Why is the game Encrypted?

[zekes]

Reaching out to the forums to ask why in the first 90 minutes of playing KSP2 I'm unable to add flags, find my save or craft file folder, or anything really to modify the game files. Do we just not get that feature anymore? KSP1 allowed saving and uploading of craft flies from the game, modding was easy, and flags could be dropped in. Are these going to be added or is this just a no-go, because quite honestly KSP2 won't be played much if I cannot access these features. And a lot of people I know are feeling the same way.

[tstein]

Since they are planning to have MP the probably already have a foundation to  ensure reliability of the content.  It might very well be related to that. Probably to modify game files you will need a tool from the developers in this case.

[GoldForest]

12 minutes ago, zekes said:

Reaching out to the forums to ask why in the first 90 minutes of playing KSP2 I'm unable to add flags, find my save or craft file folder, or anything really to modify the game files. Do we just not get that feature anymore? KSP1 allowed saving and uploading of craft flies from the game, modding was easy, and flags could be dropped in. Are these going to be added or is this just a no-go, because quite honestly KSP2 won't be played much if I cannot access these features. And a lot of people I know are feeling the same way.

More stuff will be opened to be moddable in the future. For now, they have no official modding support.

[The Aziz]

But muh flag

[Dantheollie]

“Encrypted KSP files break free. KSP players expand to newer hidden files. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But, uh, datamining finds a way.”

[magnemoe]

Watched Scott Manley's stream, he found it under C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\LocalLow\ (some reasonable named folder)
This has the obvious downside of not being an easy to access location, its also one most backup programs done cover. 
Why not 
 C:\Users\[your username]\Documents\(some reasonable named folder)
or 
 C:\Users\[your username]\Documents\my games\(some reasonable named folder)
 

[marce]

3 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Watched Scott Manley's stream, he found it under C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\LocalLow\ (some reasonable named folder)
This has the obvious downside of not being an easy to access location, its also one most backup programs done cover. 
Why not 
 C:\Users\[your username]\Documents\(some reasonable named folder)
or 
 C:\Users\[your username]\Documents\my games\(some reasonable named folder)
 

Storing app data in, well, AppData, is actually the recommended way to do it, just a little annoying for the users. Maybe they could make it configurable in the future.

[magnemoe]

1 minute ago, marce said:

Storing app data in, well, AppData, is actually the recommended way to do it, just a little annoying for the users. Maybe they could make it configurable in the future.

Agree for temporary files, not for stuff like save games. Well it just 30 GB more to back up, downside here is that all the temp files will be included but has 1 TB left on plan. 

[Gordon Fecyk]

7 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Watched Scott Manley's stream, he found it under C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\LocalLow\ (some reasonable named folder)

Good that it saves things in the user's profile, not so good in that it saves things in a folder normally hidden to users. "LocalLow" and "Local" are used for non-roaming portions the user's profile on Windows. "Roaming" is where things get copied to and from a network share if the user was a domain user, and a profile location was specified in their user account.

Even on a stand-alone computer, this means each user can have their own set of game saves, crafts and so on. If you have a family that shares a computer, each person having their own user account and settings (and saved games) is good.

Use this space for data you don't want to edit, but might be a good idea to keep things you'd like the user to see in their Documents folder, or some other per-user space, or provide a shortcut link to the places you'd like people to look in.

[whatsEJstandfor]

If a home user is part of a domain and has a roaming profile, I'd assume that whoever set that up for them is a close family member and turbonerd and would be able to find a way to redirect the KSP save folder to a network location as well

[The Aziz]

20 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Watched Scott Manley's stream, he found it under C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\LocalLow\ (some reasonable named folder)

I didn't find it though despite looking there.

[Gordon Fecyk]

On 2/24/2023 at 10:04 PM, whatsEJstandfor said:

If a home user is part of a domain and has a roaming profile, I'd assume that whoever set that up for them is a close family member and turbonerd.

I'm not suggesting that we build domains for home networks or such. I was trying to explain what the folders in appdata were for. Even in the Windows XP Home days, having each family member use their own account on one PC could save a brother from trashing his sister's desktop. 

[atomontage]

Didn't Nate promise us modding on day one? Now I see a bunch of _mod loaders_ that is not a good sign. Also the content is kinda packed (encrypted as OP said) which makes it difficult to mod. Yes, you could use Unity asset packers to unpack stuff but its not that moddable as the first game. Not a deal breaker neither, but meh.

