HB-Stratos

How to Mod KSP in 2024

I am not a mod developer, I am just starting out. I got a lot of help, and I'm writing this as a mental note for myself, as well as a hopefully correct guide for others who may want to start with KSP mod developement.

1. Installing Visual Studio Community 2022

Download Visual Studio Community (not VS Code) from here: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/
Run the installer
During installation, make sure you install .Net desktop developement as seen here:

2. Creating the Project

Create a new Project with the preset Class Library (.Net Framework). Make sure it is that exact name. It must be the exact one shown in the image, meant for dll creation with C#.

Decompiling KSP is technically against the Take2 EULA, but having the KSP Code to reference is an invaluable tool for modding. Hence it's been a bit of an open secret that modders decompile the game to help inform their mod writing. Sadly, nobody has ever fully captured how this is done, so this is what I intend to do here. If you wish to read the Take2 Eula before following this guide, you can find it here.

Notes on Legality

Preface: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc. From the research I have done on the topic, I have been able to gather this:

In US and EU legislature it is legal to decompile any program regardless of license restrictions if the purpose of the decompilation is done to enable interoperability (ref1). In the case of KSP I would say this is not given as KSP does provide a public interfac

	from dataclasses import dataclass
	import dataclasses
	from collections import namedtuple
	import math
	import re
	#I apologize for the mess of camelcase and underscores

	gcode_file_name = "Soldering Jig_0.2mm_LW-PLA_I3MEGA_1h37m.gcode"

	gcode_file = open(gcode_file_name, "r")