So 1.4 is upon us....

[Gargamel]

12 minutes ago, Snark said:

Bear in mind that the jury's still out on just how much mod breakage there will be.  Depending on what sort of internal changes there are, it's possible that many mods will be unaffected.  For example, my own mods have generally worked fine without code changes necessary over the last few KSP updates.

Then I'll be ahead of the game! 

[HAL-9000]

Could someone please advise how to avoid Steam updating KSP, or how to retain 1.3.1 in a separate installation? I am just about to get my first ever mission to Duna - I've never managed to get past Minmus before. I can' believe I'm going to lose all my mods again!

[Snark]

6 minutes ago, HAL-9000 said:

Could someone please advise how to avoid Steam updating KSP, or how to retain 1.3.1 in a separate installation? I am just about to get my first ever mission to Duna - I've never managed to get past Minmus before. I can' believe I'm going to lose all my mods again!

Well, you could read just a few posts above your own, where someone just answered that exact question just a few minutes ago...

1 hour ago, Snark said:

KSP doesn't have any DRM on it.  You can easily copy it from one location on your hard drive to another.  So, all you have to do is, copy the KSP installation folder to some other folder on your hard drive, and that will be a completely "safe" version of KSP that will never update unless you update it, because Steam doesn't know about it.  Steam will just update the folder it knows about.

Also, you don't actually know you're going to "lose all your mods".  It remains to be seen how disruptive the 1.4 update will be.  Perhaps you'll be just fine.  However, it would certainly be a good idea to make a backup copy of your 1.3.1 installation as described above, so that you're guaranteed safe.  Once you've done that, then when 1.4 arrives, you can try it out and see whether it works-- maybe you'll get lucky, your mods will still work, and you'll be able to continue playing your existing save while still reaping the benefits of the shiny new KSP version.  But if not, then you'll have your 1.3.1 install off to the side, where you can continue playing as you like.

[HAL-9000]

 

27 minutes ago, Snark said:

Well, you could read just a few posts above your own, where someone just answered that exact question just a few minutes ago...

Also, you don't actually know you're going to "lose all your mods".  It remains to be seen how disruptive the 1.4 update will be.  Perhaps you'll be just fine.  However, it would certainly be a good idea to make a backup copy of your 1.3.1 installation as described above, so that you're guaranteed safe.  Once you've done that, then when 1.4 arrives, you can try it out and see whether it works-- maybe you'll get lucky, your mods will still work, and you'll be able to continue playing your existing save while still reaping the benefits of the shiny new KSP version.  But if not, then you'll have your 1.3.1 install off to the side, where you can continue playing as you like.

Oh im genuinely sorry. I missed that one. Thanks. I would do an 'embarrassed' emoticon but I wouldn't know how...

[Just Jim]

26 minutes ago, Snark said:

Also, you don't actually know you're going to "lose all your mods".  It remains to be seen how disruptive the 1.4 update will be.  Perhaps you'll be just fine.  However, it would certainly be a good idea to make a backup copy of your 1.3.1 installation as described above, so that you're guaranteed safe.  Once you've done that, then when 1.4 arrives, you can try it out and see whether it works-- maybe you'll get lucky, your mods will still work, and you'll be able to continue playing your existing save while still reaping the benefits of the shiny new KSP version.  But if not, then you'll have your 1.3.1 install off to the side, where you can continue playing as you like.

A quick follow-up, if I may. This is exactly how I survived past updates, and what I will be doing with my Emiko career game when the DLC comes out. I already have everything backed-up to a safe location, so I can upgrade my Steam version when it's released, then take my time and wait for the mod-makers to have a chance to update whatever they might need doing. And when I know all the mods are updated and working right, I can safely transfer my saved Emiko game into the new 1.4 game. And based on past experience, it should work fine.

