once added as x months most popular it gets set in stone as it were. 

Yes maybe Craft of The Month would work, the most downloads at the end of the month using the total and the DLPV? I have often wondered about the most downloaded craft on Kerbalx.....is it mine?.....lol 

[katateochi]

2 minutes ago, castille7 said:

I have often wondered about the most downloaded craft on Kerbalx.....

You can see the most downloaded with the sort order, but that's most downloaded over the sites whole lifespan and doesn't really change.  A most downloaded per month or week would be more interesting. So yeah, that's in the pipe. 

[Castille7]

1 hour ago, katateochi said:

You can see the most downloaded with the sort order, but that's most downloaded over the sites whole lifespan and doesn't really change.  A most downloaded per month or week would be more interesting. So yeah, that's in the pipe. 

What about a badge to wear on our auto signature, some little bragging rights?

I just did a sort order and found out I am such a little guy on here, some have 6,000 downloads  on my best day I would be lucky to be in the first 30 shown! 

[katateochi]

8 minutes ago, castille7 said:

What about a badge to wear on our auto signature, some little bragging rights?

also a good idea, but I need to get some artist help to make some more badges (and also for some other aspects of the site).

[Castille7]

1 hour ago, katateochi said:

also a good idea, but I need to get some artist help to make some more badges (and also for some other aspects of the site).

Thank you, I will PM you about this

[RYU AZUKU99]

Really loving that "Hide craft without a picture" Option! The site really looks a tad cleaner.

[katateochi]

I'm adding some new sort and filtering options.  Currently you can sort craft by date (of upload), points, downloads, part count and name.  I'm extending that to be:
["date", "downloads", "views", "points", "popularity", "mod count", "part count", "name"] 
*I'll come to the "popularity" one in a sec.

I'm also adding in a filter to let you restrict it to craft uploaded "today" (last 24 hours), "this week", "this month" and the current "all time" (might add a custom date range to that too as the server side code can now handle that, but it's more a problem of where to fit it on the interface!)

As it currently is, if you sort by say "downloads" you see the craft which have the highest total download count of all time, but that doesn't really change much.  But by combining this new filter with the sort options you'll be able to see for example: most downloaded craft this week or most viewed craft today.  
note - it's not quite what it sounds, most downloaded this week, isn't craft which have been most downloaded this week, it's craft with the most downloads that were uploaded this week and "most viewed today" is craft uploaded today that have had the most views.  That's not quite as good, but the database select to pull out all the download or view dates for all craft, group them by a time period and count them is really painful and would be very slow.  But it still gives a more interesting view than just most downloaded of all time.

So, popularity. What defines being popular? (I wish I knew!). It's going to be based of download count, view count and vote_count (points).  But I'm not 100% sure how to balance those.  
Currently I'm thinking something like "crafts.download_count*1.2 + crafts.view_count*0.2 + crafts.vote_count*4"
A craft can rack up a high view count just for being well publicised (things that get shown on twitch streams can get really high view counts, but not always so many downloads) so I think view_count needs to be diluted hence multiplying it by 0.2. Download count is probably the most reliable of the three to determine if it's popular so needs a good weight.  vote_count (points) should I think be a more significant value, but KX users seem to be very stingy with upvoting craft! So that's why I'm bumping that value up by 4.  
Or the otherway I could look at it is to divide download_count by view_count and then add on vote_count, something like: "crafts.download_count / (crafts.view_count+1) + crafts.vote_count*4" 
(the +1 on view_count is just to avoid a divide by zero error).  
But that makes view_count into a much more negative factor.  I'm just not sure what the best way to do this is, I think the first way is better just from looking at how that sorts the current craft, but, yeah, not sure! So I'm asking you guys for suggestions on how you'd approach defining the equation for popularity!

