KerbalX.com - Craft & Mission Sharing

[Castille7]

Hey Kat!

FYI,

Kerbalx is down 

[katateochi]

4 hours ago, Castille7 said:

Hey Kat!
FYI,
Kerbalx is down 

logs show it was down for 63 seconds ending 15:48 (utc)....I'm such a nerd!
Was that about when you noticed it down? Should be all ok now.
 

[Castille7]

2 hours ago, katateochi said:

logs show it was down for 63 seconds ending 15:48 (utc)....I'm such a nerd!
Was that about when you noticed it down? Should be all ok now.
 

Yes, I think I was on at the same time it happened. I missed work today so I had lots of KSP Kerbalx time! Next time I won't be such a quick draw cowboy! 

[Raptor9]

I hate to pile on...but for the past several weeks, each time I try to update a craft on the site, it goes to a blank screen with an "application error" message.  I refresh and sometimes I can get back to the site in a minute or two and try the update upload again.  It's been happening this way consistently throughout August.  I hope I'm not crashing the site.

[katateochi]

12 hours ago, Raptor9 said:

I hate to pile on...but for the past several weeks, each time I try to update a craft on the site, it goes to a blank screen with an "application error" message.  I refresh and sometimes I can get back to the site in a minute or two and try the update upload again.  It's been happening this way consistently throughout August.  I hope I'm not crashing the site.

I'm working on a update at the moment to improve the upload process and reduce the load that puts on the site. Hopefully this will solve upload related issues, but it's a big update so it's taking me a while to complete. 
Do you get the application error when just updating craft, or when uploading a new craft too? And are you doing it via the mod or directly on the site?

[Raptor9]

3 hours ago, katateochi said:

I'm working on a update at the moment to improve the upload process and reduce the load that puts on the site. Hopefully this will solve upload related issues, but it's a big update so it's taking me a while to complete. 

Ah, gotcha.

3 hours ago, katateochi said:

Do you get the application error when just updating craft, or when uploading a new craft too? And are you doing it via the mod or directly on the site?

I'm uploading directly to the site.  I've just been doing updates to existing craft.  The last new craft I uploaded was on July 29, I'm sorry I don't recall if I had any issues then.

[gc1ceo]

I have used the Part Mapper a couple of times, I'm curious how long the parts database simply detects and lists those parts when it comes to new uploads?

 

[katateochi]

On 07/09/2017 at 2:32 AM, gc1ceo said:

I have used the Part Mapper a couple of times, I'm curious how long the parts database simply detects and lists those parts when it comes to new uploads?

Sorry for slow reply, but I don't quite understand your question. Are you wondering how the system copes with new mod uploads or how it identifies parts on newly uploaded craft?

[gc1ceo]

How long does it take for the database to identify parts that have identified with PartMapper?

For example, Vostok Continued spun off from Tantares a while ago but KerbalX doesn't recognize the new mod.

[katateochi]

@gc1ceo The system uses a voting process to determine associations between parts and mods. If 'part:a' is moved from mod:x to mod:y, it will take 5 different users all showing the same change (part:a now belonging to mod:y instead of mod:x) before the knowledgebase accepts the change.  If you've run the PartMapper since the mod changed then that will count as one vote towards reassociating the part with the new mod.  The voting system means that a single user can't effect a change, it needs at least 5 users to report the same change via the PartMapper.

A faster way of getting the knowledgebase to see a change is to make the mod available via CKAN. KerbalX scans CKAN's repo of mod data several times a week and adjusts the knowledgebase according to that.  
It looks like Vostok Continued is not on CKAN, but if it was then KX would pickup on that when it next scanned the CKAN repo. 

 

[katateochi]

Site Update!! => v1.2.0

I've just deployed an update which is a big upgrade of all the core components of the site. Upgraded the language (now Ruby 2.4.1), framework (now Rails 4.2.9) and upgrades to all the 3rd party libraries which the site depends on.  This was something that needed doing to keep KX maintainable and should also bring an improvement to performance and stability.  Upgrading its foundations resulted in lots of stuff getting broken so pretty much the whole code base has been gone over and tweaked so this is probably the biggest update in terms of code changes, but it doesn't really add and new features or change things (much). 