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

I don't currently run any mods, but I'm extremely close to finishing my goals in my current career save and I don't want to risk having an update screw things up (like how the 1.3.1 update changed the effectiveness of radiators thereby preventing a lot of the stations and bases that I'd already launched from working properly.) I'm going to hold off on updating until I'm finished with this career, and then I plan on taking an extended break from KSP to whittle down a bit of my gaming backlog. I might come back to play a new career after that (with mods this time) but who knows when that'll be and which updates will have been released in the meantime?

[John FX]

I am still playing 1.2.x with RO/RSS/RP-0 and looking forward to 1.3.1.

I just cannot find the enthusiasm to play stock any more.

[Snark]

2 hours ago, HAL-9000 said:

Oh im genuinely sorry. I missed that one. Thanks. I would do an 'embarrassed' emoticon but I wouldn't know how...

Nah, it's good, we've all been there. 

[klgraham1013]

Today was the first day of updating and finalizing my 1.3.1 mod collection.  Let's see how the 1.4 hotfix pans out and then I might upgrade.

[LordFerret]

16 hours ago, monstah said:

I don't know, but to me "Updates" isn't the same as "All new content".

I agree with that. While *new* parts sound interesting, I'm not too concerned with them. I'm more interested in bug fixes and functionality in the stock game... if they throw in a new part as stock here and there, I wouldn't complain... like stock docking cameras/aids, a thing requested by many for ages (but still only available via mods). "All new content" in my book would constitute the DLC part of it, which I see 'Making History' as, and the mission builder stuff. Anyway, my concern is about availability to the 'update' being only via buying into this and future DLCs.

[Ger_space]

16 hours ago, Snark said:

Also, you don't actually know you're going to "lose all your mods".  It remains to be seen how disruptive the 1.4 update will be.  Perhaps you'll be just fine.  However, it would certainly be a good idea to make a backup copy of your 1.3.1 installation as described above, so that you're guaranteed safe.  Once you've done that, then when 1.4 arrives, you can try it out and see whether it works-- maybe you'll get lucky, your mods will still work, and you'll be able to continue playing your existing save while still reaping the benefits of the shiny new KSP version.  But if not, then you'll have your 1.3.1 install off to the side, where you can continue playing as you like.

KSP 1.4 will have a new unity version so my guess is: Every mod that has a .dll or requires one will be broken. No ModuleManager, no Firespitter,  nothing will work without at least a recompile. 
I also don't know if there are any API changes.
1.3 had a longer preperation phase, which I really apreciated, but from the last KSP weekly it is still in heavy development, so i don't expect we will have a beta out soon. 

[blakemw]

16 hours ago, HAL-9000 said:

Could someone please advise how to avoid Steam updating KSP, or how to retain 1.3.1 in a separate installation? I am just about to get my first ever mission to Duna - I've never managed to get past Minmus before. I can' believe I'm going to lose all my mods again!

In steam you open the context menu for the game and go to Properties -> Betas and then choose a specific version. This doesn't actually allow pre-emptively forcing it to remain on 1.3.1 because the devs haven't provided it as an option yet, but it will (should) allow rolling back to 1.3.1.

[Dafni]

Is there any word out if the 1.4 patch or the DLC will have a DRM now?

[Superfluous J]

44 minutes ago, Dafni said:

Is there any word out if the 1.4 patch or the DLC will have a DRM now?

There is no word that it will and I can't see how they'd add it this late in the game, so I'd be extremely surprised if it did.

[soulsource]

I'll handle 1.4 the same as the last few updates. I'll give it a try, and stop playing when I finally get too annoyed by the lack of FAR (usually half an hour into the game). Once FAR is updated, I'll start a new carreer, and play like an addict.

[Snark]

5 hours ago, Ger_space said:

KSP 1.4 will have a new unity version so my guess is: Every mod that has a .dll or requires one will be broken. No ModuleManager, no Firespitter,  nothing will work without at least a recompile.

It would depend a lot on exactly how the mods work.  My guess is that lots of .dll mods-- perhaps even most-- will be just fine, possibly without even a recompile.

