Plugin idea but no skill to make it, help?

[Hanium]

Hey guys,

        First time using forums so I'm sorry If I violate any rules.

Basically I have an idea for a plugin that I'd like to see but I really don't know how to make it, I assume it's simple since its only a GUI.

     So should I just say the idea here and hope someone will make it or what?

Help a fellow explorer

Thanks in advance 

[DStaal]

Describing it here and hoping someone likes the idea enough to make it is probably good.  There might even be a current mod that does what you want, and you just don't know about it.

Your other option would be try to learn to make it yourself - if you know any programming it shouldn't be too hard, and there's a lot of help available over in the modder's subforum.

[Hanium]

1 hour ago, DStaal said:

Describing it here and hoping someone likes the idea enough to make it is probably good.  There might even be a current mod that does what you want, and you just don't know about it.

Your other option would be try to learn to make it yourself - if you know any programming it shouldn't be too hard, and there's a lot of help available over in the modder's subforum.

Thanks for your help. 

I've searched and there was no such mod

however I know the basics of C# so I think I'll make it on my own

I would appreciate it if someone gives me a sample of a GUI in C#

[wasml]

By forum rules all mods with plugins here must include the source - locate one or more in the addon release section that have features you want and you can download the source. There's also a thread specifically for moders looking for help:

Good luck with your mod!

 

Edit: forgot to mention - this is still a good source of info:

 

Edited July 14, 2017 by wasml

[Alshain]

3 hours ago, wasml said:

By forum rules all mods with plugins here must include the source - locate one or more in the addon release section that have features you want and you can download the source.

Be careful doing this.  Just because the source is available does not mean it is open licensed.  A mod that is All Rights Reserved is still protected even if the code is visible.  While looking at the code is not necessarily wrong, the act of looking at it often influences your code and if you take pieces from it that can start to be recognized it can get you into a world of trouble.  Make sure if you copy code, it has an open license (such as MIT or GPL*), and in fact it might be best just to not even look at code from restrictive licenses.  If the source is on GitHub and GitHub has detected a license file, it provides a nice little info box explaining the restrictions at the top in plain english.  You can hover over each bullet point for further explanation. https://github.com/Alshain01/KSP-AdvancedTweakablesButton/blob/master/License.txt

*GPL has same license restrictions so if you use code from GPL projects, your project must be GPL.  Of course this limits how others can use your code too.

 

Edited July 14, 2017 by Alshain

[Kurld]

"World of trouble" is a vast overstatement since all this stuff is basically free and anybody attempting to prove actual harm by somebody copying their plugin code is going to get laughed out of court.

That said, plagiarism is bad, m'kay? 

 

[DStaal]

1 hour ago, Kurld said:

"World of trouble" is a vast overstatement since all this stuff is basically free and anybody attempting to prove actual harm by somebody copying their plugin code is going to get laughed out of court.

That said, plagiarism is bad, m'kay? 

 

Well, not laughed out of court.  But you might be limited to small-claims court. 

[Morse]

AFAIR, KSP requires all the mods to be open-sourced and non-commercial, so no need to be afraid of any legal concequences.

That being said, I still highly recommend you to just tell us your genius idea. Chances are, there is something like what you want, so you'll be at least able to start from something already working, instead of from scratch, which will be very helpful for your first mod.

[Superfluous J]

this is probably a good place to start: https://www.google.com/search?q=ksp+modding+unity+gui&oq=ksp+modding+unity+gui&aqs=chrome..69i57j33.16088j0j4&client=ms-android-verizon&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8

(No I'm not LMGTFYing you. I suggest that because i happen to know the specific terms too search on though they are not necessarily the terms you'd think of)

[artwhaley]

10 hours ago, Morse said:

AFAIR, KSP requires all the mods to be open-sourced and non-commercial, so no need to be afraid of any legal concequences.

That being said, I still highly recommend you to just tell us your genius idea. Chances are, there is something like what you want, so you'll be at least able to start from something already working, instead of from scratch, which will be very helpful for your first mod.

The source must be visible, so it can be peer reviewed for malicious content.   That is not the same thing as available for reuse in any way you don't have specific permission (license)  for.   The person that types it still owns it and decides who may use it for what, and has the right to pursue legal remedy if the license is violated, even if that seems unlikely to be worth the trouble.   It would still damage your reputation and the good will of the community.   Intellectual property is property none the less. 

 

Wonder if NASA has given any thought to whether they can use Mechjeb on real rockets?

[HebaruSan]

9 minutes ago, artwhaley said:

The person that types it still owns it and decides who may use it for what, and has the right to pursue legal remedy if the license is violated, even if that seems unlikely to be worth the trouble.   It would still damage your reputation and the good will of the community.

And on top of all that, a licence-violating mod's thread would be removed from the forum.

[Kurld]

Yes, of course, the court of public opinion would be much harsher, but sadly, if somebody is enough of a sociopath to purposefully/knowingly plagiarize in the first place, that probably would not matter to them, either.

I wonder how much of this stuff actually does get peer reviewed?

[HebaruSan]

12 minutes ago, Kurld said:

I wonder how much of this stuff actually does get peer reviewed?

Allegedly, forum moderators have been known to download mod packs, unzip them, determine which mods they contain, and then check each mod's forum thread to verify that the licenses were followed:

Quote

With many repacks we're stuck with having to download the whole thing, and some can be really large, which we have to search through to find every packed mod, find its license or find its thread because the license was removed by the repacker.

This takes a lot of time, hours in some cases, and we end up in arguments with the repacker over licensing, plus the trouble when they keep on doing it because hey, modpacks aren't banned.