There are some changes to how craft are uploaded. The main thing you'll see is a slight difference on the dialog which appears after uploading, and behind the scenes there are more changes.  If you upload a large (>2mb) craft then uploading will probably be slightly slower, because large craft are now processed in a background queue.  This is slower for the person uploading the craft (as they have to wait for the background workers to fire up), but should reduce the load on the site for everyone else as the main web server isn't being locked up by a large job.  

Also all the processing of craft thumbnails is now done on the background queue as well as sending out notifications. That should make things faster and reduce load on the site, oh and @Raptor9, that should fix the issue you where having when updating a craft (the site was having kittens and hitting timeouts while trying to send notifications to all your followers in the same request cycle as updating the craft, but now notifications are essentially done in a separate thread so that should solve that problem).

I've also added an "update craft" button on the craft edit page which opens up an interface to drop and updated craft file onto.  The ability to update craft has always been there, but wasn't very intuitive and was the most common thing people asked how to do, so that should make it more apparent.

When you change the thumbnail of a craft you should now see the updated thumbnail on the main craft list almost immediately. That may vary a bit browser to browser but the main difference is that when you change a thumbnail KX tells the CDN cache to purge the previous images for that craft so your browser should get served the updated image right away.

@Teilnehmer the issue you pointed out about string encoding should be fixed. Using your example of a craft with "Höllensturm" in the name; the craft name should now display correctly and also it's url won't simply remove the non url safe chars, but will normalize them, so in this case ö will be changed to o in the url. This fix won't change existing craft, it applies to new craft (but to fix your existing craft you should now be able to set the correct name in the field at the bottom of the craft edit page and that should fix both the name and it's url).

 

Some little new things:
When you mouse over the different template names on the craft edit page you now get a little preview for (most of) them. (although atm the template list is looking a bit misaligned for some reason, even though it's fine in dev and testing environments, what, will fix).
Previously the site used to poll periodically (with ever increasing time delays) to check if you had any notifications.  So if you left the page open and meanwhile you got a notification it should appear, but that seemed like a lot of unnecessary traffic. So now the site detects (based on your mouse movements over the page) if you've been idle for more than 5 minutes and when you return it will check for new notifications.  As part of that there is also a somewhat experimental feature (so it's switched off by default) which will refresh the list of craft on the main page when you return after being inactive.  To turn that on go to settings->Interface and check "Auto Refresh Craft List".  It's only a (possibly) useful feature if you're someone who keeps a tab open to KX.

What else? Few minor bug fixes and interface tweaks here and there and a fix to correct craft pages where the content of the page was overflowing.

 

This has been a big overhaul and I've tested the **** out of it, but there are probably some things I've overlooked. So please let me know if you run into any glitches, big or small.

 

[Raptor9]

Awesome @katateochi, I know you've been working on this for a while.  Well done.

1 hour ago, katateochi said:

@Raptor9, that should fix the issue you where having when updating a craft (the site was having kittens and hitting timeouts while trying to send notifications to all your followers in the same request cycle as updating the craft, but now notifications are essentially done in a separate thread so that should solve that problem).

Lol, I am sorry. 

[katateochi]

Some more updates

Just deployed an update which improves a few older aspects:

One very minor thing; If you are logged in you can go to https://KerbalX.com/comments (which will redirect you to https://KerbalX.com/<your username>/comments) and see all the comments you've ever made or switch to see all comments made on your craft. The page has a search so you can filter comments based on their content. Not really a key feature, but there used to be a /comments page, but it had become v slow and broken so I disabled it, this just re-instantes that page (and hopefully will satisfy that one insistent web bot which tries to hit that page about 50 times a day!).
Also long chains of comments/replies on craft pages, they now only show the first 3 replies to start with, but you can expand to see the rest if you want.  With long chains of comments/replies they get a bit crushed so there is now also the option to click "full page view" and see that chain of comments full page.

 

A couple of the search filters (by science parts and 2 modes of the mods filter) had previously used a rather clunky approach to select craft, but with the framework upgrades in the last update and me getting better at SQL those filters now work in the same way as the others, so any combination of filters/search can be performed in a single database select.  The end result is that filtering craft by mod is now on average 5 times faster (and uses less memory). 

I've redone the interface for enlarging an image on a craft page when you click on it. The previous image zoom was something that has been around since the launch of KerbalX and while I thought it was cool at one point it had really started to annoy me! I think this new one is much nicer looking and it's more mobile friendly.  One thing the old one failed at was correctly resizing the image to fit the screen, with this one no matter what size the image is or what size the screen is, it will scale the image so it fits (while maintaining aspect ratio).  
It's also mobile friendly and lets you swipe left/right to switch between images (tap again to close). On desktop you can use left/right keys to switch image (or click the arrows at the side), and click in the center (or press esc) to close. 

