Mod name in part description?

[nulano]

I have about 70 mods installed. As you can imagine, this adds a lot of parts to the VAB. With so many part, I often wonder, which mod adds this or that part.

Since mods are just folders of configs, it is hard for the game to automatically detect which part belongs to which mod, unless each part clearly identifies itself in its config.

Some mods use the Manufacturer field to identify themselves (e.g. USI), but many mods don't do this and add parts to for example Jebediah's Junkyard (e.g. Ven's Stock Part Revamp) or just completely ignore the manufacturer field (Found lying by the side of the road).

It is also possible to try to identify the mod trough the Author field (I just made a mod that appends this field to the part description), but this value is unreliable even when it comes to stock parts ('C. Jenkins', 'Squad', 'NovaSilisko', 'Porkjet', 'Unknown', etc.). This is because it identifies the author of the part, not the mod itself.

I feel like Squad intended the Manufacturer field to be used for mod identification, but because of the puns they used for the manufacturer names (e.g. Jebediah's Junkyard), it wasn't taken that seriously by mod developers.

Therefore I suggest adding a new field to the part config, called Mod or something similar. This could be shown next to the part somewhere (e.g. at the bottom of the part description) or it could be one of the advanced mode filters. What do you think?

[GonDragon]

With Janitor's Closet, you can filter the parts per mod. You can even hide Squad part's if you want.

 

[nulano]

I was not aware Janitor's Closet could do that. It seems Janitor's Closet considers folders to be mods, which isn't perfect for all mods (e.g. USI stores all its parts in subfolders of the USI folder - this makes all USI parts look like they come from the same mod, even though they could be considered separate mods). I also dislike that it removes the stock manufacturer filter, but I suppose that's less of a problem.

I will keep Janitor's Closet installed, but I'm looking for the reverse effect - I do not want to know which parts belong to which mod, but which mod supplies which part.

I'll add this as a feature request to Janitor's Closet: https://github.com/linuxgurugamer/JanitorsCloset/issues/19

 

I do however think, that there should be a better way to identify mods, not based on the direct subfolder of GameData.

Edited May 28, 2017 by nulano

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

19 minutes ago, nulano said:

I will keep Janitor's Closet installed, but I'm looking for the reverse effect - I do not want to know which parts belong to which mod, but which mod supplies which part.

You are not alone, I use the same manufacturer group for all my parts, so they can easily be tracked, however as you note many use some  comedy line or add to some existing Squad company, which in truth is a bleepin nuisance when trying to find out exactly which mod supplied the parts.

I do a lot of cherry picking, because there a mod makers out there who do X better than I do,  and I reduce most mods down to the bits I use.   Admittedly JC does this but it doesn't  help in the editor when you're presented with 12 rotors with no way of identifying exactly which mod gives what.  

[evileye.x]

May some tricky MM patch can do it?

[GonDragon]

Well, I Think that with an MM patch, you could change the manufacturer of a part, so you can, for example, change all the stock parts to being manufactured by the same manufacturer (Like, "Squad Company", "Stock Inc.", "Jeb's Junkyard Manufacturer", etc).

You can do the same with mods. So, instead of have all the USI Constellation in the same tab, you could create "USI Rover Division", "USI Exlorer Division", "USI MKS Division", etc. The same with mods that use Stock manufacturers, or do not use any manufacturer at all.

[DStaal]

2 hours ago, GonDragon said:

Well, I Think that with an MM patch, you could change the manufacturer of a part, so you can, for example, change all the stock parts to being manufactured by the same manufacturer (Like, "Squad Company", "Stock Inc.", "Jeb's Junkyard Manufacturer", etc).

You can do the same with mods. So, instead of have all the USI Constellation in the same tab, you could create "USI Rover Division", "USI Exlorer Division", "USI MKS Division", etc. The same with mods that use Stock manufacturers, or do not use any manufacturer at all.

Be aware that RoverDude keys off of the manufacturer name for his custom categories - if you change the name, those categories won't work anymore.

I don't know if any other mod uses the manufacturer for anything in specific - but it's possible.