Majiir

No worries on the technologies. You're using a CSS preprocesser, which is better than other projects can say. My main concern is features. Subscriptions are only slightly lower on the list than the ability to upload and download mods. We can certainly test the spam issue before putting it live.

I've written a new base class for resource generators. This should make it much easier to write custom generator plugins. Here's an example generator using the new system: using System; using Kethane; namespace ExampleGeneratorPlugin { public class ExampleResourceGenerator : CellularResourceGenerator { public ExampleResourceGenerator(ConfigNode config) { // This constructor is required, but it can be empty. // The parameter is the Generator node in the persistence file, which defaults to the Generator node given in the KethaneResource definition. } public override void Initialize(CelestialBody body, Cell.Map<double> amounts) { // Populate cells with initial values here. foreach (var cell in Cell.AtLevel(amounts.Level)) { amounts[cell] = Math.Abs(Math.Asin(cell.Position.x)); } } } }

I'm curious why KAS is in the Crippled list. It was previously hosted only on Spaceport, and it is now hosted on my own servers. The license does not allow redistribution. Have you found it elsewhere?

KospY wrote those license terms, so I'll need to be cautious about making any changes. He decided to allow the use of some modules and not others. For now, I'll ask you to respect that decision. However, if you have specific plans you'd like to discuss, feel free to get in touch and a case-by-case exception may be more appropriate. (My PM inbox is full, so #kspmodders or email please.)

I don't see how the boldface events are compatible.

I misunderstood "required" to mean "must-have". Now that I understand what you were getting at, I think name and version strings should be required; KSP version should be required, but it should also default to the latest version at the time of uploading; there should always be a summary, but it would be fine if it defaulted to the first paragraph of the description. I think it would be fine if the summary were required and the description optional, and the summary is just copied (and bolded or otherwise emphasized) on the mod listing page. If Author is the same thing as Owner/Uploader, then it should be required (and this is easy) but if it's a separate field, it should be optional. The rest should all be optional or not present, I think. (In other words, I probably wouldn't change much at all of what you've listed.) Source control links could be great because we could integrate with various repository sites. Forum thread could be neat... I'm just on the fence about privileging certain links, especially things like donate buttons. The conservative answer is to skip them for now, since the description field can serve those purposes and they can always be added later at minimal cost. I think that's all fair. Skipping validation will help get users involved quickly. We should just be mindful that validation serves a purpose. It could also help to require validation within 7 days of registration, for example. Yes, but I put fairly low value on Squad's endorsement anyway. I think modder endorsement is much more important. If most of the top ten mods link to a community-operated repository, it's much more likely to succeed. Squad is icing on the cake.

That depends on how you interpret that metaphor. Some prototypes already exist, but they're not gaining much traction because it doesn't look like they faithfully implement the requirements this thread generated (or they're noticeably unpolished). I don't think it's enough to just produce a mod repository; it needs to check all the boxes, not check too many more, and wrap it all up in a package that's easy to use and deploy.

Multiple concurrent projects seem like a great thing to me. If joining an existing project were really the path of least resistance, we wouldn't be seeing multiple projects come up. There are good reasons to diverge, as blizzy78 and others have already mentioned. Yes, I'll be doing setup. There shouldn't be any need for direct interaction with the server except for upgrades, which I'll want to perform or supervise anyway. Generally speaking, I'll want to minimize server access, but we can play that by ear. Screenshots are only a small part of the equation. Is it secure? Does it meet the feature requirements of the community as discussed in this thread? Can it handle high load? Does it have a server with sufficient bandwidth? And perhaps the most important: Will modders use it? Will players use it? Going to Rowsdower with every half-baked site is a quick way to get him to completely ignore us. Make a site that's supported by the important stakeholders and runs successfully for a week or two, and then we can think about getting a Squad endorsement. Great document. I have some comments which are my own opinions, so take as much or little of these as you like: I don't think mod categories are a must-have. It's hard enough to get people to agree on what categories to use even when you do have a category system. (See: Curse, and how even consulting with #kspmodders, nobody can come up with a good category list.) Mod dependencies are definitely not a must-have. Too few mods have dependencies at all, and those that do are generally straight-forward to negotiate. I assume that in the "mod metadata" section, bold for required indicates that it's a required feature, not a required piece of metadata. In any case, this should be clarified. I don't think Links or License are necessary metadata; there's a description box for those. Maybe some users want them... which puts it down into the Useful or later category. I really like your proposed moderation scheme. It allows mods to immediately upload, but also enables moderators to easily filter out the obvious spammers. I'll only suggest that the flagging feature should probably be must-have. Does e-mail verification really count as a release-blocking system? I wonder if there's some sort of middle ground, e.g. requiring verification in order to get subscription notification e-mails. Overall I quite like it. Some things could shift around but it's detailed while remaining concise.

Many thanks for this! It looks a bit incompleteâ€â€it would be great to mention the other works in progress, no matter how minorâ€â€but that's easily fixed. Some of the feature descriptions are a bit specific; by that I mean there's room for discussion on some of them, and the document presents exactly one view. But by and large it reflects the thread fairly well, and it's good for getting newcomers up to speed. [EDIT] Regarding newcomers and bandwagons: While some projects have made more progress than others, I see no clear leader at this point. New projects are welcome, and I think it will help to have a variety of options.

So far, this thread is all spam that could be documented elsewhere, like on Google Docs. The other thread has seen several work-in-progress implementations, two of which have come quite far. Medavox is even working to organize things at the meta level. Go ahead with this thread if you like, but certainly don't think you're the only one taking action. It could be helpful to embrace other projects.