Bear in mind that lots and lots of mods don't do anything directly with graphics or UI rendering, which means they have little interaction with Unity per se.  They'd be broken if KSP changed its API-- or, rather, changed the particular part of its API that they happen to use-- but otherwise I expect they'd be fine.

I wouldn't be surprised if ModuleManger's just fine, for example-- it just reads config files and rejiggers config nodes, and unless KSP has reworked the plumbing of how config files get read, I see no reason why it would break.  Most of my own mods don't do anything with UI, e.g. DefaultActionGroups which just tinkers with action groups and such, or BetterCrewAssignment which works with, well, crew assignment.  I'd be surprised if those are broken.

Even mods that do work with Unity wouldn't break, unless the particular Unity API they use gets broken.  And that's far from obvious.  Companies that release shared components (such as Unity) have a strong incentive not to "break the universe" when they release new versions, because every time they introduce a change that's not backward-compatible, it clobbers the people who use it, which is not what they want.  It's more common to add new stuff than to break old stuff.  (Every once in a while, there may be some huge seismic shift that's needed because the old structure turns out to be too rickety to move forward.  But in my experience, most updates tend to be a lot friendlier than that.)

So, for example, my mod BetterBurnTime does have an itty-bitty bit of UI in it-- it makes a text object by the navball.  But unless Unity has completely rejiggered how they work with text-- or unless KSP has completely rejiggered how it uses text in Unity-- then I'd guess that would be fine, too.

My guess as to the mods that would be most likely to be affected by the Unity change would be any that are heavily graphics-oriented (Scatterer and its ilk), or which implement a lot of custom UI directly using Unity controls.

All of the above is just a wild guess, of course.  I don't work for Squad, or for the folks who bring us Unity, so I've got no privileged information there.  It's just an educated guess, based on my experience as a KSP modder and as a professional software developer.

TL;DR:  my guess is that most mods will be fine.

5 hours ago, Ger_space said:

I also don't know if there are any API changes.

I don't think Squad has announced anything about that, so technically I don't think anyone actually knows.

However... I'd be surprised if they made significant changes to the API.  It's pretty clear that the stock game itself is pretty much just in "maintenance" mode these days-- they don't appear to be doing significant feature work on it, which is hardly surprising as they've moved on to focusing the bulk of development work on stuff that actually brings in money, i.e. DLC such as Making History.  So at this point, I assume that the only time they're going to touch the stock game is:

• bugfixes
• dependency updates (e.g. moving to a new Unity version)
• necessary changes to support new DLC

...and that's about it.  Also, speaking as someone who ships code for a living, I'd also assume they'd be strongly motivated to touch it as little as possible, other than the above, for a variety of reasons.  First, they're likely making no more money on the stock game, so doing any work there that they don't have to is an expense without a return.  Second, any time you touch something, you may break something, and breaking stuff's expensive.  ("Don't fix it if it ain't broke" is a very important software engineering maxim.)    Third, a lot of KSP's "curb appeal" is how friendly it is to modding, and the huge ecosystem of mods that are already out there, so why break that if you don't have to?  Sure, if they need to break mods in order to move the stock game forward, they will... but it's worth making at least an effort to keep things backwards compatible where possible.

So my guess is that the API will stay basically the same.  Maybe they tweak it in a few places (or add new stuff) in order to support what they need to enable Making History, but my guess is that as far as most mods are concerned, it'll be pretty much a non-event.

(Again:  just a guess, I don't work for Squad.)

5 hours ago, Ger_space said:

1.3 had a longer preperation phase, which I really apreciated, but from the last KSP weekly it is still in heavy development, so i don't expect we will have a beta out soon.

Huh?  They've already announced that Making History (and therefore KSP 1.4, since Making History depends on it) is shipping on March 13, which is a week from tomorrow.

So, forget "beta"-- they're going to have the actual, real software out very, very soon.

