Beginning addon development in Visual Studio

[michaelhester07]

I've searched here (and the forum search is not helpful at all btw) and I cannot find out what to reference in a new C# project in Visual Studio 2012 express to build a plugin. Is there anywhere that shows the parts I need to build a workflow for making a plugin? And if that information isn't stickyed in this forum can it be?

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

Have you tried this

or even this They worked out ok for my needs when taken alongside the rest of the info available here admittedly the plugin info's right at the bottom of the OP but it's there.

[UbioZur]

You have a nice full (a bit outdated) video tutorial

.

Taranis have made some very good example code you can have a look here.

TriggerAu have documented his remake of Alarm clock, you ca find the info here.

You best bet will also be to create a new installation of ksp, and remove all the parts/internal/props you don't need to have the loading going as fast as possible.

You can create a savefile and use this trick to autoload the game to that save file.

I personally use this code

[KSPAddon(KSPAddon.Startup.MainMenu, false)]
    public class Debug_AutoLoadQuicksaveOnStartup : UnityEngine.MonoBehaviour
    {
        public static bool first = true;
        public void Start()
        {
            if (first)
            {
                first = false;
                HighLogic.SaveFolder = "SaveName";
                var game = GamePersistence.LoadGame("persistent", HighLogic.SaveFolder, true, false);
                if (game != null && game.flightState != null && game.compatible)
                {
                    HighLogic.LoadScene(GameScenes.EDITOR); //Start to the VAB
                    CheatOptions.AllowPartClipping = true;
                    CheatOptions.InfiniteFuel = true;
                    CheatOptions.InfiniteRCS = true;
                }
            }
        }
    }

Since you cannot use the debugger/tracelog/breakpoint under VS (sadly), you will need to use a fair amount of Debug.Log() to know what are the value of the variables and where it could crash.

In the ksp config file you want to have this

VERBOSE_DEBUG_LOG = True

[michaelhester07]

I tried those links from SpannerMonkey's reply but couldn't find what to reference to get the [KSPAddon] stuff or where those DLLS are located.

The Video helped once I got to part 2. I'll do some more with that. That information needs to be sticky somewhere though.

Unrelated:

Can I attach the visual studio debugger to KSP?

[UbioZur]

Can I attach the visual studio debugger to KSP?

Sadly no, someone made an alternative for monodevelop here.

for KSPAddon, it is declared inside Assembly-CSharp.dll

[KSPAddon(KSPAddon.Startup, bool)]

First argument is where the plugin will start

second is if it is loaded only once or everytime you go to that startup.