Categorization of mods

[linuxgurugamer]

I'm trying to come up with a set of categories which the various mods fall into. There are so many mods, and sometimes it's hard to figure out one from another

My first stab at this is:

Editor Controls

Flight Controls (Mechjeb would be here, as well as in reports)

Eye Candy

Quality of Life (ie: information which may not be reports)

Reports (ie: Fusebox)

Patches/Fixes

The following are from Curse:

Command and Control

Gameplay

Miscellaneous

Parts Pack

Physics

Propulsion

Resources

Science

Ship Systems

Structural and Aerodynamic

Sub-Assembly

Utility and Navigation

I think that the Curse categories are too broad in some areas, for example, Gameplay could include anything from editor controls to physics.

My initial goal is to be able to put the mods that I use into various categories, so that I can more easily decide which to keep and which to delete. Eventually, I may suggest to the CKAN people to add an optional category field.

Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

[hab136]

Here's my mod bookmark categories:

[Streetwind]

For my personal little "list of mods which I find interesting" notepad file, I use:

- Visual (things like EVE, EngineLight, TextureReplacer)

- Utility (things like Kerbal Alarm Clock, Kerbal Engineer, PreciseNode)

- Content (things like Near Future, Outer Planets Mod, most contract packs)

- Gamechangers (things like alternate tech trees, Ferram Aerospace Research, RemoteTech)

Some mods fall into multiple categories, and in that case, I categorize it based on the reason I install it for. As an example: RemoteTech adds content (new antennas and stuff), but I don't install it for the parts. I install it to change the way unmanned probes and science transmissions work. Therefore it goes under Gamechangers.

[SAI Peregrinus]

5 main categories:

Libraries: ModularFlightIntegrator, USI Tools, ModuleManager, and the like. Mods that do nothing on their own but provide APIs for other mods to use.

Parts: Things like the entire USI catalog, Infernal Robotics, OPT, etc.

Aesthetics: Chatterer, EVE, etc.

UI: KAC, KER, Precise Node, etc.

Gameplay: RemoteTech, FAR, USI Life support, etc.

Mods can be in more than one category. USI Life Support adds parts AND changes gameplay significantly.

[sarbian]

-Mechjeb

-Others

[Mipe]

Whatever categories you come up with, be sure to put some pressure on CKAN folk to implement them. Currently, all my mods are piled up in one long list.

[linuxgurugamer]

Whatever categories you come up with, be sure to put some pressure on CKAN folk to implement them. Currently, all my mods are piled up in one long list.

That's my general idea.

For now, I'm going to see if I can get a small website up with a database, so that there could be a place to do the catagorization by a lot of people.

Haven't worked out the details yet.

@hab136, that's quite a list, thanks.

All others, thanks as well.

[Joonatan1998]

-Parts

-planets (Anything that has to do with changing/adding/moving planets around)

-contracts

-Gameplay (Misc category for most plugins, FAR,DRE,RT,MJ would be here)

-Information (things that just change GUI, add new information)

-bugfix

Gameplay could be called "Utility" instead, just because in KSP the misc category is Utility.

dd

I think for more precision some kind of tag system would be better.

[Mipe]

Perhaps instead of categories, tags could be used? Since certain mods can fall into multiple categories, I believe it'd be more prudent to simply tag mods with appropriate tags - then we just filter by tags.

[Padishar]

-Mechjeb

-Others

"Cheating"

"Not cheating"

More seriously, you could also take a look in the "Community Mods and Plugins Library" thread (though its categories aren't particularly more helpful/accurate than any other list I've seen)...

[linuxgurugamer]

Tags or categories, it's pretty much the same, although with tags you can have more. But I'd want the tags to be standardized, I don't think allow any new tag would make sense for this.

So, what I'm thinking of is this:

A website which will list all available mods. Anybody can view mods, filtered and sorted by specified tags.

The website will get a list of all mods from the CKAN site on a daily basis, and add any missing mods

If not signed on, will show the tags for the mods based on popularity of the tags

Individualscan create an account and sign on

When signed on, you can do the following:

1. View available tags
   
2. Submit new tag for approval by moderator(s)
   
3. Submit mod for approval (to get any missing mods into the db)
   
4. View and tag/untag mods
   
5. Export modlist with tags
   

Accounts will only hold the following information:

1. username
   
2. email address
   
3. encrypted password
   

Once this is up and running, I hope to be able to convince the CKAN people to add extra filters based on a tagged modlist which was exported from this site. But for this to happen, there would have to be a significant number of people using this and requesting it from CKAN.

