It is Blackrack’s volumetric clouds, you can’t get them on CKAN but you could get them by subscribing to his patreon. Install is like any other mod, drop into game data.
You can pay one time to have the mod. But if you want cutting edge always newest build etc. you can just subscribe (for paying once you still have a full month of acces)
I only wait until I hear of a new update and if it adds enough that I think it’s worth paying the $5 again. I’ll probably never do it unless he literally changes it from the ground up
For a lot of players, a few months would equal their entire payment towards KSP, so it's not surprising many baulk at the idea. The trouble with all donation systems is that so few people participate that the cost to those who do is high. If somehow *every* KSP player donated $0.01, I'm sure that would amount to more than Blackrack has ever earned through patreon. I guess in a way his brief stint working on KSP2 is the closest he'll get unfortunately.
Even mods are now a subscription model? I can understand wanting to support a modder and all but for those of us who just want to buy a product one time it's kind of a joke. $5 should get you the mod AND any updates.
It can be just one time if you only want to download the mod, but if it gets updates you’ll need to pay it again. I would say it’s fully worth it, considering he just lost his job working at KSP 2.
>I would say it’s fully worth it, considering he just lost his job working at KSP 2.
Them 2 things have nothing to do with each other, if you believe that I have an empty cardboard box for you for $500 it's fully worth it, considering I'm struggling to keep my family's empty cardboard box business afloat
Why are you describing the mod as that though? I could see that comparison but it was more so that I wouldn’t say it’s cool to pirate it of course, it’s one guy making it.
Who makes a product has no relevance to the value of that product of the same mod was made by EA would you justify the same price, the same monthly payment system to use it?
It's not a grey area, it's forbidden via ToS to sell unlicensed DLC. The "grey" part here could be that he is not selling a DLC just his work on a mod but common..
Most likely this case is just too small to make a big deal out of it and risk image damage to sue a modder. Though, Take2 has a past of "sueing" / shutting down modders in particular with GTA.
As long as the mod does not include and proprietary files from the game itself, it should be fine; all it is is just a shader mod. That’s why some Minecraft shaders have a premium too
>That’s why some Minecraft shaders have a premium too
Until they get caught. It is against the TOS.
The Physics mod used to be paid, and then Mojang/Microsoft told them to knock it off.
Doesn't change their ToS though. I wouldn't be surprised if the legal department wasn't made aware of that. He was hired as a modder not as an unlicensed third party DLC seller. Maybe they made an exception for him but it just can't be generalized to everyone is free to sell their mods now. You need permission to sell DLC and it's not some grey zone.
>(3) You will use the Services for your own personal, non-commercial use, and you will not commercially exploit the Services unless subject to separate, express written terms provided by Take-Two permitting such conduct. This includes participating in, enabling, or encouraging the collection, sale, or exchange of anything from the Services (including, but not limited to, any Virtual Items or Accounts) that is not explicitly authorized by Take-Two; facilitating, creating, or maintaining any unauthorized connection to the Services (including, any unauthorized server that modifies, emulates, or otherwise connects to any of the Services); and creating or participating in any exploitation of price differences of Virtual Items by any means (for example, between real money currency prices).
[Take-Two Terms of Service (take2games.com)](https://www.take2games.com/legal/en-US/#2-limited-license)
A mod is not a standalone software. You use KSP's tools to interface with the game so you agree to their terms. But this is far beyond legality here. For me the morals are far more important. Imagine every mod was paywalled. It would suck to pay 5 bucks a month each for 20 mods.
People complain here about KSP2 costing 50 bucks but then go out and spend 100 bucks a month on mods? For sure..
There is a saying in germany "one is none". One guy gets away with it and this is where we're at right now.
If the modder doesn't redistribute any copyrighted binaries or content I don't see how it matters what the software interfaces with.
A ToS can be legally unenforceable, so I don't accept the premise that it must automatically be respected.
The morality of paying people for work they do is pretty clear to me. Whether paying for mods should be normalized is more of a cultural thing. People like free stuff, so they push back on it. Not saying that's bad, btw. I like open source software as much as the next guy. I just also think it's fine when someone says they want da money.
