Saving/Reviving Old Mods

[RussianCow76]

Hey all, this is my first forum post, so please excuse any improper etiquette  of mine.

I had a Nostalgia itch recently, and decided I would hunt down a classic copy of KSP from when I first started playing. To keep a long and difficult story short, I was having a blast. The old aesthetics really quenched my nostalgia thirst. But as nice as it was, KSP was definitely lacking in it's quality of life features back in the day.

So I went on yet another hunt for some classic mods that worked with KSP 0.20.0, and ended up having much less success than I hoped. CKAN, Spacedock, and Curseforge all run dry once you go further back than 0.23 or around there. Github seems to have the most potential, some mods have very old releases still archived on there but I haven't found any that work with 0.20 yet.

So far, the only working mods I've found are a copy of Banana for Scale I found on CKAN, and an release of B9 Aerospace which somehow still has it's Mediafire page (https://www.mediafire.com/download/uz3sx8631qebreu/B9_Aerospace_Pack_R3-1.zip).

So, I have come to you guys for some help. If any of you have been playing back in the day and have any old copies of mods stored away on your hard drive, or you know of any other places to find them, Perhaps we could start an effort to save these mods by Hosting them somewhere again.

I'm not a modder and I'm not familiar with the rules around uploading mods that you haven't made yourself, but I feel like for the purpose of preserving them, surely uploading them to Curseforge or Spacedock while giving credit to the author should be allowed yes? Once the file is hosted somewhere safe, adding them to CKAN could go a long way.

Maybe this is all just a pipe dream, but I figured I would at least make an attempt.

[HebaruSan]

The first CKAN release was in October 2014, which was right on the cusp of KSP 0.25, so it's not surprising that the metadata doesn't go back much further than that.

1 hour ago, RussianCow76 said:

I'm not a modder and I'm not familiar with the rules around uploading mods that you haven't made yourself, but I feel like for the purpose of preserving them, surely uploading them to Curseforge or Spacedock while giving credit to the author should be allowed yes?

That would depend on whether the individual mods' licenses allowed redistribution; e.g., if it's MIT or GPL or one of the Creative Commons licenses, then you'd be fine, but if it's "all rights reserved" (or has no license), then unfortunately no, you'd be violating copyrights by doing that.

I still have 31 old ZIPs from 2012–2014 in my Downloads folder, but I have no idea what their game version compatibility would have been, as the original hosting ("Spaceport"?) has died and version files had not been invented yet. Some of them have changelogs or READMEs that mention compatibility, but parsing that out one file at a time would be a true labor of love.

Edited February 19, 2023 by HebaruSan

[RussianCow76]

9 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

The first CKAN release was in October 2014, which was right on the cusp of KSP 0.25, so it's not surprising that the metadata doesn't go back much further than that.

That would depend on whether the individual mods' licenses allowed redistribution; e.g., if it's MIT or GPL or one of the Creative Commons licenses, then you'd be fine, but if it's "all rights reserved" (or has no license), then unfortunately no, you'd be violating copyrights by doing that.

I still have 31 old ZIPs from 2012–2014 in my Downloads folder, but I have no idea what their game version compatibility would have been, as the original hosting ("Spaceport"?) has died and version files had not been invented yet. Some of them have changelogs or READMEs that mention compatibility, but parsing that out one file at a time would be a true labor of love.

Could you share those ZIPs with me so I can parse through them? For me it would be a labor of love. Plus with how much luck i've been having searching the web this may very well have a higher success rate. If you're willing to share feel free to DM me with however you'd like to do it.

[HebaruSan]

Also, CKAN's own known versions list only goes back to 0.23.0, so it may have some problems detecting 0.20:

• https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN-meta/blob/master/builds.json

2 hours ago, RussianCow76 said:

Could you share those ZIPs with me so I can parse through them? For me it would be a labor of love. Plus with how much luck i've been having searching the web this may very well have a higher success rate. If you're willing to share feel free to DM me with however you'd like to do it.