Which means all this speculation is kinda moot, anyway.  Just wait a week, then we'll know. 

To summarize, my take on the whole thing is:

• If you've got a modded save game that you want to continue post-1.4 that would be broken if the mods break... I'd recommend making a backup copy of your 1.3.1 installation, just in case.
• However, my guess would be that most mods will either survive unscathed, or at most would require only minimal changes such as a recompile to get going again.

[PotaTouhou]

33 minutes ago, Snark said:

• However, my guess would be that most mods will either survive unscathed, or at most would require only minimal changes such as a recompile to get going again.

Unfortunately, according to Take2, they are taking all rights of mods from mod creators and giving them to themselves. They can take down mods, or monetize them by turning them into DLCs, ignoring modders' opinions and "rights"(since modders must agree with this agreement when they create mods from now on.) A lot of modders have given up updating their mods in the future for this reason.

[Warzouz]

Don't panic about versions.

I still have my 0.9 install, my 1.0 install, my 1.1 install... I sometime reopen them to check my previous designs... Not too much useful though...

 

[Hotel26]

22 hours ago, Whisky Tango Foxtrot said:

like how the 1.3.1 update changed the effectiveness of radiators thereby preventing a lot of the stations and bases that I'd already launched from working properly

Man, I read stuff like this and I think I"M NOT GOING CRAZY AFTER ALL!!!   YAHOOOOO!!

Both 1.2 and 1.3.1 knocked me for six and the result was a year's down time (I sulked in Minecraft for that long).  I've gotten myself a lot more bullet-proof now including what will shortly become a plug-in to completely avoid mining.  Yes, that's right.

Thanks, @Whisky Tango Foxtrot, I need all the reassurance I can get!  (Maybe the whole world's crazy except thee and me...?  I dunno.  I'm still a little worried about me...)

[You know, T2 won't let me write your initials in the forum!  It gets turned into "what".  Sheesh.  (Can I say sheesh...?)]

Edited March 6, 2018 by Hotel26

[LordFerret]

20 minutes ago, PotaTouhou said:

Unfortunately, according to Take2, they are taking all rights of mods from mod creators and giving them to themselves. They can take down mods, or monetize them by turning them into DLCs, ignoring modders' opinions and "rights"(since modders must agree with this agreement when they create mods from now on.) A lot of modders have given up updating their mods in the future for this reason.

So... turning KSP into GTA. If true, that is very discouraging.

Somewhere down along this road I see an all new KSP2. I'll give it a year. My guess is that will be when the latest greatest version of Unity will be adapted, (/sarcasm on) solving all problems (/sarcasm off).

[Snark]

1 hour ago, PotaTouhou said:

Unfortunately, according to Take2, they are taking all rights of mods from mod creators and giving them to themselves. They can take down mods, or monetize them by turning them into DLCs, ignoring modders' opinions and "rights"(since modders must agree with this agreement when they create mods from now on.) A lot of modders have given up updating their mods in the future for this reason.

Well, sure, that's every mod author's choice to make.  However, that's not what we were talking about (at least, not in the post of mine that you quoted)-- that was about the technical issues around mods being available in 1.4, i.e. "will all my mods get broken when I update to 1.4".  Folks had been expressing fears that it would be a big inconvenience that would break everything and they'd then have to wait for all the mods to be fixed so they could run again, and my post was simply that I suspect that won't be much of an issue (though that's just speculation on my part; I could be wrong, of course).

What mod authors choose to do-- and just how much of a chilling effect, if any, the new EULA might have on mod authors-- remains to be seen.  People mod for a lot of different reasons, and no two people share the exact same set of motivations and concerns.  Let's consider the potential impact, shall we?  Here's a list of various "categories" of modder, with the effect of 1.4 and the new EULA on each group.