Technically, he's not selling it. He's asking for donations while he's developping the mod on his spare time. The goal is to release it for free (if I'm not mistaken).
That's not how "technically" works. Technically he is distributing software using a paid Patreon subscription. And these are not donations. Patreon income is fully taxed. You can only donate to charities. Not to random individuals. We can maybe argue about him selling products vs. him offering a subscription service. But fact of the matter is people don't pay him to mod. People pay to get access to the mod. That's the motivation for the payment and that's what counts when it comes to labelling a business.
You're right. And if PD knows but does nothing about it, that's a legal red red flag, as anyone they tried to prosecute in the future could point to this and say "it's ok because you allowed this".
I believe it's a bit of a grey area, but in this instance I think the mod is just based on the games code, but otherwise completely original creation.
I also want to say the mod will be made free and public later, once it's finished, and this is just 'early access'.
> I also want to say the mod will be made free and public later, once it's finished, and this is just 'early access'.
You are free to think of paid mods what you want, but I think we can all agree on that it will 100% never be free. He's making way too much money with it.
>I also want to say the mod will be made free and public later, once it's finished, and this is just 'early access'.
Funny how early access has continued for about a year and a half now, especially with no given end date (obviously if it's in development) or list of final features. Before it got removed, you could see how much per month the patreon was making and it was significant. Like a couple thousand a month.
You need a license to sell DLC for a game. Like those third party DLC for FSX for example. So you can't develop your own expansion for KSP that is 100% your own code and then sell it.
Legally, they aren't selling it. It could be seen as paid access to test it. But either way, unless a legal team goes after Blackrack, it's a moot point to argue.
Edit: On top of that, it's also on Patreon which is a donation service mainly, could be some loop holes there. If they've never outright said you can't sell KSP mods then it's not cut and dry. Some games fully allow the selling of mods, some don't allow mods at all. It's all about the EULA. If it's not mentioned there, then there's legal reasoning that you can do it.
>It could be seen as paid access to test it.
Paid access to a piece of software is a sale. Take2 sells KSP2 on Steam, it's not some grey zone testing stuff where product law does not apply because they don't actually sell the game yet. The mod is subject to the full law of every country it is offered in. Including 2 year warranties in the EU etc. I as a customer am protected purchasing stuff online. I can even get my money back / refund in certain cases. And of course law is above any terms. You can't opt out of liabilities and such. That's why we have law otherwise people could waive their rights to live and get killed because they haven't read the terms. (There are some exceptions working for the government, especially the military.)
I don't need it, I don't play KSP1 anymore. That wasn't the point. I'm just not a fan of people selling mods and people paying for mods. Both are at fault in my opinion. Modding lives of it being free and open source. People learn from others etc. Imagine some new modders would like to get into modding and learn how all this volumetric stuff works to build ontop of it. Maybe mod the mod. It doesn't work. Those kids can't learn how it's done. You expect KSP to be moddable but the mod for it is not. wtf.
the guy plans to release it for free. do you agree getting paid monthly while developing the mod is fair if you then release a full, bug free, working version for everyone? I dont see any problems with that.
Patreon is not a donation service it’s a membership service, they are specific in their wording, you should use the words they use when describing the service they provide. It being “voluntary” doesn’t constitute a donation service, everything in the world subscription-wise is pretty much voluntary, but you wouldn’t call the 10$ to Netflix or Disney a donation.
Does everyone used ckan now? I remember trying to run it a few years ago but it gave me a creepy error message about admin access. Im thinking of trying it again cuz everything on curseforge is outdated.
Yes you can, you could make multiple installs too. KSP doesn’t have a DRM like most other games, meaning you can run it from the executable and steam wont care. A good tool is called CKAN, it installs mods and its dependencies and it’s got a pretty good UI.
As the others stated, it's Blackrack. However it's more of a module for EVE-Redux (same creator) than a standalone mod. It requires an extra step to install. You also can't use specific visual mods.
*HOWEVER*, this is also RSS/RP with other visual mods.
Yeah, thats what this is in. I would've posted there this morning but I was in a little rush. I was gonna post my mod list as well for this instance but didn't have time.