And another Q is, with popularity as an option, do you think I could get rid of having views and points as sort options? They do show different craft so it's more ways to find interesting craft, but maybe it's too many options? So from the list in [ ] above tell me what you'd get rid of, if any.  (there are also two other sortable attributes not in that; print_count and strut_count, but I don't think those are particularly useful)

Anyway, let me know what you think!

[adsii1970]

@katateochi I will be working on the graphics we discussed...  Might have some ready by the weekend for your consideration.

[HebaruSan]

3 minutes ago, katateochi said:

But that makes view_count into a much more negative factor.  I'm just not sure what the best way to do this is, I think the first way is better just from looking at how that sorts the current craft, but, yeah, not sure! So I'm asking you guys for suggestions on how you'd approach defining the equation for popularity!

How about something like how CSS selectors are compared? A vote is a much more affirmative action than simply downloading (what if you don't like it after flying it?), which is in turn much more significant than simply viewing. So only check downloads if you need to break a tie in votes, and only check views if you need to break a tie in downloads.

more_popular_craft(a, b) = a.votes > b.votes ? a
                         : b.votes > a.votes ? b
                         : a.downloads > b.downloads ? a
                         : b.downloads > a.downloads ? b
                         : a.views > b.views ? a
                         : b;

 

[katateochi]

@HebaruSan, thanks! that's a nice approach.  my only issue, and this is probably more down to a lack of my knowledge, but I'm doing this equation inside an SQL ORDER BY statement and I'm not sure how to express nested ternaries like that in SQL and also it needs to resolve into an enumerable value. need to level up my SQL fu! It's also got to be really fast, but I shall see if I can implement something along those lines.  Thanks for the suggestion! 

[swjr-swis]

I'm not much for popularity contests, but objectively, I would have to agree on vote>download>view in the weighing, like HerbaruSan also stated. Won't do my craft much good but it's how it is.

I have no idea about the actual weighing factors though. How about picking a random set and testing it out and see? You can always tweak them later if they seem to throw things very off balance, right?

Personally, I take the different parameters as meaning the following:

• Views basically tells you how good you have been advertising your craft. It says very little about what people thought after seeing more detailed information of it on KX, and next to nothing about how they feel about your craft.
• Downloads tells you how good your KX craft page is. You have managed to interest a viewer into downloading and potentially (but not guaranteed!) testing it out. It says very little about what people thought of it once (if!) they tried it out in their own game.
• Votes/points tells you they liked your craft -or the concept- for some undefined reason, but not why. It may be they just want to encourage your effort and hope you'll improve it. Maybe you gave them a good laugh. Maybe they're impressed with the likeness even if it doesn't actually fly. Or maybe they really like how well it does the intended -or non-intended- job. You won't know, but regardless, they gave you a point!
• Comments finally, are the only feedback that may explain exactly what they thought of your craft and why. I find the comments the most valuable part of this all, but obviously those are impossible to process into a popularity equation.

The views or downloads nrs are not much use to me: I already know I do next to no advertising, and there's much better craft pages on KX that I am too lazy to try equal, let alone best.

Votes I value a bit more, they're more indicative, and even if all it did was make someone chuckle, it was worth whatever effort I put into it. Still, whom I get a vote from can be a lot more interesting to me.

Comments I find amazing. I like seeing verbal feedback, because it lets them be specific about what they thought of it. I try to leave comments whenever I can, rather than just vote, for that same reason.

[katateochi]

Site update
Just deployed the changes to add additional sort by options (some of which are hidden by default, press the + button on the right to toggle them).  In the end I went with the simpler equation for defining popularity (as I could not make logic work for me inside an SQL statement for order).  Also the ability to filter by a couple of set time periods, which may sound like a kinda meh-whateva feature, but I think that in combination with sorting by downloads, points or popularity that will be a good way of finding interesting craft. 
You can set your default sort and date-range option in your settings page, under "interface".

Fixed a few minor bug too, and also realised I was being really dumb with the way craft were being selected from the DB when loading a hangar page, so hangars load much faster now!

Anyway, let me know what you think about the new sort and filter options.