Get rid of the stupid launcher, nobody likes them and they do nothing but ruin the gaming experience.

[ILOVEPIE]

I've been playing KSP since before there was even a paid beta, and I can tell you this is the stupidest thing I have ever seen with relation to KSP. If this is on KSP 2; I will not by buying the game. Period. FIX THIS.

 

 

[Thatsstoguy]

I'm not buying it either, I'd rather launch from ckan with kspie and extraplanatary launchpads than buy KSP2 with this new launcher.

[Scarecrow71]

5 hours ago, ILOVEPIE said:

I've been playing KSP since before there was even a paid beta, and I can tell you this is the stupidest thing I have ever seen with relation to KSP. If this is on KSP 2; I will not by buying the game. Period. FIX THIS.

 

 

Or, you know, you could just create a shortcut on your desktop that directly calls the KSP executable and bypass the launcher.

[Derpistheword]

Yeah this useless adware isnt gonna fly on my install. I can understand why theyd do it for KSP2 as some sot of inefficient multiplayer system but if that was the case they could just use steam's API. This just seems like another detached CEO's hairbrained idea on how to potentially increase sales of their other non-existant games.

Making a game that takes forever to get working and launch, have another piece of software hug onto it is a terrible idea.
The way to remove it is to go to C:\Users\yourPCName\Local\PDsomthing something
And then go into your KSP install's main folder and remove the PD folder from there as well.

[miklkit]

Ayup.  This launcher is a very bad idea and I'm surprised that this forum is not blowing up like the Steam forum is.

[K33N]

You guys are dying on the hill of a battle lost ten years ago. Launchers are not a big deal anymore.

 

[Thatsstoguy]

1 hour ago, K33N said:

You guys are dying on the hill of a battle lost ten years ago. Launchers are not a big deal anymore.

 

My personal problem isn't with having a launcher itself, it's with the store page on the launcher. You don't need a launcher with a store page for two games unless you are filling it with DLC.

[MastaFoo]

Remove the dumb launcher. it degrades performance as well as my faith in the company to do well by its customers. Whoever on the KSP community team reads this: Go back to Take Two, tell them their forced bloatware aint working out with this title, and get rid of the thing.

[K^2]

You can run the game without the launcher. KSP_x64.exe from the game's directory runs just fine. For convenience, you can create a shortcut to it or even add it to Steam under Games->Add a non-Steam game... option. It seems to work just fine this way. A bit crap that PD is trying to push this, but so long as the game keeps working without the launcher, I consider it a minor annoyance rather than a barrier.

[LezRowl]

The launcher has not been proven to do anything to affect the game negatively. Why would they remove it just because "you don't like it"? There really is no arguing against someone making a plain complaint. I think the launcher is nice and should stay, it's an easy place to provide feedback to the developers without having to go to some other platform where it might not be read. 

[Deddly]

A launcher has been in the game since as long as I remember, it's just been broken in almost every version. I think what's new here is that the launcher is on Steam. I don't play KSP on Steam, but I can see that being annoying, even if there are ways around it.

[jwenting]

Nobody liked the launcher when it was first introduced, way back when. At which point it was OPTIONAL and you could simply start the game without it. Not sure if that's still possible with the Steam version, but with the regular version it is.

There's absolutely NO NEED for that bloody launcher (or indeed for any launcher) except as a marketing tool and/or to force the player to log in on some account to be able to access their game (useful for MMOs, not for single player games unless you're going to introduce item malls. Looking at you Take-Two, EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard,  et. al.).

[Deddly]

1 hour ago, jwenting said:

Nobody liked the launcher

I liked it

[Derpistheword]

Plenty of people dislike it simply for the fact its completely redundant in every way possible, is that not valid enough reason?
Plenty of people hate it because of the company associated with it and potential data collection routes.

Let the reviews speak for themselves, unless this launcher is mandatory for functionality in the sequel (in which case its still redundant for KSP1) most will not like it, myself included. For Jools sake i even reactivated my old KSP forum account just for this issue specifically.

[Richy teh space man]

Why is it even being added? What value does it bring?

[eRe4s3r]

All this launcher did is make me uninstall the Steam game and install the GoG version before the launcher. Upside: All mods work. Downsides: I have a 11 year old tutorial bug.

Yes I know, truly shocking consequences of freeing KSP from Steam But if I have to choose between KSP1 on GoG with Parallax and Tweakscale or KSP 1 on Steam with neither the answer is VERY easy.... ^^

[Catto]

This launcher made my dog eat my computer and barf cause the launcher tasted bad like a Switch cartridge

[R-T-B]

Just gonna drop this here:

 

On 11/4/2022 at 12:26 AM, LezRowl said:

The launcher has not been proven to do anything to affect the game negatively.

