Kerbal Space Program Wiki:Helpdesk

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• Guidelines, guidelines for this wiki
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Sample Question

How do I upload a screenshot? -- Asgar 12:07, 31 July 2011 (CDT)

Use Special:Upload to upload the file. Please choose a meaningful file name and describe the picture. It'd be nice to know what version of KSP you used. Lastly, add {{Copyright by Squad}} to indicate the rights. --Asgar 12:07, 31 July 2011 (CDT)

Fixed template referral. This page will be archived about once per month. -- N3X15 ^{(C · T · E)} 06:36, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

What do I do if a thumbnail is not rendering?

I am trying to upload an image to the wiki, but it has failed to create the thumbnail four times, so I cannot make it visible when posting it to an article. This is the image in question: File:KerbinTopographyFull.jpeg

What can I do to get the thumbnail to render? -- MattWBradbury 20:21, 27 June 2013 (PST)

You could try taking your original file (I assume that you exported this from a SVG file or similar) and export it to another format, like PNG. You might also consider either to use a higher resolution or to resize the longitude and latitude markers, as they are currently not readable.

Another thing about the map: first of all, good job, the map is quite awesome. I also noticed a smiley face in the southwest ocean. Considering that it appears on both the Mercator and polar projections, I assume that it is not a joke/easter egg that you inserted. If it is, please remove it, otherwise people might try to search for it... --dgelessus ^{(talk · logs)} 09:01, 28 June 2013 (CDT)

I'm wondering why there is no explanation given :(. And if you have the original file: How large (in bytes) is it coded in png? The artifacts around the text are kind of awful. — xZise [talk] 15:34, 28 June 2013 (CDT)

KSP help

I need help becouse KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM

i need begginerr tips and How to make spacestations Please Help me im only 11 and other people are way more better I know a 8yr old whos alot better than me. :( — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cameron (talk • contribs)

Hi Cameron, you would get more replies if you posted your question in the KSP forum. They have a Gameplay Questions and Tutorials section. I don't have a space station myself (I might be older than your dad) so I'm not sure which is the best tip for beginners. It's fun to find out things in KSP though. --Kerbin Dallas Multipass (talk) 22:20, 30 August 2013 (CDT)

Hi, first of all welcome to the KSP wiki. But unfortunately this page isn't about helping with KSP instead about helping with the KSP wiki. But a few notes about your question: First of all bringing a spacestation into orbit is like anything else. You can do it like the Skylab by the NASA in one go, or like the MIR or ISS with multiple starts and then docking them together. And about that this wiki can help: Docking explains how to do that. But like the poster before me said: For questions on how to play KSP ask in the forum. (And rocket science can be hard, I guess the 8 year old also need a lot of practice) — xZise [talk] 03:08, 31 August 2013 (CDT)

Something needs fixing

There's a {{{1}}} thing under "Fuselages (Jet Fuel Tanks)" on the Parts page. It's part of a template and I don't know how to fix it. Ilkcs (talk) 18:16, 2 December 2013 (CST)

Hi, somebody only add a German note that jet fuel and liquid fuel are the same. I added an English version about that. Although I'm not sure if it should be noted there. I mean there is already a note on liquid fuel (and jet fuel redirects to it). — xZise [talk] 04:26, 3 December 2013 (CST)

Template:About translation

I plan to translate the article Stability Augmentation System to the German language. How do I make the About-template appear in German? --Snocker15 (talk) 07:25, 8 February 2014 (CST)

There are various ways to translate a template. And I'm not sure which one is the best. One way would be to use a {{lang}} block like in {{Stub}}, which I added. More information can also be found on Project:Translation#Templates. — xZise [talk] 12:23, 8 February 2014 (CST)

Custom CSS

I created a common.css file like on other MediaWiki powered sites, but it doesn't seem to work. Are custom CSS files not allowed on this wiki or have I made a mistake? --Snocker15 (talk) 07:28, 22 February 2014 (CST)

visible but ignored by the links

How can I make a short text vissible for reading but ignored by the links?

