cain546 Posted February 17, 2016 Share Posted February 17, 2016 I have been through several arguments and splits in community over open source projects and i know how bad the mud throwing can get, all i can say is cheer up and things will get better. keep up the good work squad! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Rocket Scientist Posted February 17, 2016 Share Posted February 17, 2016 Thanks for this nice response to the community doing what it always does when something changes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Somtaaw Posted February 17, 2016 Share Posted February 17, 2016 Thanks for the official response on this happening, tbh I had no idea Kerbalstuff had closed, I only have to get new mods once in a while so I rarely look and go 'window-shopping' for new mods to try out. I wouldn't say no to KSP becoming a little closer to Curse though, so it gets added to the Curse Client list of "able to auto-update mods", which it currently does not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kerbal101 Posted February 17, 2016 Share Posted February 17, 2016 Curse has been the most broken upload website I ever used in my life. After 10 re-uploads because it complained about mod avatar aspect and size, it failed to process 7z five times and finally even zip. The only big advantage of it compared to Kerbalstuff is the download speed. Hence, my choice was ya.disk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dudicus Posted February 17, 2016 Share Posted February 17, 2016 (edited) While i think Squad is a great group of devs, which this post is evidence of, I still feel like there's an elephant in the room that's being ignored; the community is very much opposed to using the official mod repository. I don't really want to debate the merits or shortcomings of Curse but I think its telling that the community continually seeks ways to circumvent it. I understand Squad is primarily focused on the core game play, but it would be remiss to assume they receive no value from the modding community in general. Consider all of the product quality testing, game design and even talent acquisition they have gained from such a robust and active community. That being said, i feel like modding support, especially the repository and mod managers (like CKAN) deserve a little more "official" attention and support from Squad. The mods in the game really make it something special and many users, including myself, would not have devoted so much time and attention if it weren't for all the great mods. Having about 50 mods installed in my current career save, its vitally important that we have some way to manage all these add-ons. I hope that at some point in the not-so-distant future, Squad picks this up and helps to implement an official mod manager and repository, so both mod developers and mod users are able to focus more time on development/game-play and less on mod management and implementation. Edited February 17, 2016 by Dudicus edit: a word. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juanfro Posted February 17, 2016 Share Posted February 17, 2016 Curse at this moment is not a mod repository, it is a bucket where mods are stored, meanwhile spacedock + CKAN is better and similar to what Spaceport 2 could have been. What happens when spacedock runs out of fuel and nobody wants to keep it alive in exchange of a handful of kudos? Do we go to the bucket again? Please don't settle for a half assed "solution" like curse, take your time if you need it and try to make it work, you do it for every single update, you are doing it with multiplayer, why not do it for the integration of mods in the game? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KasperVld Posted February 17, 2016 Author Share Posted February 17, 2016 With all due respect, I'm aware that a part of the community has opposed and still opposes Curse. There's really nothing I can say or do to convince you otherwise but more importantly this topic is not the place to discuss it. If you wish to discuss the Curse network then please open a topic for that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SagaciousFoo Posted February 17, 2016 Share Posted February 17, 2016 Just curious. Are there any games out right now that have official, dev-supported mod repositories? I'm pretty sure nearly everything is either Steam Workshop based or fan-run. No game developer/publisher wants to have to pay to maintain a mod site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptRobau Posted February 17, 2016 Share Posted February 17, 2016 2 hours ago, Hobbes Novakoff said: Not sure that that's really how that works. CKAN integration will help the most. Curseforge is not as open as KS was, so it wasn't able to integrate well with CKAN. I definitely got a boost from configuring my mod OPM for use with CKAN, so I think this will help SpaceDock adoption the most. Personally, as a mod dev, I think both any KS replacement and Curseforge need to work most on mod discovery. It doesn't necessarily need to be about the amount of mods. It needs to be about being able to find any sort of mod. The best way to stay up-to-date on cool mods, large and small, is still the forum. It's a bit crazy that someone who checks the mod forums daily still can find small mods that did something super cool two months ago and have since been abandoned because two people downloaded it. This is in part I think because of two omissions: Not enough categories. At this point any mod repository needs to have categories for planet packs, realistic mods, etc. We shouldn't have to put anything that doesn't fit within the standard framework of KSP in Misc or Gameplay if it's become popular enough. Not enough time period selection. If you want to stay up-to-date with mods, you basically have to watch the forum because there's no popularity category for the last week, month, etc. All-time popularity categories are very much useless for keeping up to date, because no mods can get into that within a short period. So anything that's hot and heavy, people need to discover through Reddit or the forum, which are above the level of KSP interest of many. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