Thoughts?

[Mipe]

Perhaps the best place for those categories or tags is in the mod's manifest file and it is up to authors to apply proper tags. The file is already there, just need to add extra info like that. It would then be trivial to filter them on CKAN and in-game alike.

[linuxgurugamer]

Perhaps the best place for those categories or tags is in the mod's manifest file and it is up to authors to apply proper tags. The file is already there, just need to add extra info like that. It would then be trivial to filter them on CKAN and in-game alike.

Yes, that would be ideal. But, you then are depending on all the mod authors to both update their existing ones and add new ones.

I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. Just see how long it takes to get mods updated which don't need any update for new KSP versions. I'm not knocking the mod authors, just a fact of life.

Also, maybe some people would categorize certain mods one way, and some people another way.

I think that crowdsourcing this information would overall give the best result, if we can get enough people to actually tag mods on the site.

[Mipe]

Even if some mod authors are lazy or forgetful and don't categorize their mods, I'm sure most of authors are diligent enough to do so when they release or update a mod. It essentially is an one-time thing, as long as the mod doesn't change function, its tags shouldn't. Imagine about 80% mods would be satisfactorily categorized, 10% wrongly categorized and the rest uncategorized - you'd still have a bunch of mods sitting with a "Uncategorized" label, however that's quite a lot less than otherwise.

Crowdsourcing is helpful, yes, but if we as the community cannot alter mod manifest files, it needs to be a third-party service - that is, keep a track of all mods and categorize them based on community input. But that also has its drawbacks... well, just look at Steam tags. There are quite a lot of games with nonsensial tags and even more with incorrect tags (non-JRPG games getting the JRPG tag, for example).

Well, it'll be difficult to find a compromise here. If we let authors tag it via manifest file, we can't change it ourselves (other than complementing it with a third-party categorization system). If we do it ourselves, it can potentially turn out into a counter-productive mess.

Still, a messy categorization system is better than none.

Now that I think about it, a crowdsourced KSP mod tracker would be ideal. A third-party site what aggregates information on all mods and plugins - sort of like IMDB. Status, version, description, download links, dependencies, compatibility list, comments... and categories. But that kind of thing doesn't come free.

[linuxgurugamer]

Even if some mod authors are lazy or forgetful and don't categorize their mods, I'm sure most of authors are diligent enough to do so when they release or update a mod. It essentially is an one-time thing, as long as the mod doesn't change function, its tags shouldn't. Imagine about 80% mods would be satisfactorily categorized, 10% wrongly categorized and the rest uncategorized - you'd still have a bunch of mods sitting with a "Uncategorized" label, however that's quite a lot less than otherwise.

Crowdsourcing is helpful, yes, but if we as the community cannot alter mod manifest files, it needs to be a third-party service - that is, keep a track of all mods and categorize them based on community input. But that also has its drawbacks... well, just look at Steam tags. There are quite a lot of games with nonsensial tags and even more with incorrect tags (non-JRPG games getting the JRPG tag, for example).

Well, it'll be difficult to find a compromise here. If we let authors tag it via manifest file, we can't change it ourselves (other than complementing it with a third-party categorization system). If we do it ourselves, it can potentially turn out into a counter-productive mess.

Still, a messy categorization system is better than none.

Now that I think about it, a crowdsourced KSP mod tracker would be ideal. A third-party site what aggregates information on all mods and plugins - sort of like IMDB. Status, version, description, download links, dependencies, compatibility list, comments... and categories. But that kind of thing doesn't come free.

You know, it could be both. Let authors catagorize/tag their mods in the netkan file (although since a lot of them are automatically made via Kerbalstuff that may be difficult), and also have an external site.

Then CKAN can have filters which can either filter by author tags, or by an outside service.

Anytime you get two people doing tagging/catagorizing, you will end up with multiple tags/catagories for each thing. So yes, it will be messy, but still better than nothing.

[linuxgurugamer]

You know, it could be both. Let authors catagorize/tag their mods in the netkan file (although since a lot of them are automatically made via Kerbalstuff that may be difficult), and also have an external site.

Then CKAN can have filters which can either filter by author tags, or by an outside service.

Anytime you get two people doing tagging/catagorizing, you will end up with multiple tags/catagories for each thing. So yes, it will be messy, but still better than nothing.

I've started work on a website & database for this.