Poll for modders and users about AVC Add-on

[Kar]

Greetings everyone.

For most users that don't know what AVC is, it's a add-on that check your mods versions at KSP loading and alerts you if a new version was released and advise you to download and maintain your mods up to date.

I find this little mod very useful. It does not take any space in you modded KSP.

I first, thought about making a petition, but then I thought "what the hell have I the right to petition for something that mod makers give freely?".

So, I think a poll where people like me (users) that do not know nothing about modding KSP would like to use this. Also, to know if some modders in the community would start using AVC as a standard in their mods.

I'm not going to pretend if it is easy or hard to incorporate AVC in all the mods, no will I try because I do not know nothing about modding KSP (I wish) so, sometimes, in some mods it might not be practical or easy to implement AVC. I leave this to the modders community.

If you do not know what AVC is, been you a modder (I doubt it) or a simple gamer like me that uses other peoples mods to enhance my gaming experience (thank you btw) you can check the original thread of the author cybutek: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79745

Thank you.

P.S.

There's a typo on the first option of the poll, my keyboard sucks. Sorry about that. It seams there is no way to edit the poll.

Edited October 31, 2014 by Kar

[RoverDude]

You missed the option for modders that already use it

[Kar]

You missed the option for modders that already use it

Errr... right.... I know yours use it. Love your mods man, MKS and OKS but I still did not get the hang of them

But in any way, many mods don't use AVC. I think this should be one of those "community projects" since it is hard to track mods when you have a lot of them installed. Of course when a new KSP version is released, everyone is going to run to the respective threads to see if they get updated, but when some minor changes are made like bug fixes in the same KSP version, AVC is very cool.

The point is to "convince" the modding community to get into a standard. Like the "Community Resource Pack" or something like that...

[sarbian]

"Other - please post"

I don't do thing because a poll tells me to or not to.

[Malah]

Other-modder: because I've implemented the version file for KSP-AVC but I will not implemented MiniAVC.

[Kar]

"Other - please post"

I don't do thing because a poll tells me to or not to.

And I don't expect you to do. But it would be nice for someone that do not know anything about modding, except "copy contents for zip folder into game/data folder" stuff, to know if some mod that is installed got a bug fix or a new version came out. This poll is not a vote for President lol. It is a survey.

To use or not to use AVC is in each modder option.

In a way, this reminds me my time playing Skyrim. I used a lot of mods from the Nexus community. Their mod manager for example, is great for people to check mod versions, download and install. In a way AVC just checks the version, but maybe it could be much more.

This is just a opinion, nothing more. No one should be offended or obliged to use it.

[Malah]

And I don't expect you to do. But it would be nice for someone that do not know anything about modding, except "copy contents for zip folder into game/data folder" stuff, to know if some mod that is installed got a bug fix or a new version came out. This poll is not a vote for President lol. It is a survey.

To use or not to use AVC is in each modder option.

In a way, this reminds me my time playing Skyrim. I used a lot of mods from the Nexus community. Their mod manager for example, is great for people to check mod versions, download and install. In a way AVC just checks the version, but maybe it could be much more.

This is just a opinion, nothing more. No one should be offended or obliged to use it.

Perhaps CKAN will be "the much more" that you look for, but you need to wait the time of the developpement

[Greys]

Here's my stance on the subject. First off I am by no means against AVC, my thoughts and opinions apply only to myself.

AVC's goal is to inform users on the mods that they have installed currently and tell them when a new version of that mod is available; This is it's key difference from CKAN, whose primary goal is to simplify the process of creating an instance by providing machine readable assembly and dependency information, but I assume it can do the same thing.

The way I play is that when I think of a task I want to attempt in KSP, I collect and assemble the relevant mods into an instance, and then assuming all mods work as intended for my task and I don't run into any show stopping bugs; I never update the components of that instance.

I can only be sure that all the components of that instance are intended to work with each other when I construct it. Afterwords it becomes increadingly difficult to say if updating any one component may cause conflict with other components and updating all components risks the integrity of the save file which the entire instance exists to support. I typically have one save file per instance if you couldn't guess.

As such the only time I care about new versions of mods in an instance is when I'm building a whole new instance which will then have a new save file, and this typically occurs when A, a major new mod that interests me comes out; B, a mod I'm interested releases a major new feature or feature set; and C, 2 months after a KSP update when stuff is less broken and I can be reasonably sure that there won't be a new minor version update for KSP the day after I get to the mun, which breaks all my mods and fixes something that I care about, such as crashing.

As such for me as a player AVC has no appeal, the service it provides is unnecessary and generally unwanted; it's like waggling a sweet fish sandwich in front of somebody who doesn't currently want to each a fish sandwich, but does like fish sandwiches, but they can't have one because of their diet and they know they will have one later, just not now.

As a modder, well I mainly make my mods for me, so I'm not going to add in things that I don't want. I'm skeptical of CKAN too, as I've seen it thus far it looks to be a mod manager type system, and I've argued against them in the past, but CKAN is fairly young at this point, so I'll review my opinion later once it's seen wider use.

Modder, Nope, don't want.

I must say, that poll has a really loaded set of options.