The stuff that really bothers me is that there are global configs that are saved... globally. Didn't Nate promise us portability of the game to allow different versions with different mod setups on the same machine? That's why the game does not have DRM isn't it?

[The Aziz]

1 hour ago, atomontage said:

Didn't Nate promise us portability of the game to allow different versions with different mod setups on the same machine?

You have a quote? Because I don't remember them ever saying that, as far as I'm concerned, it was always only the wish from the players.

Or I read your post wrong, wait...

Ok, no, actually, I remember no DRM. But no word on portability.

Edited February 27, 2023 by The Aziz

[regex]

On 2/25/2023 at 7:14 AM, The Aziz said:

I didn't find it though despite looking there.

IIRC it's something like C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\LocalLow\Intercept Games\Kerbal Space Program.

[The Aziz]

4 minutes ago, regex said:

IIRC it's something like C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\LocalLow\Intercept Games\Kerbal Space Program.

I thought we were talking about flags. Because I'm looking at it right now and they're nowhere to be found.

I know there's already a mod for that but I'm not installing mods when the game itself is barely standing on its own.

[regex]

1 minute ago, The Aziz said:

I know there's already a mod for that but I'm not installing mods when the game itself is barely standing on its own.

Well, yeah, you need to mod the game to get flags apparently.

[majNUN]

Yeah - I was really shocked how much KSP devs used YouTube personalities to push the game, yet from the first release there is no way to upload a custom flag. It's like they never realised that those YouTubers all have their custom flag that we know them by. That's a marketing mistake if I ever saw one.

[Monger]

It's  not encryption, it's compression. In dot net, it's far easier and faster to compile resources into the assemblies. Also has advantages for upgrade installations.

You can always add loaders etc. to serialize external files, but it's much more complicated. So it's perfectly okay to do that as the last step. 

[atomontage]

2 hours ago, The Aziz said:

You have a quote? Because I don't remember them ever saying that, as far as I'm concerned, it was always only the wish from the players.

Or I read your post wrong, wait...

Ok, no, actually, I remember no DRM. But no word on portability.

Had to traverse through two 20-min interviews... Found something.
https://youtu.be/Jw42iC-mlZM?t=646

Its kinda vague. ShadowZone is asking about being DRM free, modding and multiple installs. Nate kept nodding and confirmed DRM free but did not explicitly say it would be portable. Here I might be actually wrong.
I may have just guessed the rest because of his nodding.

However, I think its basically the same context: if its DRM free just for the sake of modding, shouldn't it also be portable? Whats the point of having a highly moddable DRM free game and not being able to test multiple copies on the same PC?

Thirdly, ppl in the KSP modding discord dug out a some kinda built-in mod manager. The situation might be better than I think it is.

 

Edited February 27, 2023 by atomontage
clarification

[Drakenred65]

I think it's just compressed not encrypted. But it should be enpripted 

Spoiler

To keep what's hidden from destroying your mind

 

[ZAJC3W]

4 hours ago, atomontage said:

However, I think its basically the same context: if its DRM free just for the sake of modding, shouldn't it also be portable? Whats the point of having a highly moddable DRM free game and not being able to test multiple copies on the same PC?

You could work around this by using multiple user accounts, but it sucks.

All settings, saves, and what looks like logs land in c:\Users\%username%\AppData\LocalLow\Intercept Games\Kerbal Space Program 2\
 

[Bej Kerman]

On 2/24/2023 at 6:24 PM, zekes said:

Reaching out to the forums to ask why in the first 90 minutes of playing KSP2 I'm unable to add flags, find my save or craft file folder, or anything really to modify the game files. Do we just not get that feature anymore? KSP1 allowed saving and uploading of craft flies from the game, modding was easy, and flags could be dropped in. Are these going to be added or is this just a no-go, because quite honestly KSP2 won't be played much if I cannot access these features. And a lot of people I know are feeling the same way.

Saves and ships are stored in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\Intercept Games\Kerbal Space Program 2 now.

As for extracting things like the tutorial mp4s, you can use unity asset extractors like Asset Studio. I still haven't figured out where the music and rocket sounds are kept - I really want to listen to these sfx and the files in SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program 2\KSP2_x64_Data\StreamingAssets\aa\StandaloneWindows64 (where th tutorials are kept) don't contain them