Majiir

tl;dr It modularizes some things that PartModule doesn't already.

TreeLoader is hardcoded to check for trees at kspmodders.com, which is offline. r4m0n maintains that server and doesn't seem to be interested in fixing it.

Kerbal Stuff does not have that capability. If its features were to be expanded, it's far more likely that it would support mod lists rather than uploaded packs. No. I've only once granted an exception for Kethane distribution (for Extraplanetary Launchpads). The issue is that you can't possibly support Kethane; do you have an intimate understanding of how it works? Are you aware of all the compatibility details between Kethane versions? Instead, what will happen is your pack users will say "I have a problem with Kethane" and look up my thread. I have worked very hard to reduce the support load for Kethane, and that's been very successful. I'm not willing to compromise that. All of those things can be achieved with mod lists and/or package management tools. This is why I encourage you to look into those more deeply: They can solve a lot of these pain points without inflicting the kind of damage that mod packs would.

I'm going to wear a few different hats for this post. As Kerbal Stuff admin: Mod packs are allowed on the site as long as they respect the licenses of the mods in the pack. As former KAS maintainer: I wouldn't count on getting permission to distribute KAS. The license was written specifically to forbid mod packs and re-hosting. As a modder: Mod packs have been attempted many times, and I'm not aware of any that have taken off. There are good reasons for this. Mod lists are not as bad, but they can still be misleading. Looking at this thread, you have checkmarks for compatibility. What does that even mean? Unlike in other games, KSP mods very rarely conflict. When they do, the conflicts are insidious and hard to track down even when the developers are working in cooperation. There's no way you can exhaustively test every mod in your list for mutual compatibility. All you have is a surface-level inspection: Do these things obviously conflict after a few minutes of playing? I do urge you to work on lists rather than packs. There have been many discussions on this forum about the problems that mod packs cause, from support to version staleness to licensing to necrotic downloads. I have never seen any would-be packer properly address those concerns. Even if you (somehow) surmount those issues, there's a more basic discomfort with mod packs: they steal popularity. You upload your pack, a bunch of people download it, and... you get the download counts. On Kerbal Stuff, mod visibility in search and the home page are influenced by hits. The same is true of Google Search and all kinds of hosting providers. That cause problems for users looking for a particular mod, but it also hurts the mod developers. Finally, mod packs add very little value. The best I can come up with is "you only download one file" and "you don't have to deal with dependency issues". Except... neither of those hold as soon as the user wants to install mods outside your list. Some basic dependency management skills are essential to installing KSP mods, and it's really not hard. Modders are very careful when introducing dependencies to make sure they soft-fail as much as possible, and many mods will automatically work out which dependencies to use at run time. Downloading one file is nice, but it's entirely offset by the possibility that one mod is out-of-date, and the user has to uninstall it, install the correct version, and then sort out whatever differences there were between the original and packed versions. The benefits are so quickly washed out by complications. I suggest you push the envelope on mod lists, and work on ways to make it easier for users to find and use them. There are a lot of possibilities here, including tools for managing automatic installation of lists, or even first-class mod list support on sites like Kerbal Stuff. Working on those frontiers will do a lot more good than pushing an idea that's already been beaten to death over and over in this community.

Looks good. If you like, you may remove the Kethane-LICENSE.txt file, since the license text is in the shader comment. (It might confuse people to see a Kethane license if they haven't installed Kethane.) Up to you, of course.

You have copy-pasted the Github viewer source code instead of the license text... Please include just the license text, preferably as a comment in the relevant files. As it is, someone who wishes to use a piece of your code will not know which licenses it's covered by. Using a comment clears up that ambiguity.

Win64 is stable in the same situations where Win32 is stable. If you never exceed the 32-bit address space, you likely won't run into problems with Win64, but you also aren't deriving any benefit from Win64. In other words, Win64 is only even moderately stable in situations where you might as well just use Win32 anyway.

You're trying to solve the wrong problem. It's not that Toolbar breaks on Win64; it's that Win64 is broken. You're asking mods to change so they will run better on Win64, but that's pointless because Win64 is broken and mods can't change that. Sure, Toolbar might mildly exacerbate the issue, but at the end of the day, Win64 is broken. Nobody should be using Win64 KSP. Yes, I have these same issues. I've been asking Squad to make improvements to the stock AppLauncher since it first entered experimentals, and those changes have yet to come. Kethane, for example, requires tracking station support. Toolbar is an optional dependency, but I can't support AppLauncher at all because it simply doesn't do the job.

