Suggestion: Put potentially shareable files (saves, crafts) in a more accesible location

[Haustvindr]

To the devs: If you have already planned a different method to share stuff, like an export/import system from within the game, then please ignore this post.

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With that said, let's get to it. I'll try to explain properly.

Right now everything that the game needs to persistently save it's located within appdata. That's okay for the most part, but there's a little issue for normal folks: appdata folder is hidden by default.

Okay, so, what does it means?

That means that for the typical user, when they want to share a craft file: they would open the file explorer, then try to navigate to appdata using nothing else than their mouse/trackpad, and get frustrated because they cannot see any "appdata" folder. Therefore, it might be actually useful to split the game data between "shareable" and "local" data.

Now, many people in the forum will think that this is just a stupid suggestion, since it is very easy to reach appdata, but... I know, many (all?) developers know, and pretty sure Intercept knows, that the typcial user is... well, let's say that they are a bulb at half power. Moreover, Intercept are trying to make the game more accesible, including attracting both younger and less technical savvy players, so I think it is indeed a relevant suggestion.

So, what do I propose?

My to-go proposition is to use the "saved games" folder, which was introduced with Vista just for... well, savegames. It is not visible in the "promoted" folders in the file explorer tree under your user name, but it is not a hidden folder and can be easily accesed just navigating to it (in <drive>:\Users\<user>\Saved games).

Alternatively, you could just use the "my documents" folder, just as many other games do.

By placing those files in an easily accesible location, you will be making much easier the life of many many players that are not midly-advanced Windows users. Also, I don't know how the locations will be in Linux/Mac, but they might find it useful as well.

Then, which files I propose to move to a more accesible location?

It should include our campaigns, workspaces and individual crafts (or the equivalent). Generally speaking, it should be moved anything consciously created by the player:

• A campaign save file would be relocated
• But the global game settings (screen resolution, UI scale, graphics quality, ...) does not need to relocate
• Craft/workspace files would be relocated
• But the default craft/workspaces would not
• Screenshots made within the game would be relocated
• Etcetera

Of course, I don't know how many files the game will create, and which of those should be relocated or not, but I hope the idea was trasmitted properly and you would probably have a much better idea about which contents may be "shareable" and which don't.

Okay, sounds fine, but how difficult is it?

I'd guess not much since it is just a redirection for the paths of some specific contents. Moreover, it could even be done with junctions at the filesystem level and don't even bother with redirections, though I don't recommend it.

Some last words?

Yes, just thank you for your work bringing this game to life.

Edited February 26, 2023 by Haustvindr

[mattihase]

Even as someone who's used appdata a lot, this is (I think) the first time I've had to go hunting in LocalLow for anything as opposed to Local or Roaming. Very unique design decision.

[TechDragon]

As someone with multiple hard drives... This infuriates me because I put KSP2 on a separate hard drive. I was asked where I wanted KSP2 to live, I selected the place I wanted KSP2 to live... and KSP2 decided "nah, were just going to throw our crap where ever we like" and puts stuff on my busy, space constrained, C drive... I don't like it when Adobe does this, and I like it when games do it even less. 

Secondarily to the "I hate programs taking up space on a hard drive I didn't install them to" issue... 

This has repercussions for mods and beta install testing and the sort of thing most of us have gotten used to doing when we keep a rich collection of mods. I cant have 6 installs of KSP2 nicely sitting side by side if they all try to load save files from the same folder with potential corruption issues if the games try to automatically load files in the directory, I've seen some games that just auto delete save files they cant load... who knows. Its just not how I as someone that loves mods want KSP2 to work... I want it to keep the save files for a copy of KSP2... with that copy of KSP2. 

Edited February 28, 2023 by TechDragon