For example:

in text something like this:

ape ???aka monkey [primal]???

if reading:

ape aka monkey [primal]

but the link animal#ape works, and point on it ignoring ???aka monkey[primal]??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by NWM (talk • contribs) 15:55, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi, I'm not sure what you want to do so I have to guess: Do you want to link to a page (e.g. Kerbal Space Center) but showing another text (e.g. KSC)? This is possible with the pipe (“|”) char: [[Kerbal Space Center|KSC]]. It will link to the text left to the pipe and show the text to the right: KSC. Of course I know there is a redirect from KSC to Kerbal Space Center, but this is simply an example of pages that work. Maybe the English Wikipedia can help you on Help:Link. — xZise [talk] 15:46, 2 April 2014 (CDT)

Thanx Xzise - I meaned, that in names I want to give synonymes and the english word of the name of the sections. I try to make it more easy to use for that kind of user never met in (my case hungarian) word of "pályahajlás" but in the game meet english word of "inclination". I want to help to put it together by making the wiki a bit more synonyme and english-hungarian dictionary, but it undermines the linking system. Thanx for the link, I think anchoring will solve my dilemma of easy linking and informative section names. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NWM (talk • contribs) 15:50, 3 April 2014‎

-Ouch! There is no template "anchor" in this wiki. -Has the kerbalwiki anything similar to Wikipedia's anchor template?— Preceding unsigned comment added by NWM (talk • contribs) 17:36, 3 April 2014‎ (UTC)

Hi, usually you only need the anchor template, when you are not linking to a section (which is basically ==…==) and you can use HTML directly: <span id="ANCHOR"></span>. You simply replace ANCHOR with your anchoring target. Now I got two examples here. When you want to link to the topography of Kerbin use Kerbin#Topography. There is no need for an manual anchor. On Terminology we are already using anchors so that Terminology#ap does get you to the apsis explanation. You need to look into the page's code to see the spans there. Of course you can use the pipe to hide the link target: Kerbin's topography — xZise [talk] 13:01, 3 April 2014 (CDT)

about stock parts

Is it possible to add in the description of stock parts their length? This cool make easier creation of complrx crafts Stormlion.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Stormlion (talk • contribs) 13:14, 10 April 2014‎

Problem is to get the exact heights (I guess that's what you are talking about). — xZise [talk] 08:46, 10 April 2014 (CDT)

Getting effective heights of parts with upper and lower nodes is easy enough (They can be read out of the part.cfg files). For other parts, it would probably require some modeling expertise. On a related note, how is 0.23.5 getting those effective diameters in the VAB/SPH popup menus? UmbralRaptor (talk) 20:03, 10 April 2014 (CDT)

About what popup menus are you talking? And it is easy to get the height of a part, this can be added. Especially when we are using modules adding a parameter is not so cumbersome. It can be treated optional so it won't break old infoboxes. — xZise [talk] 10:04, 12 April 2014 (CDT)

Okay I've added a {{{height}}} parameter to {{Infobox/Part}}. Please note, that role templates (e.g. Template:Infobox/Part/Strut) don't support this and most likely won't support it, because they are getting obsolete. The parameter is also optional. — xZise [talk] 03:01, 16 April 2014 (CDT)

Is it possible to edit the navbar?

I'm starting to translate some pages to my home language(Portuguese), and I would like to also translate the links and titles of the lateral navbar,

<<< This one.

Is it possible? Where or how? Eitz (talk) 18:05, 25 April 2014 (CDT)

Short answer: No. Medium answer: It's complicated and can only be done by sysops. Long answer: All non standard entries (How to Help, Main Site, Sections (header), Tutorials, Controls, Stock Parts, Locations, Celestial Bodies, Languages (header), Data templates (header)) need each one page in each language. For example I created some time ago MediaWiki:Celestial Bodies/de. So when you set the language to German, Celestial Bodies will be translated into German. But only sysops needs to do this. And the user has to set the language in their preferences and not via some /pt magic. Another answer: You can't do it, but you can provide the translations (e.g. User:Eitz/Navbar translation) and maybe a sysop will integrate this.

If you are lucky and my bot can also edit/create pages in the MediaWiki namespace, I could write a script which does this. — xZise [talk] 04:02, 26 April 2014 (CDT)

Okay I did a quick test, and currently my bot can't edit in the MediaWiki namespace. — xZise [talk] 02:57, 28 April 2014 (CDT)

Can I Create A Page?

Hi, I just joined the wiki today and I can think of a few good pages that should be added. If it is possible can somebody give me the link to the area of the site where you can create a page. Thank You! — Preceding unsigned comment added by LyrikTech (talk • contribs) 02:29, 18 May 2014‎ (UTC)

You can create pages as long as they are related to Kerbal Space Program. Search for the name of the page you want to create, for example Wing. This will bring you to the search result, because no page exists. There is then a text "Create the page "Wing" on this wiki!" and you can start creating the page when you click on Wing. Please make sure that there isn't already an article. For example there created somebody an article with the plural as page name although there was already one with the singular. — xZise [talk] 05:29, 20 May 2014 (CDT)

Edited the wrong thing..

