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

WRITING STATUS: Unfinished

How to use the OpenVSP Python API (Unofficial Beginners Guide)

This guide will attempt to teach you how to set up the OpenVSP Python API for automated airplane analysis from zero to extracting the VSPAERO solver data into python data structures. This is not a comprehensive guide of the API as there are several areas of it that I have not touched yet and therefore can't teach.

This guide also assumes you have some base knowledge of how to use OpenVSP through the GUI. Should you not have this knowledge yet, the OpenVSP Ground School is one of the best tutorial series for a program I have ever come across. You can find it here

Note

This guide was not written by an expert, just your everyday end user who learnt the API in a week for a university project. Do take everything said here with a grain of salt, though I do hope the content is useful. Thank you to Rob McDonald on the Google Group for answering my many questions while learning.

Writing Status: in progress

Afterburners and Heat Blur Rendering, a Study

This is a collection of years of research and information collection I have done, written with the hope it will be helpful specifically to the developers of KSA, but also to anyone else who might find this.

I will be going into detail on the intricacies of afterburner and heat blur, as well as possible ideas to render all of it for the purpose of a video game.

	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")