godarklight Posted February 17, 2016 Share Posted February 17, 2016 To make it clear, I personally don't oppose curse, nor are we trying to destroy it or anything silly like that - that's not what spacedock is about to me and others from the spacedock team. It's just another place to upload mods, and for CKAN it's a storage backend as curse's policies disallow automated tools. But having something by the community for the community is also nice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirCmpwn Posted February 17, 2016 Share Posted February 17, 2016 Kerbal Stuff guy here. Someone pointed out to me that this official statement exists. Thanks for the response, Squad. I appreciate its candidness, and that it exists at all, and I figured I'd stop by and add even more clarification. Firstly, we were blamed for continuing to support Curse as the official mod repository, in spite of KerbalStuff hosting more mods. The reason for this lies in the history of the website’s creation: it was developed specifically to be an unofficial, independent alternative to the official mod repository. Curse provided, and still provides, a stable platform for uploading mods and other ingame content, and we have no reason to end our partnership with them. Because of those two arguments, we never explored the possibility of making KerbalStuff the ‘official’ mod repository. At this time similar arguments can be made for other community initiatives, such as KerbalX, CKAN or the KSP Subreddit. Eventually I gave up, but I believe I made it very clear that Squad's choice to support Curse and continue supporting Curse over Kerbal Stuff was the wrong choice and that I wanted to seal the deal and make Kerbal Stuff official. I had also reached out to them in the past and offered things like admin positions on the site for KSP staff. Kerbal Stuff wasn't developed to be an "unofficial, independent alternative", it was developed because Curse sucked and I wanted to make something better available. Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, was the accusation that we threatened the website with legal action. We would like to stress that no such thing happened. Back in 2014 when the website was being developed we were in the process of acquiring a trademark on the word Kerbal, and part of the obligations one has as a trademark holder is to investigate possible infringements of your trademark. Failure to do so may invalidate the trademark entirely at a later point. To this end we talked to the people behind Kerbalstuff to determine what the website was going to be, and several scenarios were discussed briefly including possibly renaming KerbalStuff. As it was to be a non-commercial community website it quickly became clear that no legal action was warranted against KerbalStuff, and we never pursued legal action against Kerbalstuff or any other community website for using the phrase Kerbal in its name. We’re thankful that Sircmpwn has since retracted this part of the statement from the Kerbalstuff website, but we’ve received a lot of questions about it. I misspoke when I originally used the words "legal action" in my public letter, and have since edited it after KasperVld reached out and pointed out that it could be misread. I never saw letters from lawyers, but there was a discussion that I felt very threatened about. I was *told* to change the name - it wasn't an open dialogue. There were several weeks of arguing back and forth about this, followed by a long period of silence that was never properly resolved. I never heard the words "you can use Kerbal in the name" from Squad, even after bringing the matter back up several times. The discussion was hostile. - - - I'd still like to let this die. My feelings from the original letter still stand - maintaining Kerbal Stuff is a burden that went unnoticed and unappreciated from both Squad and the community. I will extend a warm "thank you" to the hundreds of players who have emailed me words of late thanks and encouragement, and a cold "love you" to the dozens of players who emailed me rude and spiteful comments, but the decision remains final. A lot of people have also suggested donations - none of this is because of money. I can afford to host Kerbal Stuff very easily. Thanks, though, honestly. SpaceDock has my blessing. I have also given them a copy of the database (all personal info removed). Hopefully they can meet your modding needs in the future so no one has to deal with the awful mess that is Curse. Maybe in the future Squad will even reconsider their choice to support Curse and go with the superior alternative? Time will tell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 17, 2016 Share Posted February 17, 2016 2 minutes ago, SirCmpwn said: A bunch of good stuff. I'd just like to say thank you for dedicating so much time and money on it. I will miss Kerbal Stuff, but I understand why you shut it down. A lot of people don't understand the cost of running it. Again, thank you for all of the time you put into it. Many people are upset that it's gone, and I am, too, but I think it was the right decision. We all support you here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jkortech Posted February 17, 2016 Share Posted February 17, 2016 26 minutes ago, KasperVld said: With all due respect, I'm aware that a part of the community has opposed and still opposes Curse. There's really nothing I can say or do to convince you otherwise but more importantly this topic is not the place to discuss it. If you wish to discuss the Curse network then please open a topic for that One thing that Squad could do that would be a big step would be having one of the Get Mods links go to a page that has Curse and SpacePort mentioned. You could phrase it like "Curse, the official mod repository" and "SpacePort, the community run mod repository". Just having info on both for new players easily accessible would fix the visibility issue that people complain about and Curse would stay the official repository. Any thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth C3P0 Posted February 17, 2016 Share Posted February 17, 2016 It is very sad that KS is down. Here is what the page said Quote Kerbal Stuff is shutting down On June 1st 2014, I started working on Kerbal Stuff. 20 months have passed. 