Modding Day-One KSP2

[Zombie_Striker]

I know KSP2 won't have modding support on day-one, but that wont stop me (or others) from trying. Most likely, there will still be a dozen or so people who will try to mod the game however they can.

I haven't seen a thread about modding yet, so I figured I'd make one. What is something you wish to be modded into the game, day-one?

[AtomicTech]

Aye, I'll be a week one or two modder.

I'm going to make my AtomicTech Inc. Junkyards II!

[GoldForest]

Without the part tools, we can't really make part mods. 

The only mod that might get made is plugins, I believe. 

[linuxgurugamer]

3 minutes ago, GoldForest said:

Without the part tools, we can't really make part mods. 

The only mod that might get made is plugins, I believe. 

Actually, no.  They will be releasing support for parts mods before plugins, and I suspect that it's going to be harder to reverse engineer this game than KSP 1

[AtomicTech]

5 minutes ago, GoldForest said:

Without the part tools, we can't really make part mods. 

The only mod that might get made is plugins, I believe. 

Where there's a will, and part configuration files, there's a way.

 

1 minute ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Actually, no.  They will be releasing support for parts mods before plugins, and I suspect that it's going to be harder to reverse engineer this game than KSP 1

Probably, although I suspect we'll get a really good knowledge of how it works from the tools that they give us.

[Scarecrow71]

I'm not a modder, but I will certainly be poring through the game data folders to see where things are located.  I also will be taking a look at the assets in the game itself to see what exists and to get an idea of what things I may like to see added.  Again, I'm no modder; I write code for a living, but I couldn't use Blender/Unity to save my own life.  But, I may try to at least see if I could figure out some stuff.

[AtomicTech]

Just now, Scarecrow71 said:

I'm not a modder, but I will certainly be poring through the game data folders to see where things are located.  I also will be taking a look at the assets in the game itself to see what exists and to get an idea of what things I may like to see added.  Again, I'm no modder; I write code for a living, but I couldn't use Blender/Unity to save my own life.  But, I may try to at least see if I could figure out some stuff.

Same here!

Spoiler

Also, longtime no see!

 

[GoldForest]

26 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Actually, no.  They will be releasing support for parts mods before plugins, and I suspect that it's going to be harder to reverse engineer this game than KSP 1

I know official support for parts is coming first, but someone brute forcing it might be able to make a plug-in work is what I was saying.

Edited February 23, 2023 by GoldForest

[Gotmachine]

We don't need anything from the devs to start modding KSP 2.
There is a quite dynamic community and toolset ecosystem allowing to extensively mod any Unity game. The most popular/advanced of these tools is BepinEx.
In fact, I would argue that given how overwhelmed Intercept seems to be with trying to put the game together, they should probably let the modding community handle everything on their own.

[linuxgurugamer]

4 hours ago, Gotmachine said:

We don't need anything from the devs to start modding KSP 2.
There is a quite dynamic community and toolset ecosystem allowing to extensively mod any Unity game. The most popular/advanced of these tools is BepinEx.
In fact, I would argue that given how overwhelmed Intercept seems to be with trying to put the game together, they should probably let the modding community handle everything on their own.

I'd actually disagree with this.  It would be best if the devs provided at least some guidance as to how to set up mods, package them, etc.  Otherwise you end up with the absolute mess that the GameData directory is, in that mods seem to have their own internal layout for things.  There has been somewhat of an acceptance of some conventions for layout, but it's still somewhat of a mess.

Regarding BepInEx,  it's going to depends on whether they are still using the C# byte-code compilation, or if they did as mentioned years ago about translating the C# code to C++ and then compiling it down.

[Gotmachine]

1 hour ago, linuxgurugamer said:

It would be best if the devs provided at least some guidance as to how to set up mods, package them, etc

Yes, in an ideal world, KSP 2 would have a proper mod manager that define and handle packaging, semver, dependencies, metadata, etc.
My little finger tells me we aren't in that world, and that we better handle all this by ourself.