Can I ask why you spun off a new thread? The enthusiasm is awesome. I'm not sure what's so distinct about this project that requires another thread. I'll look forward to seeing what comes of this.

It does. I'd feel better about it if it were going to good use. That's why I started this challenge. It would be worth asking Squad to give it some visibility. But there is no point doing that until a community repository has been finished and operated live for some time.

To those offering domains: many thanks, and keep them coming. This is an important part of making the actual deployment work. Summary of domain options so far: kerbal.net kerbalstation.org kss.io kspmodders.com spaceport.kerbalcentral.com I'll point out that ksp.io is available if anyone wants to snag it. I hope domain owners are willing to have domains paired with whatever software meets the requirements. If that's not the case, please specify that so it can figure into our planning.

I don't know enough about Ruby to comment on code quality, but even the domains alone would be very useful. Besides, it has the best TOS of any mod hosting site we've seen: http://www.kerbalstation.org/tos.html I'm really liking that there are multiple projects working in parallel. It doesn't much matter that some are more finished than others; we can always migrate from one to another if a higher-quality project arises. So, consider this my word of encouragement to everyone.

Flexibility is great. Being able to completely swap out a front-end or back-end while keeping the rest will help the project grow with competing solutions. In that spirit, don't get too attached to any particular technologyâ€â€mod_rewrite is specific to Apache. There are a lot of ways to do routing (mod_rewrite, nginx rewrite, framework routing modules, etc).

So, you've made a mod - now share it! There are a lot of ways to host your mod for download, and each has its tradeoffs. Here's a short overview of some of your options. SpaceDock The community-built hosting site. SpaceDock has no ads (right now), free, and featuring integration with CKAN, as well as useful download statistics. Decent bandwidth and page load times. Currently maintained by the SpaceDock dev team, you can get in touch with them on the Esper IRC channel #spacedock. KerbalStuff Dead for the foreseeable future. You may wish to use SpaceDock instead. GitHub If you want one place to manage your project, its code, support requests and all of its releases, GitHub is for you. Its file hosting is rather basic - there's very little in the way of download statistics - but it's free, has no ads and doesn't have a low bandwidth cap. You can use shields.io to get basic metadata. Dropbox, Google Drive, MediaFire and others These sites are free and generally quite easy to use. If you host a large and/or popular mod, you might run into bandwidth limits, but smaller projects should get along just fine. I can't speak to the quality of their download statistics, but it's a notch above GitHub to my knowledge. CurseForge Squad has partnered with Curse to allow KSP mods through CurseForge. You can earn revenue for hosting popular mods with Curse, or avoid advertisements by linking to CurseForge. It also has a moderation queue which can delay mod uploads, and mods uploaded to Curse are subject to the KSP addon posting rules. Majiir I am offering free, no-advertisements, no-strings-attached hosting for mods. Right now there is no website for mods I host, but you can create one of your own if you like. Get in touch with me in this thread, on IRC or by email (majiir-[at]-majiir-dot-net) if you're interested. I also operate KerbalStuff, but you may be interested in individual hosting if you have a domain name you'd like to use, or if you're hosting very large files. Self-hosting If you have your own web hosting service, you can self-host - but this can be expensive, particularly if your mod becomes popular. Hosting on a personal computer often provides a poor experience for users, so I recommend you stay away from this option unless you have the resources to support it. What about Kerbal Spaceport? Spaceport was shut down May 30, 2014. Help me improve this guide. If you have any information to contribute to this guide, please post your thoughts. As usual, moderators, feel free to make edits to improve this post.

Squad has stated they'll support (with words, at least) a community repository.

See this thread and submit a full debug log on the Kethane bug tracker. Happy to fix this, but I can't without logs. (Up-to-date logs from KSP 0.23.5 would be best.)

Things I like: 소녀시대 Coffee High download counts Someone else answering stupid common questions in my mod threads Pictures of awesome Kethane contraptions Cool mods using the Kethane API Things I don't care about: "omg great mod!" Reputation points (it was nice when I was unique in having two bars, but now every General Discussion spammer has nine bars and it's meaningless) So here's an idea... If you want to do more for modders, ask us what we want. We all like different things.

No worries. It frustrates me too. I've considered a few ways to shake things up and I'm not fully happy with any yet. Happy to take suggestions on how to compromise a little.

Basically this. To make performance reasonable while maintaining accuracy is non-trivial. If anyone has a serious proposal for how to solve this, by all means, share it. So far, everything I've seen is along the lines of "just record the trajectory and then turn that into hexes, easy, duh."

Keeping track of what orbit a vessel has been in and for how long: easy. Efficiently computing which cells that vessel has passed over in that time: hard.

Do not move mod files. It's a recipe for errors. Many mods depend on files being in a specific location. If you want to trim down mods, go ahead and delete parts after you've installed the mod.

You don't have the latest version of something (probably KSP). The ARM pack counts as a version and is required by the latest versions of these mods. The warning displayed comes from CompatibilityChecker, which is built into both KAS and MechJeb, among others.

Putting a GameData folder in the root is the only "standard" I've seen advocated. Some mods do need to place files elsewhere, so this reduces ambiguity, but it also helps users who aren't intimate with mod installation. We take a lot of steps to make sure users don't make mistakes during the installation process. (In the case of Kethane, these steps have all been reactive, not preventative. Users are alarmingly good at screwing things up.) Overwriting readme files is a separate issue. That's obviously a bad thing, and it's also not a consequence of including a GameData folder. While I agree with John FX's sentiment that folders in GameData should represent mods and not authors, I must point out that you should not rename a mod's folder unless you really, really know what you're doing. Many mods depend on their file locations being unchanged, and violating this can have weird and unexpected results.