OK, I've checked their licenses, and the ones I'm allowed to redistribute are now here:

• https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-OWFd7ADf8ONkhO9gkZbu_9KnCaSGHva?usp=sharing

I made no attempt to collect things comprehensively back then, so it's a very random assortment of odds and ends. Mostly boring big name mods that everyone already knows, and mostly small downloads. Fingers crossed that it does you some good.

[zer0Kerbal]

@RussianCow76 of course if you find something (like the Banana) you can always ask me to adopt/update.

[RussianCow76]

5 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

Also, CKAN's own known versions list only goes back to 0.23.0, so it may have some problems detecting 0.20:

• https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN-meta/blob/master/builds.json

OK, I've checked their licenses, and the ones I'm allowed to redistribute are now here:

• https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-OWFd7ADf8ONkhO9gkZbu_9KnCaSGHva?usp=sharing

I made no attempt to collect things comprehensively back then, so it's a very random assortment of odds and ends. Mostly boring big name mods that everyone already knows, and mostly small downloads. Fingers crossed that it does you some good.

Thanks so much, it's really appreciated.

 

1 hour ago, zer0Kerbal said:

@RussianCow76 of course if you find something (like the Banana) you can always ask me to adopt/update.

Will do

[RussianCow76]

8 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

Also, CKAN's own known versions list only goes back to 0.23.0, so it may have some problems detecting 0.20:

• https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN-meta/blob/master/builds.json

OK, I've checked their licenses, and the ones I'm allowed to redistribute are now here:

• https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-OWFd7ADf8ONkhO9gkZbu_9KnCaSGHva?usp=sharing

I made no attempt to collect things comprehensively back then, so it's a very random assortment of odds and ends. Mostly boring big name mods that everyone already knows, and mostly small downloads. Fingers crossed that it does you some good.

I went through them all, and all I got to work was Tac Lifesupport, the MK II cockpit interior, Kerbal Alarm Clock, and Docking Port Alignment tool, and they all only worked on my 0.21 copy, except for Alarm Clock which did work on 0.20.

The 3 mods I'm looking to get working more than any are Ferram Aero, Joint Reinforcement, and Either Mechjeb or Kerbal engineer (I guess if I had ferram I'd also have to have KW rocketry of procedural fairings as well lol).

So far, any Ferram I've tried just straight up doesn't do anything, Same with Joint Reinforcement. And when trying Various Mechjeb Versions, they all have the parts show up but they are just dumb probe cores with none of the mechjeb functionality. And the Kerbal Engineer I tried caused a glitch that made all stock parts in the game to not show up in the editor, the only part that was left was the BFS banana in the mystery goo container XD.

Those 3 alone would go a long way in making the game more playable. I was suprised just how bad the stock joints are, I had a rocket with two orange tanks in my first stage, and it was so unstable that the vibrations from sitting on the launch clamps was enough to break the rocket apart before I even ignited my engines.

I appreciate you helping me out, I did make a little bit of progress. I will keep looking for those big 3, let me know if you get any leads.

Edited February 19, 2023 by RussianCow76

[Nazalassa]

#include <web.archive.org>

https://web.archive.org/web/20140628051949/http://beta.*** malicious site we no longer use ***.com:80/

https://web.archive.org/web/20141023014458/https://*** malicious site we no longer use ***.com/

I think you may find some mods there, maybe mods for 0.22 or 0.23 are compatible with KSP 0.20? Haven't tried.

[RussianCow76]

On 2/19/2023 at 11:24 AM, Nazalassa said:

#include <web.archive.org>

https://web.archive.org/web/20140628051949/http://beta.*** malicious site we no longer use ***.com:80/

https://web.archive.org/web/20141023014458/https://*** malicious site we no longer use ***.com/

I think you may find some mods there, maybe mods for 0.22 or 0.23 are compatible with KSP 0.20? Haven't tried.

I did look there too for a while, with very little luck.

[Nazalassa]

Why did these *** malicious site we no longer use *** appear?

Oh well, let me write *** malicious site we no longer use *** and we'll see if it gets replaced

Oh yes it does (argh)

[Sampa]

to my understanding, you can TECHNICALLY ressurrect a mod, regardless of license, so long as you do not distribute (resurrection for personal use only)