1,191 mods have been uploaded and 20,407 users registered with the site. Today, I am officially closing Kerbal Stuff. I'll explain how it came to this. I built Kerbal Stuff after the announcement that KSP mods were to be officially moved to Curse. At the time, and still today, I did not feel that Curse would do right by the kommunity. I stepped up to build an alternative that would be much better than the mess Curse would provide. I built Kerbal Stuff to do right by the kommunity where Squad wouldn't. I opened up a beta and got some modders on board, and Kerbal Stuff was very well received. It's fair to say that Kerbal Stuff decisively won the battle over Curse, providing hosting for nearly double the number of mods. It boils down to Kerbal Stuff simply being better at it. Kerbal Stuff had no ads for its entire lifetime, emailed users when their mods updated, and cared more about the modders and the players. Undoubtedly Kerbal Stuff has had a direct impact on Squad's revenue - how many players must have hopped back into Kerbal Space Program after getting an email about their favorite mod receiving an update? In the past month, despite frequent downtime and slow page loads, Kerbal Stuff has served 1.2 million page views over 279 thousand sessions for over 84 thousand unique visitors. As thanks, Squad continues to endorse Curse as the official source for KSP mods. They refuse to even mention Kerbal Stuff in public. During the early days, they even tried to have the name changed to omit the word "Kerbal", citing a trademark that didn't exist (they later registered the trademark). Even setting Squad aside, running Kerbal Stuff is a largely thankless job. In fact, for the most part, I just hear complaints. Most people don't actually care about the effort put into it. Whenever I've taken the time to add features or make improvements or meet the requests of users, no one has shown any appreciation. I stopped volunteering my time and energy to extend this website, because my efforts were always met with silence or complaints. I don't have expectations of anyone. I don't expect anyone to gush over how great any new features I implement are. I don't expect Squad to support Kerbal Stuff as the official source for mods. However, these factors have contributed to the apathy I have for the ongoing maintenance of Kerbal Stuff. I'm not willing to invest more of my time and energy into making Kerbal Stuff faster or more stable. I have been well aware of the slowness and instability, but I simply have no motivation to fix it. I would like to thank those who have been supportive. Thanks to the volunteer admins for helping maintain the site. Thanks as well to the modders who chose to host their mods on Kerbal Stuff, and the users who chose to use it as their source for mods. All of the mods hosted on Kerbal Stuff are available via this torrent. The source code for Kerbal Stuff will continue to be available on Github. I can be reached at [email protected]. - Drew "SirCmpwn" DeVault Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceplaneAddict Posted February 17, 2016 Share Posted February 17, 2016 @KasperVld, I may not speak for @SirCmpwn, but I honestly think this is the kind of "apology" I would be looking for! My respect for you and the rest of @SQUAD is now double than before, meaning.... IT'S OVER 9000!!!!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robotengineer Posted February 17, 2016 Share Posted February 17, 2016 Thank you for the OP @KasperVld, and for your response, @SirCmpwn. Hopefully the new space dock.info will be up to where KerbalStuff was, content wise, soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warp_8 Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 Darn, I liked Kerbalstuff. I wonder what happened to CKAN? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimbodiah Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 (edited) I only went to CurseForge as a last resort if KerbalStuff was acting up or it was not available on Github, and then even only if the mod author had a link to it. Sad to see the lack of love and KerbalStuff pulling the plug, but understandable. Also nice to see the vultures already circling. Edited February 18, 2016 by Jimbodiah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrChumley Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 6 hours ago, KasperVld said: Thanks again to Sircmpwn and Majiir for running this amazing website, an even bigger thanks to our amazing modding community and the best wishes to the team picking up where KerbalStuff left off. Hear, hear! We have an awesome community. Posts like this make me proud to call myself a part of it. I also want to briefly address the source of apathy that caused this to happen. As a (very minor) mod maintainer, I understand some of the reasons that caused this all to come about. If you really like a mod, or service, especially one that is given freely at no charge, a simple "thanks", and acknowledgement goes a long way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buzzkil88 Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 Thank you for the reply guys. I'd still like to voice my opinion though. Steam Workshop. Opinion over. Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buzzkil88 Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 1 hour ago, Warp_8 said: Darn, I liked Kerbalstuff. I wonder what happened to CKAN? It's a mess. Most mods on ckan link to kerbal stuff for download. Ends in an error. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swjr-swis Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 4 minutes ago, Buzzkil88 said: It's a mess. Most mods on ckan link to kerbal stuff for download. Ends in an error. Give it a few more days, guys. There is a team working hard on getting a new server set up for the mod repository and CKAN links/metadata updated, and mod authors have to get the opportunity to upload their mods to the new server. Some mod authors may not even know yet something happened. It can't all be done in a blink of an eye. A few days of inconvenience and we'll be back in business. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yemo Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 9 minutes ago, Buzzkil88 said: It's a mess. Most mods on ckan link to kerbal stuff for download. Ends in an error. First public ones updated to spaceport reference and test-downloaded using ckan about half an hour ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buzzkil88 Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 Just now, TheMoonRover said: So that's why I couldn't download a copy of my own mod through CKAN. At least it's also on Curse, but I can't update it by myself on there. Am I right in thinking Curse allows only one author per mod? Not sure. Never use curse. Always ckan and kerbalstuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r4pt0r Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 I wish curse would just die. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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