Modding and file location issues

[schlosrat]

If you're interested in installing mods (Space Warp, BepInEx, or otherwise) you might want to keep a clean version of the game around so you can test things unmodded and see if a mod you've got is causing a problem or if it's the game. This is a no-brainer from KSP1 days, so no surprise, right? But wait! Things are a little different with KSP2 because now your game saves are in "C:\Users\<Windows User Name>\AppData\LocalLow\Intercept Games\Kerbal Space Program 2\Saves\SinglePlayer\<Campaign Name>". This offers a nice advantage to testing mod vs. no-mod, but does present a potential problem...

Since the game is one place and the saves are in another, both your modded copy and your clean copy are using the same folder. Windows will happily let you launch two copies of the game, so it's possible (though stupid) to open the same save in both. Since they will follow the same naming scheme for autosaves, they will now stomp on each other, which invites the Kraken in.

Solutions are: Have separate campaigns just for use with either the modded or clean version of KSP, or be carful you don't inadvertently summon a Kraken by shutting down one before running the other. Running two at one time is probably also a bad idea just from game performance issues, but that's secondary to the damage that could be done by letting the two walk over each others saves.

For those of us that are new to Steam (like me), if you want to find your game it's here: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\Kerbal Space Program 2". You can copy that folder to another location to make a duplicate, or you can move it entirely and then make a duplicate of that. For example I've got two copies of the game now on my root drive in "C:\Kerbal Space Program 2" and "C:\Kerbal Space Program 2 Modded".  You can launch the game from either folder with the KSP2_x64.exe file (this bypasses Steam if that matters to you).

[schlosrat]

Update: I've got three versions now:

• C:\Kerbal Space Program 2
• C:\Kerbal Space Program 2 SpaceWarp
• C:\Kerbal Space Program 2 BepInEx

While there is a BepInEx loader for SpaceWarp mods I'm hesitant to have a loader load another loader to load a mod...

I've found that for the mod user the install process is basically the same and just dead easy with either of these.

1. Unzip the modloader and copy those files into the game folder you want to use
2. Run once with just the mod loader so it can build out its file structure
3. Quit (save not needed)
4. Unzip your mod and copy it into the appropriate destination for the modloader you're using and whatever file naming you've done for your game folder

• C:\Kerbal Space Program 2 BepInEx\BepInEx\plugins
• C:\Kerbal Space Program 2 Space Warp\SpaceWarp\Mods

Just like with KSP1, some modes with have a zip structure that assumes you're already in the mod/pluging folder, and some will start at the game folder, so if the file structure of the zip for the mod you're installing has a BepInEx or SpaceWarp folder, then dive down to the plugins / Mods folder and copy its contents. If the mod zip folder structure begins with a folder named for the mod, then just copy from there.

Edited May 25, 2023 by schlosrat

[thewhitemetroid]

Thanks. Good idea to keep a vanilla campaign save for an unmodded instance of the game. Will do.

[munix]

On 2/28/2023 at 2:42 PM, schlosrat said:

• C:\Kerbal Space Program 2
• C:\Kerbal Space Program 2 SpaceWarp
• C:\Kerbal Space Program 2 BepInEx

Good news is, this can be reduced to just two instances now, KSP 2 and KSP 2 Modded, since SpaceWarp now runs exclusively on BepInEx as a plugin, and doesn't do any mod loading on its own anymore.

 

[attosecond]

On 2/28/2023 at 8:12 AM, schlosrat said:

Things are a little different with KSP2 because now your game saves are in "C:\Users\<Windows User Name>\AppData\LocalLow\Intercept Games\Kerbal Space Program 2\Saves\SinglePlayer\<Campaign Name>".

This actually bugs me.... a lot. Steam lets me choose the installation directory for the game, which in my case is on a separate physical drive from my OS drive. I want control over where the game saves are going, also. Burying them deep inside a hidden folder (AppData) on my primary drive with no option for changing the location feels wrong. What was wrong with the way KSP1 did things? Each copy of KSP1 had its own saves folder structure, so there was never a need to worry about my RSS install overwriting my crazy no-holds-barred FTL install saves.

[munix]

2 hours ago, attosecond said:

This actually bugs me.... a lot. Steam lets me choose the installation directory for the game, which in my case is on a separate physical drive from my OS drive. I want control over where the game saves are going, also. Burying them deep inside a hidden folder (AppData) on my primary drive with no option for changing the location feels wrong. What was wrong with the way KSP1 did things? Each copy of KSP1 had its own saves folder structure, so there was never a need to worry about my RSS install overwriting my crazy no-holds-barred FTL install saves.

It is fairly standard for user data to be separated from game data, but I definitely agree with you here.

