How to set-up to create mods in KSP

[diomedea]

As I can't find any definite answer from previous threads, I ask any of the experienced good souls here the fatal question:

- what is the correct set-up for a modder?

I already have MS Visual Studio Express, no problem I can read C#. But is Unity required for anything, and if so, what version?

I have some experience with project control, mostly subversion and variants. And GoogleCode. But I see many developers here like GitHub: should I open an account over there as well? Or would you suggest otherwise?

Is there any repository online with KSP reference documentation, where you can find described what visible methods do from the stock DLLs?

[MacTee]

A good YouTube playlist is here ->

. It explains how to set up your VS and the first steps of Plugin development.

The KSP Wiki also explains the first steps.

Or another interesting thread Example plugin projects to help you get started somewhere here in the forum

You don't need any vorsioin control (but i would recomend it ) Take a look at assembla.com (if you like svn).

And i don't know any KSP documentation of the available functions.

[diomedea]

@ MacTee: many thanks. Very useful set of Vids you suggested, can't believe not to have found them stickied somewhere on the forum or the Wiki.

Useful the thread with the example plugin, as well (I had that already bookmarked, though). And thanks for your hints about versioning systems.

Pity about KSP documentation, it is all "find yourself and share with others" here?

[EndlessWaves]

Project management is up to you, KSP, the forums and spaceport have no support for any versioning or similar tools so use whatever's familiar to you. Ditto for IDE, I don't like visual studio express due to it's limited code folding support but all three work equally well, as does a simple text editor and the .NET or Mono command line compiler.

Unity is used for exporting Part models. It's not used for anything involving plugins directly. A specific version isn't needed, squad keep updating the version the game runs on, it can been seen on the first line of the output_log.txt file in the KSP_data folder (a log that's very useful for modders as it contains an expanded version of the in-game console). For 0.22 it's 4.1.2f1 but older and newer versions will likely work equally well, there's not much of it actually used for KSP.

[diomedea]

@ EndlessWaves: many thanks. Good hints and very useful.