I've been messing around with image blurring effects so the zoomed in image gets a background which is a blurred version of the image, and I think the end result is pretty nice. But it does take a bit of power to blur and zoom the image, so I'd be interested in feedback if you think it causes things to be sluggish.

And on mobile it looks like this, using as much of the screen space as possible.

 

I've also (somewhat experimentally) enabled mobile swiping when on craft pages to have the same job as clicking on the next/prev tabs (which are only shown on desktop).  So you can click on a craft on the front page and then swipe left to move onto the next craft without needing to return to the front page. 

Few other minor things; replaced almost all the old style image based icon assets (for things like up/down vote arrows, fav icon etc) with glyphicons from the KerbalX fontpack and a few minor bug fixes here and there. 

[XLjedi]

Is there a way to actually navigate to that new "Comments" page thingy you added?

I was thinking I might see it under "My Stuff"?  ...also a "not on my craft" filter option would be useful!

 

Edited October 2, 2017 by XLjedi

[katateochi]

1 hour ago, XLjedi said:

Is there a way to actually navigate to that new "Comments" page thingy you added?

I was thinking I might see it under "My Stuff"?  ...also a "not on my craft" filter option would be useful!

There is a link on your dashboard page (with the 10 most recent comments).  But you're right, there should probably be a link in the user menu.
I'll have a think about the "not on my craft" idea. only 1 line of code needed to implement that, but I'm not sure how people would feel about that. 

And on a related note; you can go to <username>/comments, but whatever username you enter I've made it so it redirects you back to your username, so you can see your comments. Even though comments are made publically, I wasn't sure that people would like having the list of all their comments presented in one place that everyone could see. But....if you look at how this forum or imgur is setup you can view all the comments/posts made by any other user, so maybe that wouldn't be an issue. What do you think?

[XLjedi]

10 minutes ago, katateochi said:

I'll have a think about the "not on my craft" idea. only 1 line of code needed to implement that, but I'm not sure how people would feel about that. 

If you're worried about how others might feel, then you've probably misunderstood what I'm asking for.

This would just be a filter that would show me the comments that I've made on other people's craft.  It would be a subset of what I can already see... only it would screen out all the comments that I made on my own craft.

Edited October 2, 2017 by XLjedi

[katateochi]

@XLjedi oh right, yeah I had misunderstood, yes that should be doable. 

[XLjedi]

10 minutes ago, katateochi said:

@XLjedi oh right, yeah I had misunderstood, yes that should be doable. 

BTW, I did find the hotlink navigation item that I was looking for...  it's there under the title for Recent Comments on the dashboard.

Recent Comments on your craft

View/Search all Comments     <---- it's this link

 

 

[Raptor9]

@katateochi, I'm experiencing two issues on the site.

1) When updating craft through the EDIT CRAFT page, when the new window pops up asking YES or NO to update the craft, when I select YES nothing happens.  I tried waiting for a minute, and then refreshing the page, but the updated date doesn't change in the top left corner.  If I upload a craft that replaces an existing craft file of the same name, that update method works fine.

2) Whenever I'm logged in and try to go to My Hangers, it returns a 500 error code...primary buffer panel again.  Someone needs to check those panel welds. 

We appreciate the continued hard work. 

[politas]

Am I correct in thinking that the KerbalXMod replaced the old KerbalX PartMapper.exe? Sorry it's taken so long for any CKAN folks to notice this change.

[swjr-swis]

5 hours ago, Raptor9 said:

1) When updating craft through the EDIT CRAFT page, when the new window pops up asking YES or NO to update the craft, when I select YES nothing happens.  I tried waiting for a minute, and then refreshing the page, but the updated date doesn't change in the top left corner.  If I upload a craft that replaces an existing craft file of the same name, that update method works fine.

An 'Update Craft' button was added in the 1.2.0 update of the website; it's at the bottom of the edit craft page, under the craft options. See if that works for you until kat gets a chance to look at this.

 

5 hours ago, Raptor9 said:

2) Whenever I'm logged in and try to go to My Hangers, it returns a 500 error code...primary buffer panel again.  Someone needs to check those panel welds. 

