Painkiller - painless career transition

[RealGecko]

ACHTUNG!!! Be sure to backup your save game, before trying it at home

When KSP 1.2 entered pre-release state I tried it and I liked it. It performed much better than 1.1.3 and had many things refined: replaced that “cubic” font in ScreenMessages, SAS control fixes etc. However even after 1.2 official release I continued playing 1.1.3 as I had more than 100 hours invested in my career save. I guess no one plays unmodded KSP nowadays, so I decided to wait until all mods I use got updated and then switch. I exported CKAN list of my mods from 1.1.3 and started to check daily whether all of them are available or not. But we all have real lives and modders do not just sit there and desire to deliver you new version few hours after release, so I was patient for two weeks. But then I understood that I need another approach. So, here’s my painkiller for painless career transition from 1.1.3 to 1.2. Goal is to transit career save, without losing any ship, kerbal or contract.

WARNING! I used this approach to transit to 1.2.0.1586 and not 1.2.1. For 1.2.1 I guess I’ll wait a bit too

First I’ve checked every installed mod manually and split them all into five categories:

These include: part mods, gameplay critical mods, contract packs, utilities and eye candy mods.
Let’s check each of them step by step.

Step 1: Part Mods

These mods add parts to the game that my current flights rely on. Some of them like KIS or KAS are more gameplay modifiers of course, but without parts they add into the game my flights will be lost. This category was ported to 1.2 relatively fast. The list is not that big, some of them are just dependencies for others:

This list includes everything I needed except OSE Workshop. @ObiVanDamme is currently busy, but @Angel-125 kindly decided to help him port mod to 1.2 and it is available here.

So, if after loading your career save you get message saying that some of your ships was not loaded, than you probably missed something. Recheck!

Step 2: Gameplay Critical

This mods modify gameplay in different ways: modify part characteristics, modify tech tree nodes, add new experiments, like KRnD, Simple Construction etc. Overall looks like this: 

Not all of them were available for KSP 1.2. But hey! I’m a programmer, I can do this

I recompiled Orbital Survey Plus, tried it, and it worked. Those who interested may grab it here.
Science Revisited Revisited is just a set of MM patches and as @sarbian ported MM to KSP 1.2 really fast, then SRR must work flawlessly. I tested it out in clean 1.2 installation and it worked like a charm. So SRR 1.4.0 is compatible with KSP 1.2 as soon as MM is compatible.
That is true for every MM dependent mod

Step 3: Contracts

Stock contracts are pretty boring, to be honest. So I disabled most of them with CC and installed various contract packs to make career progression more interesting. Overall looks like this:

Almost all contracts pack I’m interested in were available, except Interplanetary Mountaineer and Anomaly Surveyor.

Fortunately @nightingale created smart system that works like MM for contracts, so Interplanetary Mountaineer did not require any work at all to get up and running, but not everything was as easy with Anomaly Surveyor as it has custom dll to ensure overall functionality. Well, I recompiled it and tested it by dropping near Pyramids, and it seemed like everything is fine. Those who interested may get recompiled dll here.

But hey, that’s not all! You may notice that I have some interesting file called 03.1 - Know How.txt. What’s in there? Let’s have a look:

Yes!!! Squad changed stock contract types! And we do not want to lose anything, remember? So open your persistent.sfs (Did you create a backup? Why didn’t you???) and do exactly as it said:

So, here we are! Now after importing this persistent.sfs into KSP 1.2 I was 100% ready to transit without losing anything: all my flights were in progress, all my kerbals were in place, all my contracts were intact!

Step 4: Utilites

This mods are completely not critical for career, they do not affect science, ships or kerbals in any manner. But they make our game experience more pleasant: KAC, CapCom, EasyBoard etc. This list is individual for everyone. I can live without some of them for some time, or I can replace some of them with newcomers, like replace KER flight panels with Basic Orbit panels, feels pretty similar. This list was created from scratch, I just crawled through the list of available ones and decided which I need.

Step 5: Eye Candy

The name speaks for itself. This mods are not affecting gameplay or UI in any manner. We can live without them pretty easily. But hey! I really love this Reentry Particle Effect
This list was created from scratch too, and as my laptop is not the best out there this list is not really big. Which one of them you will install is your personal taste

Bonus: Toolbar settings

@blizzy78's toolbar is pretty handy mod. But if you create a clean install of KSP you may notice that you have to reconfigure all your buttons again. Well, that is not really necessary. Navigate to you KSP 1.1.3 GameData, grab toolbar-settings.dat and copy it to your KSP 1.2 GameData. That’s it, start the game and reconfigure your mods to use toolbar, all your buttons will be back

Conclusion

Yesterday I finally transferred my career from 1.1.3 to 1.2 an played it for ~4 hours. What can I say?

• It did not even try to crash
• It performed much better
• Overall look and feel is cooler
• Memory footprint much lower

I had 14 FPS at my Munar manufacturing complex, while I had barely 6 in KSP 1.1.3

KSP 1.1 was the first version I played since 0.18. It gave me many fun hours, but now it’s a history.

Hail to The King, baby!

Edited November 2, 2016 by RealGecko
Commas, commas, commas