So I misunderstood the tutorial template, and actually edited the template while trying to write an article. How do I fix this?7— Preceding unsigned comment added by Wild Bill (talk • contribs) 18:35, 31 July 2014‎ (UTC)

Hi, welcome to the KSP wiki. Now you are certainly not the first who did that mistake. Just look at the history of that page. Maybe I should protect it … but anyway to fix it is easy.

I'm going to revert your changes; don't worry they are not lost. Simply click on the date and time of your last edit which should bring you to this page. You can then edit it, copy the content and paste it into an article with the correct name. Be aware that if you hit “Save page” on Tutorial:Template that you actually reintroducing your accidential change so check before clicking on “Save page” if you are editing there the new page (with the name of your choice).

About the name of your choice: Choose a descriptive name preceded by a “Tutorial:” and search for it. You should get a message that the page doesn't exist but click on the red link (which should look like your future page's name) and you are good to go. That's more or less everything which is important about that.

Then another thing is etiquette when posting on the talk pages (or community pages, where people write each other) to sign them. See on the English Wikipedia about that feature. I added one to your post here but it would be nice if you do that for your future posts. — xZise [talk] 15:22, 31 July 2014 (CDT)

Thanks for the help, will sign in the future.Wild Bill (talk) 17:13, 31 July 2014 (CDT)

Multilingual search

Is there any possibilities to search in other languages than English? For example search as "légkör" and points to the atmosphere/hu? Is there any possibilities for something like this in categories? NWM (talk) 07:27, 21 August 2014 (CDT)

Unfortunately it's not possible to search only through pages of a specific language. About having pages in a language redirect to the page in English with suffix: Project:Discussions/Article names in other languages. Although that discussion wasn't really fruitful. — xZise [talk] 11:20, 24 August 2014 (CDT)

I'am thinking of making an "concets/hu" page linked from Main Page/hu. And I put the contaminated Hungarian words with their own links in alphabetic order. I've started to test this concept on page Category:Game interface/hu. NWM (talk) 13:10, 24 August 2014 (CDT)

It would be possible to have categories for this, like Category:Translated page/<lang code> and my bot could comb through all pages with a language code and automatically add them to the category. This way you get a nice sorted list of pages. And a little note: Add a colon in front of a category or file link to create a link and not “use” it. — xZise [talk] 07:59, 25 August 2014 (CDT)

Of course the problem there is that it doesn't link to it in the language of the page. Okay another suggestion: Although the wiki hasn't enabled them but my bot could search for {{DISPLAYTITLE:title}} and create a page like List of translated pages/<language code> and create a list similar to the category but with the translated link target. The advantage (compared to your solution) is that you could open that page and search via your browser (usually ^ Ctrl+F) through all translated pages and not “only” through the pages of a category.

If I have enough time I could add a way to also add that to the categories (like you did). — xZise [talk] 08:06, 25 August 2014 (CDT)

I've meant a "contents/xx" super-page with all of the words: title, synonym, sequence title - of all of the pages (over the categories). Due to enormous amount of words, the contents would be sequenced by "A", "B", "C"... It would be more then a simple "translated pages/xx" because many words can point in same page as synonyms (aerobraking, atmospheric braking), and words can point on sequence too.

The "translated pages" is not a good name - because the translations happen both direction, the original "Linux" page is Russian, the "Science mode" is Hungarian...

I don't know the DISPLAYTITLE, the needed indexing work-time seems same, but there are some questions:

• how can it handle surjections (several page have the same DISPLAYTITLE:"title" - do not forget: the writers are dumbs)?
• does it work perpetually - continuously or when you activate it?
• can it handle misspelling?

PS: ^ Ctrl+F works on my "test-page" too NWM (talk) 15:27, 26 August 2014 (CDT)

Currently the bot can't do that. I would have to write a script. What do you mean with 'surjections'? It could discard any spaces and quotes around it, that shouldn't be a problem. It would at first run only when I activate it (I haven't set it up to run continuously). And what about misspellings? If the title in DISPLAYTITLE is misspelled, it won't (most likely) not warn about it or so, but as soon as it somebody fixed it and the bot has run though the pages it should update it.