Most/all posts tagged "computer science" have nothing to do with it. Renaming it "computing" would sort that out nicely. Source: Am a computer scientist.

Those details are confidential. What I can say is that it's not just one or two issues, and it's not just the last couple updates. There have been a few issues where "number of updates since this was reported" got too high to remember, so I instead went with "number of community managers since this was reported". (Four.) This thread is indeed a good outlet. I just want everyone to be aware that excessive release hype has a negative impact on modders; our issues are often the first to be backlogged. This makes development and maintenance a lot harder than it has to be. Also remember: Modders use nearly all the same systems as the KSP developers. If it's hard for us, it's usually hard for them, too!

The developers are well aware of what's said here. What I said about releasing under pressure wasn't hypothetical; I've seen it. The devs communicate a lot with the pre-release groups, and they explain why these features are in, but these others are delayed. Some issues are delayed until "things calm down", but the truth is that never happens at Squad. They put themselves in a perpetual state of urgency, so everyone is either too busy working or on vacation to recover.

My plea to Squad and You: Please don't do this. Hyping updates is (clearly) a lot of fun, but it makes things harder on Squad and modders. Why, Majiir? You make no sense! Because when updates are hyped this much, Squad comes under immense pressure to release the game "on time" (even though no release date is promised) and it means that lots of important features and bug fixes get swept under the rug. These issues could be revisited during the next cycle, but since that update is also hyped, they take the back seat to more pressing issues and... they never get fixed. This makes things particularly difficult for modders, because we go months or years with frustrating bugs that are always promised for "the next update" and never arrive. So, please, instead of hyping the update and pressuring Squad, ask for a high-quality release. Ask for updates which crush the outstanding issues lists. But Majiir, Rowsdower started this! Yes, he did. He also doesn't have to cope with the resulting mess created in the KSP codebase. Cheers, Majiir

64-bit KSP itself is broken. Please don't blame blizzy. Instead, avoid using 64-bit KSP until it becomes more stable. In its current state, it doesn't actually provide any benefit, because exceeding the 32-bit address space will cause regular crashes, so you effectively gain nothing from it.

Kerbal Stuff has now officially launched, concluding this challenge. See the announcement post here!

We're proud to announce Kerbal Stuff, the mod repository created by the KSP community! For the past few months, Kerbal Stuff has been in a public beta. During that time, more than a hundred mods have been uploaded, over a thousand users have registered for update notifications, and the site has served half a million downloads. Today, Kerbal Stuff goes gold! Built to meet the needs of modders and mod users, Kerbal Stuff has a host of great features: E-mail notifications when your favorite mods update Full version history with KSP compatibility information Instant downloads with no landing pages Fast uploads with no moderation queue Detailed download statistics ...and a lot more. Kerbal Stuff is developed, tested and operated entirely by volunteers in the KSP community: SirCmpwn is the lead developer of the Kerbal Stuff website. Majiir operates the server infrastructure which hosts the site. ferram4 and Rich help with day-to-day administration. Thousands of you helped test and improve the site design! We strive for Kerbal Stuff to serve the community's interests first and foremost. The site's policies are designed to encourage all kinds of content while protecting the rights of authors. If you're new to Kerbal Stuff, give it a try! Creating an account will let you sign up for notifications when your favorite mods update, and you'll also be able to create a profile and upload mods of your own. If you've already been using Kerbal Stuff, thank you for helping us in the public beta. We now encourage modders to use Kerbal Stuff as their primary distribution point. Additionally, the API is ready for large-scale consumption, so feel free to use it in your plugins and tools for update checks. For the latest on the site's development, see the development thread. Kerbal Stuff is open-source, so feel free to contribute new features. Finally, the launch of Kerbal Stuff represents the conclusion of the Community Repository Challenge. Congratulations! Other Discussions: Kerbal Stuff blog Reddit

So, I just woke up and haven't had my coffee yet. Not all of this needs to be public record, but since the discussion is already here... The outage affecting my servers has been resolved. The trigger for the outage is unknown; it could have been caused by a large spike in disk activity, or it could simply have been random. The outage affected all of my virtual machines, not just KerbalStuff's, which is why my IRC bouncer disconnected. I didn't respond to you because you sent me messages on the forums, IRC and e-mail within minutes of each other, with vague things like "it is urgent", and I was going to bed. You know what's urgent? Something's wrong and the server isn't responding! You know what's not urgent? Getting wound up about a forum post. If you really want to drag private conversations into the public, I'll be happy to link the full log. Spoiler: "equals" is not a term we agreed on. I don't pull the plug on servers or IRC bouncers over disagreements. That's not in my character.

