Mod Folder / Mod Loader

[Vas]

Why is it that this game has no mod folder yet? I don't like having to overwrite game files to play certain mods. It should be possible to drop a mod into it's own folder in a mods folder and let it overwrite official game files with it's own files, without making users have to reinstall their game to remove a mod or back up game files each time. Rimworld and Starbound both allow this, why can't KSP? I'm sure other games do too but I can't think of any other examples right now.

Another thing with this is an in game mod managing menu, so you can turn mods on or off, and even select the order that they load up in, in case one mod overwrites stuff from another mod. Like if one mod adds water as a resource, and one adds food, 2 seperate mods, they both need to add something to the same official file so they both need to edit that file so you'd need a merge method for that. You need a loading order for mods that might replace one or 2 things in another mod as well.

I'm fairly sure this may have been suggested before, just wanted to suggest before I forgot and all. I'm rather impressed that the game only crashes 20 times a day when being run on Linux off a flash drive. xP I thought it wouldn't run at all. Gonna go back to trying to dock ships and watch the game crash 20 more times for a while then see what all people think about mod loading folders and such. I just want to eliminate permanently the need for any overwriting of official files.

[Carmoldu]

I'm totally with you. I would also add a mod-updater tool to that list!

[Tex]

But... there's already a folder directly in the KSP directory especially for mods. All you have to do is put the mod folders in the "Game Data" folder, and it should do it for you. As for the ingame mod manager... Ironically, there is a mod for that. Please look around a bit more.

[Red Iron Crown]

I'm totally with you. I would also add a mod-updater tool to that list!

I'm hopeful that when the Curse client is updated to support KSP, it will support mod updates without paying.

[Vas]

But... there's already a folder directly in the KSP directory especially for mods. All you have to do is put the mod folders in the "Game Data" folder, and it should do it for you. As for the ingame mod manager... Ironically, there is a mod for that. Please look around a bit more.

That folder isn't for mods alone. Official game data is there too. Not to mention, some mods give you stuff you have to overwrite in your official game files. On top of that, some mods have multiple folders that they add to gamedata. You can't figure out which one goes to which unless you delete all to delete one mod.

[magico13]

That folder isn't for mods alone. Official game data is there too. Not to mention, some mods give you stuff you have to overwrite in your official game files. On top of that, some mods have multiple folders that they add to gamedata. You can't figure out which one goes to which unless you delete all to delete one mod.

There are only two folders that are stock within GameData: Squad and NASAmission, anything else is from mods so only those two have to be kept when removing all mods. A separate folder isn't going to change anything about mods that add multiple folders and if a mod requires you to overwrite stock files then they would still have to do that if there was a mod folder (otherwise they'd have their own folder in GameData).

As for a mod loader in-game, the issue with that is that all the mods are loaded before the main menu comes up, since KSP loads everything into RAM at startup. The whole startup procedure would have to be rewritten (it should be...) so it is unlikely to happen for a long time as a stock feature.

[Red Iron Crown]

As for a mod loader in-game, the issue with that is that all the mods are loaded before the main menu comes up, since KSP loads everything into RAM at startup. The whole startup procedure would have to be rewritten (it should be...) so it is unlikely to happen for a long time as a stock feature.

I think the launcher would be the appropriate place to put this functionality.

[magico13]

I think the launcher would be the appropriate place to put this functionality.

The only issue is that there are a lot of us who don't use the launcher, namely everybody who runs KSP through Steam. An extra button in the main menu with the appropriate changes to the loading mechanism would be nice. Though the launcher would be more suitable if it weren't for steam skipping it.

[Sirrobert]

Squad has one of the easiest modding systems I know off, even though it's still in Alpha

I don't expect fully intigrated mod support beyond what we have to be a priority for them until WAY down the line in near release

[Vas]

That folder isn't for mods alone. Official game data is there too. Not to mention, some mods give you stuff you have to overwrite in your official game files. On top of that, some mods have multiple folders that they add to gamedata. You can't figure out which one goes to which unless you delete all to delete one mod.

Did you read ALL of my post? A mod that adds multiple folders, has it's OWN FOLDER. A folder all it's own with the name of the mod pack.

A merge command + update/overwrite command in mods to overwrite stuff or add stuff to other mods or official files without actually overwriting other mods. Take a look at Starbound's modding. I made a mod that renames one item in the game without overwriting that item in the official files. All I did was create a copy of the item with the same path to the item in my own mod pack, then change the values. Some people just use _merge in their file to add things to the official files. I believe this also overwrites any values you add to the file as well if they exist in the original. So merge is both overwrite + new.

[daniu]

There is the Plugins/ folder too; I read that KSP also reads mods from there already (not putting mine there though so not positively sure).

It sure looks like it's supposed to be the preferred destination folder for mods in the future.

[Deathsoul097]

There is the Plugins/ folder too; I read that KSP also reads mods from there already (not putting mine there though so not positively sure).

It sure looks like it's supposed to be the preferred destination folder for mods in the future.

Actually, it's the opposite. Mods used to go in there, and it only exists for backwards compatibility with the old mods. Also, is Drag and Drop into Gamedata really that hard? And mods that add multiple things into gamedata are usually adding stuff from other mods, like MM, or Toolbar, or Firespitter's Dll and pathway. (And trust me, having multiple of the same Dll in gamedata, especially when they are in different subfolders, makes things a huge, laggy,crashy pain in the ***.