Now, that thread was specifically about what a big burden this was for moderators, so this may no longer be their practice, and it doesn't apply to code copied from one DLL to another piecemeal, but there has been at least some level of scrutiny applied.

Edited July 17, 2017 by HebaruSan

[Kurld]

I was thinking of peer-reviewed in the sense that somebody goes and looks at the source code to make sure folks aren't being malicious. I'd guess most of the highly popular plugins have been looked over quite a bit by other modders. But does anybody ever actually go and confirm that for any given plugin that the source code is actually even uploaded somewhere?

[HebaruSan]

7 minutes ago, Kurld said:

I was thinking of peer-reviewed in the sense that somebody goes and looks at the source code to make sure folks aren't being malicious. I'd guess most of the highly popular plugins have been looked over quite a bit by other modders.

I'd agree with your guess, probably most of the code hasn't been looked over very much, and the review that has been done is probably heavily weighted towards the big names.

7 minutes ago, Kurld said:

But does anybody ever actually go and confirm that for any given plugin that the source code is actually even uploaded somewhere?

I believe the moderators of the modding forum enforce that rule plus a few others. It's fairly common for them to delete a download link because a license isn't specified yet, for example.

[Kurld]

Good to know, thanks.

[Benjamin Kerman]

They also check for copyrighted things. I know, i have experienced it. Not one of my best moments, but i thought it was ok at the time as i tried to give credit to Squad.  

[Alshain]

On 7/14/2017 at 10:37 AM, Kurld said:

"World of trouble" is a vast overstatement since all this stuff is basically free and anybody attempting to prove actual harm by somebody copying their plugin code is going to get laughed out of court.

That said, plagiarism is bad, m'kay? 

 

Who said anything about court?  I never mentioned legal action, I was more referring to banishment from Squad's services.

Not just Squad's either.  Though Spacedock doesn't technically have to follow Squad's rules, Squad has the ability to blacklist their links on the forums if they feel their content is too far in violation of them (they have done it before with other sites) so it's more likely that the managers of Spacedock would ban your mods as well rather than allow their site to be blacklisted.

This is all theoretical of course.  But lets not push into reality please.

Edited July 18, 2017 by Alshain

[Kerbart]

On 7/14/2017 at 0:48 PM, DStaal said:

Well, not laughed out of court.  But you might be limited to small-claims court. 

Copyright claims are always federal cases; never small-claims court.

[Hanium]

I'm trying to do it myself but its seems to be rather difficult according to my level of expertise (zero expertise)

On 7/16/2017 at 2:38 PM, Morse said:

AFAIR, KSP requires all the mods to be open-sourced and non-commercial, so no need to be afraid of any legal concequences.

That being said, I still highly recommend you to just tell us your genius idea. Chances are, there is something like what you want, so you'll be at least able to start from something already working, instead of from scratch, which will be very helpful for your first mod.

Basically my idea is:

The Labs can tell you real science notes or FYIs about their current location or their current orbiting planet.

For example if you have a lab orbiting Kerbin, you can right click on it and see the option to (Observe) you then have to pay a certain amount of science and need to wait for sometime before getting the knowledge.

Its a simple idea and I just thought it would give more depth and use for science, I feel it would motivate me to put Labs in every planet and orbit every planet.

The notes would be different depending on the planet and whether orbiting or landed.

 

P.S. I think I'm giving up, I simply don't know how to code it, if anyone tries to make this mod/plugin, please tell me, I would love to play KSP using it

 

Edited July 23, 2017 by Hanium

[HebaruSan]

On 7/13/2017 at 8:04 AM, Hanium said:

I assume it's simple since its only a GUI.

3 hours ago, Hanium said:

Its a simple idea

P.S. I think I'm giving up, I simply don't know how to code it

Honestly, this is one of the main reasons* I encourage people to try implementing their own ideas. Few things are more enlightening than discovering in detail exactly why something you thought was simple is not actually simple. Someone who's had that experience will be less likely to complain loudly about bugs or slow updates, whether from SQUAD or from other modders.

(* The other reasons are: Some percentage of people will succeed, producing both a new mod and a new modder; and "make this mod for me" posts rarely attract a developer unless it's a very simple concept.)

[Rodhern]

On 17/07/2017 at 8:56 PM, Kurld said:

I was thinking of peer-reviewed in the sense that somebody goes and looks at the source code to make sure folks aren't being malicious. I'd guess most of the highly popular plugins have been looked over quite a bit by other modders. But does anybody ever actually go and confirm that for any given plugin that the source code is actually even uploaded somewhere?

I have been playing around with Github a little now (still a novice but no longer completely blank). I am more scared of the scenario where the binaries and the source code do not match up, than I am of the rather exotic scenario of blatantly malicious source code.

There are two main ingredients to this 'fear':

1. To make a new release on Github I simply drag a zip-file to the Github dialog. To be really upstanding I should make a fresh checkout of the tag, then run my build script on the new checkout, then package up the artifacts and upload that. In practice it is very tempting to instead press the Visual Studio 'build' button and just refresh the assembly dll file in a copy of my previous zip file.
2. It takes a bit of effort to build one of the Github KSP addons. At least it does for me. I have to update/downgrade/modify the solution files incl. KSP assembly references before I am able to build. (Of course, subject to license terms, the upside is that you get unlimited mod customization options).

Edited July 23, 2017 by Rodhern
spelling

[Kurld]

I've thought of the same issue, Rodhern and that's really the problem that I was trying to point out, even though I didn't do it very well.