Installable KSP?

[RocketScientist00]

Hi guys! I quit Steam reporting bcoz sal_vager told me to quit it.

NOTE: This is a discussion, NOT a suggestion!

If KSP can now be installed into the PC, what would you feel about it? Do you want a KSP Installer?

(This is my comeback thread, bcoz I was busy streaming and forgot about the KSP forums.)

Happy discussion!

[Bilfr3d]

umm....

I quit Steam reporting bcoz sal_vager told me to guit it

what?

And what exactly do you want to discuss? it isn't very cleanly set-out

[MKI]

Can you redefine what you want from this thread. Its really hard to understand what this thread is even about.

[vexx32]

There's very little reason KSP would require such a thing, and only minimal benefits would be granted. At best, you'd just have less potential issues with the operating system giving it trouble with wrongly-configured permissions.

It's not worth the trouble, in my opinion.

[Kasuha]

KSP does not behave very well in your computer, having all of code, configuration, modifications and user data in one folder goes against good programming practices and makes it vulnerable to malicious attacks. So yes, it would be probably nice if KSP was changed to follow good practices and stored each of these in appropriate places (which of course differ per used OS), and came with an installer that would make sure all these actually go to their appropriate places.

But since KSP is still deep in alpha phase of development and not really extremely popular, it makes things a bit simpler the way it is, both for developers and for users.

[Streetwind]

The fact that everything is in one folder is one of the things I love the most about KSP. It makes things like keeping different instances and modding and tweaking so extremely comfortable and effortless. I would really dislike it if a new installation routine came along and decided to split it up in four different places.

[stupid_chris]

There's already a KSP installer <.< If you have the game on Steam, it will already do all the job for you. Else the store version has an installer for Windows and Mac

[Sirrobert]

What are you talking about?

Edited May 18, 2014 by KasperVld
removed some minor profanity

[Red Iron Crown]

The fact that everything is in one folder is one of the things I love the most about KSP. It makes things like keeping different instances and modding and tweaking so extremely comfortable and effortless. I would really dislike it if a new installation routine came along and decided to split it up in four different places.

Yes, this. I hope it never switches to an installer with registry entries, Start menu items, etc.

[Kasuha]

The fact that everything is in one folder is one of the things I love the most about KSP. It makes things like keeping different instances and modding and tweaking so extremely comfortable and effortless. I would really dislike it if a new installation routine came along and decided to split it up in four different places.

I'll be blunt: it is as comfortable as Windows 95. There are reasons why modern systems split things up. And when done right, things don't have to become less comfortable due to that.

Portable applications are a different story. But I'm not entirely sure KSP is intended to be used as portable application.

[Sirrobert]

What kind of things would you gain from splitting up the KSP map?

[Guest]

KSP does not behave very well in your computer, having all of code, configuration, modifications and user data in one folder goes against good programming practices and makes it vulnerable to malicious attacks. So yes, it would be probably nice if KSP was changed to follow good practices and stored each of these in appropriate places (which of course differ per used OS), and came with an installer that would make sure all these actually go to their appropriate places.

But since KSP is still deep in alpha phase of development and not really extremely popular, it makes things a bit simpler the way it is, both for developers and for users.

I like the way it is now. Could you explain to me how splitting up the installation into a myriad of hidden and/or DEP protected folders makes it any safer or helps it to "behave" any better? What do you mean by "behave"?

[Kasuha]

I like the way it is now. Could you explain to me how splitting up the installation into a myriad of hidden and/or DEP protected folders makes it any safer or helps it to "behave" any better? What do you mean by "behave"?

Reasons are similar to those why you have cupboard for cutlery and bookcase for books and don't mix them together in one large box.

Besides, "myriad" is a gross exaggeration. We're talking about three, four places maximum - binaries, global config, saves and screenshots.

First, Program files folders are protected by system, making it harder for all kinds of malware infecting them. Also, they're there available for all users of the computer if you have more of them.

Other folders like Application Data, Documents, and Pictures are user-specific. You can have your own game settings and your own profile if you wish to, should you share your PC with someone else.

Also, all these folders are covered by default system backup settings. So if something happens with your disk and you make backups, all your data is saved. Not so much if you put KSP to an arbitrary folder on your disk.

I have a shortcut to KSP screenshots, KSP saves, and KSP.exe itself on desktop anyway - opening the explorer and crawling directory structure to get to KSP and open folders I need is slow and ineffective. If they were in documents and pictures, I wouldn't even need these shortcuts.

Edited May 16, 2014 by Kasuha

[sumghai]

For certain reasons, I run KSP directly off an external HDD.

I would very much prefer that the KSP folder structure be kept the way it is right now - it makes backing up my entire game much easier.

[Guest]

That is an excellent explanation, Kasuha. I never thought of it that way, especially the part about windows recovery systems. That definitely could come in handy. I can see now where and why KSP would benefit from an installer. I have been frustrated in the past while trying to find game saves for other games that were buried in a rats nest of hidden app folders. That was why I was wary of RocketScientist00's suggestion.

[phoenix_ca]

The annoyance with Windows is that there is no hard standards enforced by Microsoft about where programs must put their crap. Things are different on Linux, and wildly different on OS X. Linux has some modicum of standards for where supporting application data must go, while OS X has two folders, only one of which is usually relevant. There's ~/Library/Application\ Support/ and /Library/Application\ Support/ . And that's it really; anything outside of that is into non-standard land. This makes managing an OS X (or other Linux/BSD) system way, way easier.

Windows, is a hot mess. Programs will put themselves wherever they please. There isn't even a standard place for binaries. Instead of a single /Applications/ folder there are two folders that don't provide useful separation. And then there's the blasted registry, and finally the quagmire of folders that is the \Users\ folder on Windows where various applications may or may not store their data. It's not stored in a standard way (Application Support data is stored in OS X by application name), meaning there's no predictability for the user. One can't actually look in those folders and expect to find user data for an application. It could be held in the registry (barf) or somewhere else entirely.

All those inconveniences add up, enough that simply wanting the damn program all in one place is understandable. If Microsoft did a better job of establishing a coherent and unified standard for devs to use, and devs would actually follow it, this wouldn't be such a headache.

Edited May 18, 2014 by phoenix_ca

[cantab]

The big issue is what Streetwind mentioned. How do you propose to handle multiple instances of the game, that might be different game versions, different selections of mods, different versions of those mods, and some might even have manual edits made to core game files? This is something most installable programs either don't do or don't make easy for the user. How do you make managing such as easy for the user as it is in the current system of One Folder Per Instance? How much extra code is this going to introduce to maintain and debug, with three different operating systems and both Steam and direct installations possible on each?