And I never doubted that ^ Ctrl+F wouldn't work on your example. — xZise [talk] 06:49, 27 August 2014 (CDT)

I mean - for example there is a title "knowledge" in science/x1 page and science_mode/x1 too. In this case what does your bot do? What will be the answer for "knowledge"? NWM (talk) 13:15, 27 August 2014 (CDT)

That's a good question. It could link to both, as I said I would write a script, so anything reasonable should be possible. — xZise [talk] 09:09, 28 August 2014 (CDT)

So I've run the bot now and there are various pages like User:BobBot/indexes/hu. It's not polished yet: Ffor example you can't easily switch into another language and I want to have there headers for each letter of the alphabet. — xZise [talk] 14:58, 11 September 2014 (CDT)

Great work! Although it is almost useless for non-English speakers but it seems as a quite a useful tool for translators-editors. Only two things I miss from this bot: there is no list of English pages, and there are not category:xx-s (some page written on category:-like page , for example "dwarf planet", and some on tutorial:-like page (gravity assist))...

About the first: That is an issue of those pages here. On User:BobBot/indexes/de#R it shows the German term 'Reaktionsrad' instead of the English one, but because basically 99 % of pages don't use {{DISPLAYTITLE:}} they are listed with the English term. I need to find a better way for alphabets which don't use the Latin one (has Japanese an alphabet?). It currently simply chooses the first letter. And yes it only works on the main namespace (currently?), but actually 'Tutorial' is not a special namespace (in the sense of the software, you could create a page 'ThisIsNotANamespace:Page' and the page name would be exactly that and not 'Page').

The bot first iterated over all pages (in main ns) on this wiki but now it just iterates over the last Special:RecentChanges from User:BobBot/indexes/timestamp. In theory as soon as a category is edited it might appear there, which could cause problems because it might add them as actual categories and not as links. And I currently run the bot manually so it won't be updated live. About the list of English pages: That might be coming in the future, but I can't promise it. My internet is currently not the best and I need to iterate over all pages again. By itself that is not a problem, because obviously I don't need to do anything while it iterates, but it's using the connection. Also there is no real need for an English index because you can already search for a page by using Special:Search. — xZise [talk] 19:11, 17 September 2014 (CDT)

Only some question:

How does this bot index the multi-character letters, like German "Sch"?, and how sort in the non-alphabetic writing systems (Japanese, Chinese...)? (for them, some kind of categorization would be useful)

Is there any method to index links, sections or categories? Like "Drag/xx" or "Atmosphere/xx#drag", or "category:Dwarf planet/xx" NWM (talk) 04:34, 25 September 2014 (CDT)

Currently it just uses the first Unicode character (which would be “S” for “Sch”) and sorts that then by the built in sorted and I'm not exactly sure how that sorts. But that is mostly a display detail, and as soon as I have a suitable solution it will just rearrange the index page according to the new 'alphabet'. In the best case it doesn't need to search through all pages again and the current {{DISPLAYTITLE:}} still work.

What do you mean with indexing links? It is not possible to index sections, although I might add in the near future that when the display title is given as 'Foo#Bar' that it appears as “Foo” but links to the section “Bar”. What I said about categories still applies: Currently it just searchs through the main namespace (left most tap says “Page”), which probably will change in the future and then categories behave just like any other page (so you add {{DISPLAYTITLE:}}) although I'm not sure if I remove the namespace by default or not (just using it to have a translated namespace sounds silly). — xZise [talk] 06:58, 25 September 2014 (CDT)

I mean the indexed link is for example: Drag/de contains:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Luftwiederstand}}

#REDIRECT [[Atmosphere/de#Luftwiederstand]]

Appears in BobBot's indexes and links to Atmosphere/de#Luftwiederstand (if someone writes it)

But I think it would be less ado to write the final "concent" manually. Not each of the languages has alphabet, and only few alphabet follows the the Unicode sorting. But undeniably, bobBot will be a great aid... NWM (talk) 07:58, 30 September 2014 (CDT)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ There is no page Drag/de so I'm not sure if I understand it correctly, but the actual solution would be to use {{DISPLAYTITLE:Atmosphäre|Luftwiderstand#Luftwiderstand}} in Atmosphere/de. When the bot is seeing that it will automatically add a entry “Luftwiderstand” and create a link to [[Atmosphere/de#Luftwiderstand|Luftwiderstand]] (at least in theory, I haven't tested it yet).

