Easier Addon De/Installation

[BloodyRain2k]

I thought about how installing addons could be made easier and aside the external tools for handling this there's a pretty obvious and I'd guess rather easy solution.

Instead of installing addons with their folders (Parts, Plugins, Ships etc) into the game ones it should check in a seperate Addons folder for addons, in the simple way of Addons\ModName\[Parts,Plugins,Ships] and threat them as if these were in the main folder.

Gmod does it the same way and it works good I'd say. That way you can easily add and remove mods without having to handpick the files out of the folders again.

In the case that a mod overwrites stock parts it should simply ignore it's stock parts and instead use the mod's ones. (Anyone ever tried to deinstall Ferram Aerospace Research? Hope you made a backup...)

And in the rare case that two mods overwrite / add the same parts, well dunno, first comes, first served? Doesn't really matter, you can't load two at the same time now either.

I'm also in the progress of writing my own mod manager and even though I'm using crc checks to find installed parts correctly that fails when mods happen to overwrite stockparts with partial stock files. Well either that or I messed up the deinstallation.

Anyways, this approach would get rid of these problems.

PS: I'm not complaining, it's wonderful to see a game like this have addon support so early :3

also it's portable and doesn't rape the registry which just makes it even more worth the money

(loading time's a bit big though but w/e)

Edit: PPS: sorry if this was already suggested, tried a short search but didn't find anything.

Edit 2: Two weeks and no response from anyone, guess no one except me cares. Meh.

Edited October 13, 2012 by BloodyRain2k

[mattthebat]

Out of curiosity, what language are you writing in? I was going to do a cross-platform Python version.

[OrbitusII]

I think that simplifying the addon installation system is unnecessary right now. After all, all you have to do is sort the files correctly and you're good. KSP is very easy to mod, especially compared to Minecraft, so while addon installation could be improved, it really doesn't need to be.

[3_bit]

An addon would be nice... good luck with all the complex FTP access and stuff.

[patrizl001]

I swear there was a mod that you could control which mods could be activated and de-activated, but it got lost in the purge.

[TriggerAu]

If the one your thinking of is Kerbal Space Program Mod Manager, then you can find it here - http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/13155-Win-With-Auto-Updater!-Kerbal-Space-Program-Mod-Manager-1-4-2-0 - is from Jun so it survived, minus the posts from Oct of course

[Zaeo]

While I do agree this should be an "eventuality", I also believe that modders should name their parts "*Mod_standardpartname*"

This allows for easier navigation for everyone, with a simple change in prefix, mod gets substituted with the modmaker's tag of some sort.

For example, All of Pulsar Technologies parts will have "P-tech_Partname" as its naming standard.