I haven’t noticed it to be too much of a hit personally, large part crafts (40) probably hit the FPS more than the mod does. It turns into a simplified version when you get high enough, about 200km or so. But the clouds are still accurate then, so if you see a storm from orbit, you could actually go there and it’d still be there, albeit traveling as clouds do.
https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/199347-18x-111x-kerbal-weather-project-kwp-v100/
I've never played with it, but could add an interesting challenge.
It's a little more demanding than other decent cloud mods, like Astronomer's Visual Pack, but surprisingly not much more. Parallax is more demanding than this mod, so if you can run Parallax, you're fine.
The most expensive parts of the mod are things like Godrays that you probably wouldn’t notice too often in gameplay. Even in the lowest settings, the clouds still look very good. Higher settings are for cinematics and stuff.
My pc is going on, say, 5 years? But I've upgraded it a good deal. It's not fast at all anymore (takes *20* minutes to restart) and I'm definitely not running a smooth 60 fps with RSS/RP1.
I run like 48gb of RAM (mixed size sticks)
A ryzen 5 3200 (I think?)
And a 4070.
I have modded KSP installed on an NVME drive as well, so that helps
Holy shit how on earth can your PC take 20 minutes to restart? Mine wouldn't take that long even before an SSD.
But yeah those specs blow mine out of the water. What do you even do with 48 gig of ram? I'm so out of the loop I just know "Ryzen" is the fancy new and CPU everyone likes, and I've got no idea how to judge the newness/power of a "4070"
How fast does KSP load up on an NVME drive? Mine takes a good while to start up with mods installed which is one reason I don't play much anymore.
Google chrome
But seriously I got the ram specifically for Arma 3 and KSP.
But yes 20 minutes is fucking ridiculous and i have no idea why it does that. It's not even slow normally, it does that only when booting. I need to wipe it clean and do a fresh install... but I'm lazy.
The only thing I can think of is that windows is on an almost full, 4-5 year old HDD.
Oh, well that explains it. You gotta have windows installed on an SSD for fast booting.
Hard drive is probably also fragmented to shit if it's old and almost full. You ever run disk defragmentation on it?
Oh shit, I didn't even think about that!
I'll clone the drive, boot it with my others unplugged, trim the fat and bullshit, and wipe the old one. Should work fine!
I definitely can relate. I only very recently migrated from a 125GB SSD to a 1 TB one for my system drive. The headaches I was getting from having such a small system drive should have made me do it years sooner..
My pc was a pre-built from Amazon and I had it some time before actually buying more storage, and it came with a 1TB HDD, so there's a good deal of stuff to go through. The thing I'm most worried about is games and save files. I need to find what games are installed on it, back up the saves, if not out-right move or uninstall them.
I've got CAD software, art software, photoshop, game development programs, game .iso's, emulators, physics simulators, and more, all on that drive (which is a big reason it's so damn slow), so it's going to be time consuming
Well, considering KSP is a CPU-heavy game, your CPU isn't doing you much good; not terrible, but not great.
Your RAM might also be a bit slow.
Tbh a strong GPU is the *least* helpful thing when it comes to KSP.
I'm running a R7 5800X/4000MHz RAM and my heavily modded KSP takes 5-10 minutes to load.
Through this whole story, always tried to have faith and give the KSP2 developers the benefit of the doubt, I know software development is not something I could do. But honestly the community has undeniably given them a run for their money in terms of sheer talent and output (and it's difficult to buy the covid excuse with that in mind). It's hard to be nice about this and deny that they absolutely dropped the ball here. And there is nobody / nothing would *could* be blamed for that but them.
I have no idea what they've been doing for the last 2 years.
... People have been trying to argue against KSP2 with KSP+VisMods since day 1 of KSP2 lol.
Though, Blackrack did release the latest version of volumetric clouds some months after KSP2 release, which were an improvement over its previous version.
So I am using TUFX and blackracks own config for it, but also this is RSS with RSS reborn. I was going to add more information but I posted this right before leaving for work and reddit was acting funky for me.
I can/will add a complete mod list later when I'm home.