In general when you have {{DISPLAYTITLE:…|A#B|…}} in page C it'll create a link like [[C#A|B]]. I've also tested DISPLAYTITLE on my test wiki, and it'll only read until the first | so the other rest won't be visible (hopefully they'll never fix that). — xZise [talk] 04:27, 2 October 2014 (CDT)

Short Stupid Questions

Is there anything in this wiki like {{nowrap|text}} and <wbr> in the wikipedia? (no braking and breakable coherent text) — Preceding unsigned comment added by NWM (talk • contribs) 05:41, 22 September 2014‎ (UTC)

I think <wbr> should work if the browser does support it. And you could add the template yourself or use the HTML code of it. — xZise [talk] 04:32, 23 September 2014 (CDT)

"" doesn't works, and I don't know how to make that template -yet... NWM (talk)

Okay if doesn't work, there is nothing I can do about. I'm not even sure why this is the case: It's a HTML tag added in HTML 5 but already used in HTML 4 (but not officially defined). The wiki probably doesn't accept this as a valid tag, although the question is, if this is because the software is to old or because it was deliberately deactivated. — xZise [talk] 06:11, 23 September 2014 (CDT)

Okay User:Kspjptrans added {{nowrap}}. — xZise [talk] 17:48, 24 September 2014 (CDT)

Can anybody tell me, how can I hide a .svg picture in a linking text, for exaple [[transfer rate|{{mark|fuelu}}/s]] ? As I see something like this works in partbox at required research node, but id don't find the method. NWM (talk) 09:55, 26 October 2014 (CDT)

You need to invert this so something like this: /s ([[File:Jerry-can char.svg|18px|Fuel unit|link=Liquid fuel]][[Liquid fuel|/s]]). It's not pretty and currently not supported by {{mark}} but afaik the only way if it's not possible otherwise (aka rewritten). — xZise [talk] 14:23, 26 October 2014 (CDT)

'What links here' without templates

Is there any method to see the real direct links on the tools/"what links here" page? I mean it would more useful to see the template instead of the endless list of the pages using that template. It is fatiguing, especially at the parts' page, due to the "parts" template list all the parts' page... NWM (talk) 07:33, 30 September 2014 (CDT)

Yeah but I don't think it's possible, because the software don't know if a link originates from a template or not. — xZise [talk] 04:29, 2 October 2014 (CDT)

CAPTCHA Question

For everyone who wonders

During registration, the CAPTCHA I was presented with showed the Squad logo and asked me what type of animal was depicted. I answered "chimp" which was wrong, and then "ape" which was also wrong. Luckily, on the third try, i was given a different question. Does anybody happen to know what the correct answer would have been? (And please, for the love of all that which does not suck, do NOT tell me the answer is "monkey"). --Kronaz (talk) 20:15, 9 October 2014 (CDT)

Well you won't get an answer then ;) . We had a big problem with spam bots … about a year ago and then the CAPTCHA was changed and it really helped. Maybe the spam bots are to intelligent? Now I'm not a biologist to determine how accurate your guesses are, but I'd guess most people wouldn't use chimp or ape. — xZise [talk] 20:39, 9 October 2014 (CDT)

Huh, well that's sad. Even here, where science is a big part of the game, nobody seems to know the difference between a monkey and an ape... :'( --Kronaz (talk) 20:41, 9 October 2014 (CDT)

Making a Tutorial

I was wanting to add a tutorial, but I looked at the tutorial section and all I could find was the template. I would still like to make a tutorial, I just don't know how. Can anyone help me?

CJW201210 (talk) 16:33, 3 November 2014 (CST)

It is simple: like a normal page bit the name is "Tutorial : 'Pagename'"

PS: Please, make quality work! — Preceding unsigned comment added by NWM (talk • contribs) 08:47, 4 November 2014‎ (UTC)

What NWM said, but be aware that unlike Talk : Main Page is the same as Talk:Main Page, Tutorial : Pagename is different than Tutorial:Pagename and I'd prefer using the latter. — xZise [talk] 08:28, 4 November 2014 (CST)

CAPTCHA question hint

There should be a hint for the CAPTCHA Question 'How hard is ______ _______, anyway'anywhere, maybe in the helpdesk! To google it takes a lot of Kerbal-Time!

Thanks for your kind attention! — Preceding unsigned comment added by OO fargo Oo (talk • contribs) 23:48, 6 November 2014‎ (UTC)

https://www.google.de/search?q=how+hard+is+anyway Hmmm I disagree. — xZise [talk] 07:54, 7 November 2014 (CST)

Is there a translator centre of some sort?

I registered to this wiki a couple days ago, and I wanted an easy way to chat with other Hebrew translator, couldn't find one. Is there like a talk page for Hebrew translators? Thanks. LCDBDisplay (talk) 10:40, 2 April 2015 (CDT)