As for using an external / community maintained modding toolset / modloader / injector, there are several benefits at doing so, regardless of if the game if using the Mono or Il2CPP backend.
But frankly, I don't see how they could possible have made the "KSP 2 will be more moddable than KSP 1" statement if the game is using IL2CPP.
I know that personally, that would probably kill all motivation for me to develop mods for KSP 2.

[Kerb24]

I want to try to learn to mod, but I won't have time to do it for a few months.

[MARL_Mk1]

To those of you who have and / or will mod KSP2 for the benefit of all, thanks in advance

[drhay53]

To answer the original topic:

A reliable launch profile and autopilot like GravityTurn.

Other forms of autopilot like mechjeb.

Edit: KerbalJointReinforcement

Complain if you want, but doing everything manually gets boring after a while. I'll do it a few times but after that I'd like a mod that creates proper maneuver nodes for common patterns and automates launching. I suspect this is going to be the first thing that sends me back to ksp1 while waiting for more ksp2 content.

Edited February 23, 2023 by drhay53

[regex]

Two things I'll be looking into fairly soon (probably not day 1) are making a PID tuner and adding axial tilt to Kerbin. But I'm not a modding trailblazer, I usually get involved once the scene has a process which works.

[linuxgurugamer]

26 minutes ago, drhay53 said:

To answer the original topic:

A reliable launch profile and autopilot like GravityTurn.

Other forms of autopilot like mechjeb.

Edit: KerbalJointReinforcement

Complain if you want, but doing everything manually gets boring after a while. I'll do it a few times but after that I'd like a mod that creates proper maneuver nodes for common patterns and automates launching. I suspect this is going to be the first thing that sends me back to ksp1 while waiting for more ksp2 content.

Are you planning on doing this, or just saying this is what you want?  Because this thread was asking what modders would be doing, not what was desired

[drhay53]

30 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Are you planning on doing this, or just saying this is what you want?  Because this thread was asking what modders would be doing, not what was desired

That's not what the OP says. It says "What is something you wish to be modded into the game, day-one?"

Edit: meaning, this is my wishlist. Which is what I thought was being asked.

Edited February 23, 2023 by drhay53

[FreeThinker]

2 hours ago, Gotmachine said:

As for using an external / community maintained modding toolset / modloader / injector, there are several benefits at doing so, regardless of if the game if using the Mono or Il2CPP backend.
But frankly, I don't see how they could possible have made the "KSP 2 will be more moddable than KSP 1" statement if the game is using IL2CPP.
I know that personally, that would probably kill all motivation for me to develop mods for KSP 2.

What is so bad about IL2CPP exactly?

[K^2]

9 hours ago, GoldForest said:

Without the part tools, we can't really make part mods.

You absolutely can. This is a Unity game. Even if all the assets were locked away inside the package files, there are ways to inject replacements. And if it's like KSP, where the part files themselves are loose, then it's just a matter of reverse-engineering the file format and writing a custom exporter, like a Blender script, for it. No decompilation or any other EULA-violating intervention required even. Hex editor and a bit of savvy is all that's needed.

So we can have part mods within days of the early access released. Functional mods are another matter. That might take a while, and without an official API, I don't know if they'd be possible in a way that would be consistent with forum rules. So we might have to actually wait for the Intercept to release a modding SDK to have anything like robotics parts, for example.

And yeah, if nobody else is going to be looking into it, I'll take a crack at a Blender script for part mods. I should have time over the weekend.

[stephensmat]

I will admit Mechjeb became indispensable for me; and I hope to see it in KSP2.

With some of the 'automatic missions' we keep hearing about, I doubt it'll be as necessary, but still...

[linuxgurugamer]

2 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

What is so bad about IL2CPP exactly?

Probably that it can't be decompiled/reverse engineered.  

Frankly, I'm expecting a scripting engine somewhat like Lua or another languahe

[DareDrop]

For all of you that have made mods and maintained them THANKS SO MUCH. KSP would not have been the game that it has been without you. We may not have even seen KSP2. The Mods have been everything from small and useful to, at sometimes, large and heartbreaking, but you tried and persisted.

Please Keep it up.