Open Source?

[flowers]

Since development seems pretty much done, it would be really nice if the source, or Unity project files, or anything like that was released.  To be clear, this could even be released only if you have KSP2, it would just be nice to see if the community might be interested in more extensive modding.

[PDCWolf]

I know this is a... complicated thing and I'm totally with you on the fact that it's abandoned and they'll never touch it again. However, it technically isn't cancelled nor completed so it's within the framework of something that can be picked up and continued (which again, I doubt they'll do, Ex-PD has tons of problems in their basket right now to bother looking at KSP2).

I will however direct you to the effort for this to happen for KSP1 which, although just as likely to happen, it'd at least be a much more useful source than whatever Frankeinstein's monster they made KSP2 to be.

[chefsbrian]

7 hours ago, flowers said:

Since development seems pretty much done, it would be really nice if the source, or Unity project files, or anything like that was released.  To be clear, this could even be released only if you have KSP2, it would just be nice to see if the community might be interested in more extensive modding.

Exceedingly unlikely for legal reasons beyond even Unity and the KSP owners themselves - Large projects like KSP2 almost universally make use of licensed middleware atop the engine in the form of plugins and external tools (In Unity it feels like you can only get things to work with half a dozen various third party tools most of the time), which are both often somewhat complicated in their licensing rules (Per seat, per copy, per financial period, I've seen it all) and completely outside the rights of the involved teams to distribute for open source use. That's quite literally their product and moneymaker, no way they'll let someone else just give it away for free.

Unfortunately, most middleware is also not merely a "well just take it out" option, it tends to be either integrated heavily into asset pipelines, render pipelines, or gameplay code. It'd take significant development effort to rip them out and replace them, and often technically complex work atop of that - much of the whole point of a 3rd party library is to take something difficult, time consuming, and finnicky to implement, and just using a prebuilt solution.

So they'd have to spend money to take an axe to it, and with the looming risk that if they accidentally missed anything (Because, say, all the old devs are gone) then they're liable for potentially huge damages. Not worth it, when the reward is just to undermine one of their major franchises, by releasing something that at best would be completely non-functional due to said axe taken to the codebase.

To be completely honest, anyone who has the technical skill and interest to spend the effort that'd be required would be far better served just actually building a new game entirely. If you can replace all the things that need replacing, you're a capable enough programmer, team, or community to actually just make a new game. It'd likely take less effort than trying to identify and salvage whatever code you can from the existing projects rotten foundations. The art assets are the least valuable thing floating around here - Not to demean the efforts of any of our lovely content modders, but there's a reason that there's so many parts mods for KSP1 and even some for KSP2. Its a much more manageable scale of work for a hobbyist, so a project that could solve the code and technical issues would have no shortage of talented artists to draw upon.

[pathurus]

wouldn't that help with piracy?