[schlosrat]

2 hours ago, attosecond said:

Each copy of KSP1 had its own saves folder structure, so there was never a need to worry about my RSS install overwriting my crazy no-holds-barred FTL install saves.

I think you can accomplish most of this with campaigns. If you use one campaign or set of campaigns for RSS and another for FTL that will have the saves in different folders. You might be able to trick the system into letting you have the whole folder structure on another drive (not sure about that in Windows, but I bet I could do it easily in MacOS or Linux)

4 hours ago, munix said:

Good news is, this can be reduced to just two instances now, KSP 2 and KSP 2 Modded, since SpaceWarp now runs exclusively on BepInEx as a plugin, and doesn't do any mod loading on its own anymore.

 

Yep! This is just what I’ve done and I love it!

Edited March 8, 2023 by schlosrat

[thewhitemetroid]

I've always shot from the hip on modding and rarely kept a back up of a game I'm adding mods to (and boy have I paid for that!). Since I am all the way in early access now expecting tons of game breaking patches, how do you typically handle keeping a fresh vanilla backup without having to recopy your original patched version and going through cleaning out all the mods?

[Strykker2]

On 3/14/2023 at 8:28 PM, thewhitemetroid said:

how do you typically handle keeping a fresh vanilla backup without having to recopy your original patched version and going through cleaning out all the mods?

Symlinks.

Since currently most mods use BepInEx + Spacewarp and don't modify existing game files I just keep the mod directory elsewhere and create links to it in the KSP2 directory.

I have a small tool I wrote that allow me to automate this, and can manage a few different Mod groups or configs.: https://github.com/ColinZeidler/KSP-Modded-Toggle

Its an external tool that doesn't directly touch any KSP2 files. (creates a json file where you extact and run it to save the configs/settings you use.)

[TechDragon]

We really shouldn't need to have extensive juggling tools for stuff like this... I genuinely cant understand why they have put the game save data in the current location while continuing to state they intend to support modding.

Mods + "Only one save game folder for all copies of the game no matter what mods may or may not be in each of these copies" = An obvious bad time waiting to happen

 

Now its entirely possible the developers thinking is something like this... they can track the mods that use whatever official API is released, and they intend to annotate the save game information to track which mods are involved in a game and to have some kind of a mod manager UI that wont let you open saves that have/need mods that you have turned off... and I've seen some games use this sort of setup so its a "known solution" to the issue... but it also tends to be a solution used for games with, much less flexible modding options, or much less creative and inventive modding communities. This works for simpler mod scenarios, part addons, UI changes, high level and cosmetic stuff that doesn't affect the game particularly deeply... We're dealing with a modding community that developed a mod to replace the SOI based orbital dynamics with an n-Body integrator to get more realistic orbits! 

Regardless of the likely hood of a KSP2 Principia mod, its an excellent example of the kind of "deep modding" that the KSP community seems to have a penchant for... and these will not play nice with a restrained tidy modding API that fits neatly in a box you can track per save file... its going to be an issue and its an issue with an easy fix that they should just be doing now rather than later before more mods get made.

 

[Sea_Kerman]

IIRC Factorio has something like this with only 1 mod folder but an ingame mod manager to enable and disable mods, essentially like deleting and undeleting stuff from the gamedata folder from KSP1

[PTNLemay]

Minecraft does the same thing, it's a big pain.  Do they use the AppData folder because it's faster somehow from the operating system's perspective?  Why not just run the game from the same location as the executable?

EDIT:
@schlosrat

I saw you mentioned the location for a Steam install.  Where is it when one installs it straight from the website?

Edited June 30, 2023 by PTNLemay

[LuxStice]

On 6/30/2023 at 9:40 PM, PTNLemay said:

Do they use the AppData folder because it's faster somehow from the operating system's perspective?

my guess is that its a common folder on all computers, and its commonly known as the "all the data your app needs folder"

[schlosrat]

On 6/30/2023 at 4:40 PM, PTNLemay said:

Minecraft does the same thing, it's a big pain.  Do they use the AppData folder because it's faster somehow from the operating system's perspective?  Why not just run the game from the same location as the executable?

EDIT:
@schlosrat

I saw you mentioned the location for a Steam install.  Where is it when one installs it straight from the website?

Sorry I missed this, the ping didn't seem to go through. You can find typically that here: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program 2"

I think they use the AppData folder so that all your games can share the same campaigns and saves. So, suppose you wanted a modded game and another one that's clean. Since the campaigns are in the AppData structure these two games can share them. You can open your modded game, load the save, play, save again, close that game and open a clean install and carry on (unless you've got parts from mods - then you're presently quite doomed)

Edited July 9, 2023 by schlosrat