[BudgetHedgehog]

If done well, any mod shouldn't overwrite stock parts but use ModuleManager instead. This keeps debugging and uninstalling very easy. And as I've mentioned on the forums before, are people really just blindly copying across Gamedata folders? Without looking inside to see what game-changing files are being added? It takes like 30 seconds and keeps you informed about what you're doing.

Having a separate folder would not change much because that could A, get messy if you're not careful and B, you'd still run into conflicts and overwrites, just in a different folder.

[Dodgey]

Yea no offense I don't see the problem, a mod loader is on the way with Curse and manual is really easy. As has been said if the mods are doing it right they are using module manager, and you can just copy your entire KSP folder as a backup.

[Vas]

If done well, any mod shouldn't overwrite stock parts but use ModuleManager instead. This keeps debugging and uninstalling very easy. And as I've mentioned on the forums before, are people really just blindly copying across Gamedata folders? Without looking inside to see what game-changing files are being added? It takes like 30 seconds and keeps you informed about what you're doing.

Having a separate folder would not change much because that could A, get messy if you're not careful and B, you'd still run into conflicts and overwrites, just in a different folder.

How do you overwrite a mod accidently if each one gets it's own folder? If MechJeb has it's own folder for everything in it, and you drop it into the /mods/ folder, MechJeb won't overwrite anything unless you're copying it on top of another MechJeb folder which means you're just overwriting the same mod. If another mod named SomeSuperLargeMod is installed, which adds new parts, resources, ship configs, and other stuff is installed, with it's own DLL even, it goes into /mods/ and gets it's own folder called SomeSuperLargeMod. Nothing gets overwriten. And if one mod called "CoreReplacement" gets installed, it's mod may contain duplicates of the game's core items but with different values, it'll still go into /mods/ but those values will be changed in game.

As for someone else saying that it gets laggy if you have mods having copies of the same DLL, that might be slightly true, unless the game detects the DLL is duplicated and just uses one of them across all of the mods. I'm just saying the modding system should be improved. I don't like it currently, installing things and overwriting core game files and mixing stuff into the core game. I don't want to go hunt down every piece of a mod to uninstall it after testing, and I don't want to delete the entire directory of KSP, restore backup, then put 10 mods that did work back in just to remove one mod that didn't work. And if you tell me "Just write down the files it adds and where they are" then clearly you don't care about making modding easier, you just want to argue.

[DMagic]

Mods already come in their own folders inside of GameData. You don't just drop the MechJeb.dll into GameData, it goes into GameData/MechJeb/MechJeb.dll. I don't see how adding another layer of folders is going to help that.

And there are legitimate reasons why some mods must put multiple folders into the GameData folder, usually these are explained in the relevant forum posts and/or readme files.

Exactly what "core game files" are you overwriting anyway? Like everyone else has said, pretty much anything that modifies stock files does so through Module Manager. If that's not the case then you should complain to the mod maker, but I'm only aware of a handful of mods that actually instruct you to overwrite stock files.

[magico13]

-snip-

I don't think you're installing mods correctly... What exactly are you doing? Going into each mod's folders and finding the plugins/parts/etc folders and merging them into the KSP plugins/parts/etc folders? If so, that is the incorrect way of doing it. Some mods ship with a GameData folder, the simplest way of installing them is by merging the GameData folder with the one in the KSP folder. If they don't include a GameData folder, then the top level folder goes INTO the KSP GameData folder. Every mod should have its own folder, nothing should be overwritten. Any mod that requires "overwriting" stock things will use ModuleManager and will still be installed into GameData and won't actually overwrite any files.

I think if you want to have a serious discussion about improving how KSP mods work you should first understand how to install them correctly. The exact thing you are suggesting is how KSP already implements mod installs.

Edit: Here is an example of a GameData folder with mods installed. If I wanted to remove, say, Kerbal Construction Time, all I'd have to do is delete the KerbalConstructionTime folder. No searching around for things. Just highlight+delete.

Edited May 14, 2014 by magico13

[BudgetHedgehog]

<snip>

Some mods bundle other mods (most of the time, they're hard dependencies) and those bundled mods might be an older/incompatible version. One recent example was Navyfish's DPAI bundling an older version of Toolbar which broke MJ if it was installed. Even if the bundled mods are still in SuperLargeMod folder, you then end up with 2 copies of the same mod - one current and one outdated. This would lead to weird things happening in-game which obviously isn't ideal.

I don't want to go hunt down every piece of a mod to uninstall it after testing, and I don't want to delete the entire directory of KSP, restore backup, then put 10 mods that did work back in just to remove one mod that didn't work.

I'm not sure where your frustration lies. As it stands, to uninstall a mod is literally as simple as deleting a folder in Gamedata. That's it, that's the extent of 'hunting' required. How much less are you expecting to do if the folder was called /mods/ instead? And like I said, if a mod is done well, there's no overwriting of stock files because it uses ModuleManager.

And if one mod called "CoreReplacement" gets installed, it's mod may contain duplicates of the game's core items but with different values, it'll still go into /mods/ but those values will be changed in game.

Sorry, but really though.. that's literally the entire point of ModuleManager. It changes stock (or other mods) files without overwriting or duplicating them (and you honestly believe that having duplicates of a part will be fine? Yeah go ahead, copy a part, slightly change it's value and then load up KSP. That'll work, for sure). KSP loads EVERYTHING at the start - if there's two definitions of part X or resource Y, it'll load both, because they're different.

Edited May 15, 2014 by ObsessedWithKSP

[Javster]

I think Prison Architect gets this right. You literally can't mess it up.