Program to control Mods?

[LadyAthena]

This idea came when I was playing Skyrim.. heavily modded. There is program that you hook to the Skyrim .exe It detects your saves and creates profiles for each character and it's saves. When you boot up the program, you choose a character, and forces the game to load only saves that has to do with that specific character.

Like-wise as we all know. Elder Scrolls games also lets you activate and de-active mods with a push of a button.

So why have this?

You could have multiple career games with different setup of mods. One game could be focused more on cosmetics, and EVE, making the world beautiful with minimal other mods. Another could be focused ehavily on parts, or difficulty by using TAC and Remote Tech, etc. (Stuff like this would seem to be helpful to youtubers as well).

Basically the idea is to combine the two into 1.

A program that hooks into the KSP .exe that you start up first. (Similar to the already created CKan for mod management). In it you can select and deselect mods, and only the mods you selected are loaded by KSP. The others ignored.

Also having the option to "save" a profile of mod loadouts for quick switching.

Possible?

[hab136]

Check out CKAN.

However if you have multiple sets of mods, simply keeping two copies of KSP works a lot better - just copy your whole Kerbal Space Program directory.

[LadyAthena]

Check out CKAN.

However if you have multiple sets of mods, simply keeping two copies of KSP works a lot better - just copy your whole Kerbal Space Program directory.

I already mentioned CKan in my original post. Helps to read ~.-

Also, the reason for my question of such things, is so people don't have to have multiple KSP's installed.

Everyone knows about keeping two copies and CKan.

[stibbons]

Then you'll know that ckan already supports metapackages.

[Frostea]

Then you'll know that ckan already supports metapackages.

IMO metapackages are about halfway to what LadyAthena is asking for, which is a fully featured UI-based method of swapping mod packages. I like this idea. Might be even better if you could specify custom cfg files that you have written yourself for certain packages.

[magico13]

A long time ago I wrote something that is like a start to this idea that let you swap between GameData folders (and save folders and whatever other folders you wanted) called DataSwitcher. No one used it, so I stopped working on it. PJF and the rest of the CKAN team have some ideas for how to implement different mod groups that you can easily swap between in CKAN, so I'd expect that will be coming. It'll happen faster if pjf can afford to do more "sprints". Currently he can only afford to do 1 a month, but if you want to help make that two you can check out his patreon page.

[NathanKell]

Good show pointing out that link, I want to second the motion.

If I recall, the CKAN team were brainstorming how to do this with various file system tricks; it's dead easy on Linux but less so on Windows, but I have faith they'll get there.

[magico13]

If I recall, the CKAN team were brainstorming how to do this with various file system tricks; it's dead easy on Linux but less so on Windows, but I have faith they'll get there.

On Windows you can still use symlinks, but you have to have administrator privileges, which is sometimes frustrating. That's how my old program works. Makes it very quick to switch between mod lists

[NathanKell]

I junction most of my mod folders between my git directory and KSP (and between KSP installs), but yeah, it needs admin privileges and that's (AIUI) the sticking point for CKAN.

And since KSP_Data is shared, instead of switching mod lists, can have like 10 installs that take no more than 1 install + sum(all mods)

[Fel]

Basically... this is just module manager with a GUI... kind of.

I am not completely certain what problems can occur if you try updating the parts database after the parts have loaded; but BEFORE the parts load, you should be able to do anything you want.

If you have the first load order, it should be possible to block certain dlls from loading (Hmm... I thought you might be able to affect permissions from here, but it looks like I'm wrong)... or try using binarywriter to create the dlls you want to load, (depends on how KSP iterates through them).

If all else fails, you could just load the assemblies/DLLs yourself.

Edited April 23, 2015 by Fel

[LadyAthena]

IMO metapackages are about halfway to what LadyAthena is asking for, which is a fully featured UI-based method of swapping mod packages. I like this idea. Might be even better if you could specify custom cfg files that you have written yourself for certain packages.

Exactly

A long time ago I wrote something that is like a start to this idea that let you swap between GameData folders (and save folders and whatever other folders you wanted) called DataSwitcher. No one used it, so I stopped working on it. PJF and the rest of the CKAN team have some ideas for how to implement different mod groups that you can easily swap between in CKAN, so I'd expect that will be coming. It'll happen faster if pjf can afford to do more "sprints". Currently he can only afford to do 1 a month, but if you want to help make that two you can check out his patreon page.

Nice link! I hope they can do it, it'll really open up the game for people, especially modders. More so because of the memory limitations of the game. If/when Squad finally gets 64 bit fully going, this'll be a big help for those mods that conflict with others, allowing you to have multiple instances of saves and profiles for mods.