I tested going to my own hangars by different routes, it all works. I also tried going to your hangars and it seems to work as well. This is on Windows and Firefox. Whatever the fault is, it's not universal.

[swjr-swis]

3 hours ago, politas said:

Am I correct in thinking that the KerbalXMod replaced the old KerbalX PartMapper.exe? Sorry it's taken so long for any CKAN folks to notice this change.

The PartMapper is not a mod... it's a standalone command-line executable that runs completely outside the game. As such, I'm not sure that it should be indexed by CKAN to begin with.

 

That aside, the functionality of the PartMapper is now included in the KerbalX mod, in a more user-friendly way. PartMapper has also not been updated in over a year now. Safe to say at this point it should probably not be advertised to the general public - they should be pointed to the KerbalX mod.

From the KerbalX mod page:

Quote

Part Data

When you upload a craft using the KX mod it will also include info about all of its parts. In the case that the KerbalX knowledge base doesn't recognise a part on the craft it can get the required info from the uploaded part data. This means that all craft uploaded via the mod will have all their parts detected, and in the case of your upload resulting in unknown parts being added to the knowledge base you're helping expand KerbalXs knowledge base.

 

[katateochi]

4 hours ago, politas said:

Am I correct in thinking that the KerbalXMod replaced the old KerbalX PartMapper.exe? Sorry it's taken so long for any CKAN folks to notice this change.

Essentially yes. The old PartMapper tool is not totally obsolete, it still has a role to play in finding out about mods which are not indexed by CKAN, but I'd much rather the CKAN reference for KerbalX point to the KerbalX mod.  I've been meaning to update the CKAN info for ages and I keep forgetting, could you make that change for me? That would be really helpful!  

 

1 hour ago, swjr-swis said:

That aside, the functionality of the PartMapper is now included in the KerbalX mod, in a more user-friendly way. PartMapper has also not been updated in over a year now. Safe to say at this point it should probably not be advertised to the general public - they should be pointed to the KerbalX mod.

It's not quite the same, the PartMapper examined your whole GameData folder, where as the KerbalX mod only sends part-mod info which is relevant to the craft being uploaded. PartMapper hasn't been updated because as it's not actually a mod it doesn't depend on KSP so it's fairly immune to KSP update changes and it seems to still work ok (I mean, it's always been a bit clunky, but I never intended to write a GUI for it).  (It's also a bit of a hassle to update because any change to it and I have to submit it to Symantec to get it certified). But yes, folk should be directed to the KerbalX mod as standard, and if they don't wish to use the mod and end up with a craft that has unrecognised parts then KerbalX will instruct them to use the PartMapper. 

@Raptor9 I shall have a look at those two issues! 

[Raptor9]

3 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

I tested going to my own hangars by different routes, it all works. I also tried going to your hangars and it seems to work as well. This is on Windows and Firefox. Whatever the fault is, it's not universal.

Ah, yeah, I'm on Google Chrome, so maybe the issue is only with that.

[katateochi]

@Raptor9 
Just added a fix that should sort out the issue of updating craft using the main upload file drop when on the craft's edit page.
You can now update an existing craft via 3 slightly different routes. 1) If the updated craft has the same name, then uploading it from the main page will prompt the site to ask if you want to update the existing craft with the same name.  2) If you go to the craft edit page and use the main upload, it will assume that you want to update that craft with the given craft file (even if the names don't match), but will ask you for confirmation first.  3) Also on the craft edit page you can click "Update Craft" at the bottom of the page to open up another file upload area and again it will assume that you want to upload the current craft but will ask for confirmation.  
Option 2 was broken, but should now be fixed and will work in the same way as option 3.

I can't replicate the issue you've reported with accessing your "my hangars" page, but I can see errors in the logs for that page and and I think I've added a patch to prevent that error from happening. Let me know if that sorts it.  
 

29 minutes ago, Raptor9 said:

Ah, yeah, I'm on Google Chrome, so maybe the issue is only with that.

 I do most of the development and testing in Chrome, so chrome is the least likely browser to throw issues. (IE and safari probably don't get as well tested as they should do! but these days the difference between browsers isn't the horrific minefield that it used to be.)  Just for interest sake; 69% of KerbalX users use Chrome, 11% use Firefox, 7% Safari, 5% Edge, 2% IE and various other browsers at < 1%