From steam at least, it ignores the command line parameters set there by the user, which is not horrid, but is annoying.

Edited November 6, 2022 by R-T-B

[Zefnoly]

On 11/4/2022 at 8:26 AM, LezRowl said:

The launcher has not been proven to do anything to affect the game negatively. Why would they remove it just because "you don't like it"? There really is no arguing against someone making a plain complaint. I think the launcher is nice and should stay, it's an easy place to provide feedback to the developers without having to go to some other platform where it might not be read. 

It does tho. It breaks modded games. Even with circumvention it seems to bug out some mods in weird ways. They beleive the folder for the launcher is the "root folder" of KSP and store configs etc... in a gamedata folder they make inside the launcher folder. It is very strange and Im seeing more errors than usual Even with a custom install location where I litterally use commands on steam to launch from a custom location. I have my game on a seperate drive than where steam installs it.

Using the luanch parameters to make steam launch from the custom location. Yet mods are making a "gamedata" folder inside the PD launcher folder in the steam install location. Steam install does not even have the mods nor is what steam is launching. So why is this happening? It seems the new steam setups to make this launcher work is doing weird things to the way the game runs. I am now forced to launch the game without steam. Which means I loose my FPS counter, steam screenshots and the steam playtime counter.

Edited November 6, 2022 by Zefnoly

[HebaruSan]

19 minutes ago, Zefnoly said:

They beleive the folder for the launcher is the "root folder" of KSP and store configs etc... in a gamedata folder they make inside the launcher folder.

That would be a bug in those mods. The game provides the correct path to the game root in KSPUtil.ApplicationRootPath, and mods should use that rather than assume the game will be started from a particular folder. You should report this problem to the maintainers of the mods in question.

[Zefnoly]

1 hour ago, HebaruSan said:

That would be a bug in those mods. The game provides the correct path to the game root in KSPUtil.ApplicationRootPath, and mods should use that rather than assume the game will be started from a particular folder. You should report this problem to the maintainers of the mods in question.

Fixed the problem with this post. No longer an issue. And again. Before now these mods wouldnt have this problem. The launcher introduced a change that these mods didnt take into consideration, basically breaking them. And since this problem is now on all versions of the game. Proper workarounds needs to be found as older versions of mods may not be updated to solve this.

Here is the solution

You need to make steam launch from a shortcut to the actual game EXE rather than the EXE itself.

[HebaruSan]

@Zefnoly, yes, I understand all of that. It's still a bug in those mods and should still be reported.

In fact, if you mention them here or PM them to me, I'll take a look and submit some fix pull requests as needed.

Edited November 6, 2022 by HebaruSan

[razark]

Launcher?

[N_Danger]

What is this launcher you speak of?

/s

I have used the .exe to launch the game for years. And I have been copying the game from the Steam directory to it's own directory for as long as that so Steam updates wouldn't break my mod'ed saves.

So I would say don't use it if it bothers you?

[Lisias]

16 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

That would be a bug in those mods. The game provides the correct path to the game root in KSPUtil.ApplicationRootPath, and mods should use that rather than assume the game will be started from a particular folder. You should report this problem to the maintainers of the mods in question.

No, it was not a bug on the mods. Even KSP was writting the KSP.log on the wrong place, and "forgetting" to use the UserLoadingScreens.

But… You raised an interesting point. I didn't checked how this "PDLauncher bypass" had affected the KSPUtil.ApplicationRootPath. Doing it now.

-- -- POST EDIT -- --

I reproduced the bypass problem on my Windows testbed and got this form my test case (this was executed on a Windows 10 machine):

[LOG 05:30:41.839] [KSPe] pwd:                        C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\PDLauncher\
[LOG 05:30:41.839] [KSPe] origin:                     C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\
[LOG 05:30:41.839] [KSPe] KSPUtil.ApplicationRootPath C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal Space Program/KSP_x64_Data/../

I concede that using the KSPUtil.ApplicationRootPath would had prevented some breakage, but since KSP itself needs the PWD to be set at the same path as where the executable is (called "origin" on the path above), I can't blame the add'ons for following suit.

When in doubt, we always should do exactly the same as KSP does, and KSP needs the PWD to be set on the same directory where the executable is, otherwise it will misbehave - as misplacing the KSP.log, ignoring the UserLoadingScreens and if I remember correctly (pending confirmation) where the @thumbs directory is placed (I think this is how I detected the problem on Linux, when a Graphic Shell launched KSP with the CWD on a different place - but it's more than an year, perhaps two, since i handled this, I need to find my notes).

— — POST POST EDIT — — 

My add'ons will be updated nevertheless. If the consensus of the eco-system is to use KSPUtil.ApplicationRootPath, so this is what I will use from now on.

Edited November 7, 2022 by Lisias
adding test results