There will be no ads on any mod site I host.

The blog post about licensing changes has been published: New Licensing with Kethane 0.9 It includes some good information aside from a summary of the changes, including some newly open-sourced code and a guide to creating a fully open-source Kethane fork.

Kethane 0.9 has been released. The download link on the first post has been updated. This update features major API enhancements and revisions to licensing. (A blog post with details about the new license terms will follow. [EDIT 2] Here it is.) Gameplay remains largely unchanged from version 0.8.8.1. Additionally, Kethane is now hosted on KerbalStuff instead of my nabaal.net serverâ€â€but KerbalStuff itself is hosted on my servers, so your download experience should be largely unchanged. Historical versions are still available on nabaal.net. [EDIT] This should go without saying, but this is a very breaking update for plugin API users. Part configs shouldn't need any updates, but any plugin referencing Kethane is definitely going to break. Changes in this version: Massive reorganization of plugin code. The previous mess of spaghetti has made way for a more organized codebase with fewer dependencies between components. Licensing has been revised to be more open and easier to understand. A license summary file is available in the repository root and in the download archive. Of particular note, (most of) the plugin is now available under the BSD 2-Clause license. This revision was facilitated by the aforementioned code reorganization. Revisions to the core resource API. The formerly monolithic KethaneData has been split into a number of classes for handling scenario state. Third-party code can now read and mutate state through accessors instead of modifying state directly. The resource generator interfaces now handle cell deposits through IBodyResources methods instead of the ICellResource interface (which has been removed). This reduces GC pressure in some cases (e.g. CellularResourceGenerator) and gives resource generators more control over how resources are read and extracted. In particular, cross-cell interactions can now be modeled within generators themselves. Toolbar support is now provided by blizzy78's wrapper code instead of an optional assembly. The KethaneToolbar.dll included with the download is intentionally empty, and the main Kethane plugin will clean it up on first run. Legacy save support has been removed. Saves generated prior to version 0.8.1 are now incompatible. To upgrade, load and save an old persistence file in version 0.8.8 before upgrading to 0.9. Reset Body Data in the debug panel now additionally resets the scan data. Since they weren't posted before, here are changelogs from the last few versions: Changes in 0.8.8.1 (taniwha): Fixed GetConnectedResources issue with converters. Changes in 0.8.8: Fixed erroneous CompatibilityChecker warning. Changes in 0.8.7: Rebalanced converter stats. Converters now produce useful mixes instead of individual fuels, and they no longer defy conservation of mass. There are also some waste byproducts which could be economically useful if captured. Logarithmic scaling of the scanning timewarp factor was removed in favor of a linear factor. This has the effect of removing the commonly observed "gaps" when scanning at medium timewarp rates. (Very high warp rates will still have gaps; this is a limitation of the simulation.) Part costs were adjusted across the board for the budget feature. The Kethane resource now has a unit cost, so it can be recovered for some value. Fixed optional converter inputs/outputs. (Thanks, taniwha, for the pull.)

There's a sticky for that.

Please report any specific issues to me. While SirCmpwn is the developer behind KerbalStuff, I am the operator and I determine policy on my server. I don't intend to filter the content on KerbalStuff aside from ensuring mod copyrights are respected. (And, y'know, uploads should be KSP-related.)

Someone says "let's not be abusive to modders" and it spawns eight pages of contentious discussion on whether that's actually a good idea. That's telling.

This is awesome. You're right, KAS doesn't support this very well. I don't have time to do much at all with KSP right now, but when I do, I'd like to look into better internationalization for mods. It can only be partial since some things like resource names go through KSP, but if enough mods have translations ready to go, it may influence the base game. So for now, I'll encourage you to continue writing translations for mods, and when there's more time I can work on making it easier with translation files.

I am busy with RL obligations. I am not participating in the Kerbin Cup this round. (My team got this far running at 50% anyway.) If you would like to make a serious offer to maintain or assist with any of my projects, please send me a note. They require a lot of time (and a lot of money, in some cases). Otherwise, kindly keep your thoughts on mod maintenance to yourself.

Note that while most implementations simply check against the KSP version, it's entirely possible that some mods might do more involved compatibility testing, e.g. by unit testing parts of the KSP API. The best way to understand the warning is to look at the source of each mod listed. I wonder who wrote it?