1. Modders who don't especially care about the new EULA and plan to continue modding as before.  No effect, everything's fine.
2. Modders who hate the new EULA and stop modding. But their already-released mods still work just fine on KSP 1.4.  No effect, everything's fine.  (Though eventually the mods could break if there's some future release of KSP that breaks the mods.)
3. Modders who hate the new EULA and stop modding.  Their mods break in 1.4. But their mods have a permissive license.  The mod is gone, for a while.  If the mod's at all popular, though, it's highly likely that someone new will pick it up and continue maintaining it.  Happens all the time, and I see no reason to think this will change.
4. Modders who hate the new EULA and stop modding.  AND their mods break in 1.4.  AND it's not a very popular mod, so no new owners bother to step up.  The mod dies.  But honestly... in this case, does it matter?
5. Modders who hate the new EULA and stop modding.  AND their mods break in 1.4.  AND they have a restrictive license that prevents anyone from picking it up.  The mod dies.

I have no idea what the actual numbers are.  But I'd guess that most mod authors are modding because they like to mod, and playing KSP because they like to play KSP.  A changed EULA doesn't change the actual experience of modding or playing, so I'd guess they'd continue modding as before.  I know I sure will, I'm squarely in category 1.  My guess would be that the large majority of mod authors will be in category 1.

And of the mods whose authors aren't in #1, I'd guess that for technical reasons most of them will be in #2.

And of the ones that aren't in #1 or #2, most of the important ones will fit in #3.

Which just leaves #4 (which doesn't matter much)... with the only real "problem case" being #5.  But my guess is that that will be a relatively small subset of a subset of a subset, and that it won't have a major impact on the mod ecosystem for KSP.

In short:  I see no particular reason to fear that a "modpocalypse" is coming.  I'd guess that most mods will continue pretty much as before, perhaps some might fall by the wayside, but others will rise to take their place, and folks move on.  But that happens all the time anyway, as old modders get bored with KSP and new ones pop up.  It's the circle of life.

I could be wrong, of course.    But in any case, the thing will be shipping in another week, so I guess we'll find out pretty darn quick, won't we?

[Gameslinx]

On 3/5/2018 at 7:44 AM, Snark said:

You can easily copy it from one location on your hard drive to another.  So, all you have to do is, copy the KSP installation folder to some other folder on your hard drive, and that will be a completely "safe" version of KSP that will never update unless you update it, because Steam doesn't know about it.  Steam will just update the folder it knows about.

 

Isn't this against the new EULA? Quite sure it says along the lines that you are not allowed to run ksp from its directory ".exe" if it is outside of the recommended or default install location.

Edited March 7, 2018 by Snark
Tidied up the editing for you. ;-)

[Tyko]

7 hours ago, PotaTouhou said:

Unfortunately, according to Take2, they are taking all rights of mods from mod creators and giving them to themselves. They can take down mods, or monetize them by turning them into DLCs, ignoring modders' opinions and "rights"(since modders must agree with this agreement when they create mods from now on.) A lot of modders have given up updating their mods in the future for this reason.

Quote your source please. Or are you just doing some trolling to get people riled up?

[linuxgurugamer]

8 hours ago, PotaTouhou said:

Unfortunately, according to Take2, they are taking all rights of mods from mod creators and giving them to themselves. They can take down mods, or monetize them by turning them into DLCs, ignoring modders' opinions and "rights"(since modders must agree with this agreement when they create mods from now on.) A lot of modders have given up updating their mods in the future for this reason.

 Are you a  Lawyer? The agreements or written by lawyers, for lawyers, to be used in court if necessary. I am not a lawyer, I do not pretend to be a lawyer, and I most certainly know that the agreements or written that way because sometime in the past somebody has done everything that is listed in the agreements. The agreements are designed to protect the companies. 

 Keep in mind that if a company started enforcing every provision in every Eula on everybody, they will go out of business because their reputation would spread like wildfire.

[Jimbodiah]

So where are al the mod updates for 1.4??? 

 

 

<ducks for cover, avoids thrown objects, swirves under banhammer>