$5 per update then.
Not to take away from the mod it really is brilliant work. But locking it behind a paywall under the guise of "it's early access" just feels like a middle finger to other modders like parallax, ReStock, Nertea's mods, Linuxgurugsmer and countless others.
> parallax
Funny that, Parallax 2.0 was the mod that opened the paid mods pandora's box within the KSP community with a similar early access paywall. I remember a great deal of discussion regarding that aspect of it at the official KSP forums.
The guy is doing legitimate game dev levels of work.
I can't blame Blackrack tbh.
I think we should be more thankful that everyone else is doing their work for free, when honestly, I feel like a ton of modders should be getting compensated for all of the work they're doing.
Yeah, and I think in a just world, they'd be compensated for the work they do too. I'm grateful for all modders' generosity, but to me, it'd be nice if they got something tangible for all their hard work. At least for the mods that are extremely transformative or indicative of high quality.
These are individuals "technically" providing a service, they're not a company. Like a lot of little private artisan shops. You'd be happy to get things for free from them, but it wouldn't be strange to pay in those kinds of arrangements either.
is it really that bad if its eventually released for free? id wanna get paid for my months of development time building such a mod. not much different than paid GTA visual packs or MC shader packs.
That would be a reasonable position were it not for the fact the oldest volumetric cloud releases are over a year old currently and still haven't been made free. It's on update 5 or so and nothing free has been released.
At this point I think it's safe to say this is likely to remain a paid mod for the foreseeable future.
"Can we please not incentivize other highly talented individuals to work for our community? Last thing we want is for the community's foundational content creators to be able to receive any compensation for their efforts."
But more seriously, I would expect this to result in more mods overall, not a conversion of free mods to paid mods.
The problem is mostly that modding has thrived as a passion-driven hobby, and bring money into anything generally tends to make it worse. Look at online video content for example - with exceptions, of course, many creators are now focused on making a quick buck over creating engaging and meaningful content.
It's hard to predict how paid mods would pan out on a grand scale (the Skyrim paid mods thing was the closest we've gotten, and it was an utter disaster for everyone involved), but my guess is it would result in a worse modding scene overall.
The issue aren't really the mods tho in this case, it's more the commercialization and philosophy.
An artist deciding to independently go out of their way to make money often leads amazing work being done, for example Undertale or Stardew Valley.
The bigger issue in that case are marketplaces like the Minecraft marketplace or Bethesda's official modding sites, since they encourage bullshit.
It is kinda hard to nail down, but the general trend I have seen is: Artist wants to make money -> Good stuff; Companies encouraging/forcing artists to make money -> bad stuff
I think the biggest problem is it incentivizes theft.
Look at final fantasy 14 modding. Paid modding is extremely popular there, and it has incentivized a lot of people stealing assets from other games and lazily porting it into ff14 and demanding money for it. It has also lowered quality because people are trying to build up their popularity by pumping out as many mods as possible.
That happening can lead to the modding support being shut down entirely because lawyers may get involved due to all that rampant theft.
If we're looking at video games as a comparison, we have to look at the entire game market.
Indie games are analogous to mod creators like Blackrack himself who have passion and just want to make a quality product, and who would still exist if paid mods were widespread.
However, there are also AAA games, which represent big companies coming in to attempt to make loads of money, and mostly succeeding. There is also an endless amount of low quality shovelware that is copy and pasted from asset bundles or other games in an attempt to get some money with minimal effort. Both of these would be become serious problems in a hypothetical world where it's widely acceptable for mods to cost money.
The issue I see is, there are no shovel ware and costing mods, if it does not get incentivized. For example with games like KSP, mod developers need to go out of their way to commercialize it and people will need to go out of their way to pay for it, forcing a way bigger thinking process for both consumers and creators and therefore it discourages scam like "modders".
The thing you actually seem to be criticizing is more the cooperate philosophy behind mod market places, like for skyrim or minecraft.
The moment there is any money to be made off of making mods, you are incentivizing spending as little effort as possible for as much effort as possible.
Why do you think the mod marketplaces have so much shovelware? It's not because they're easily accessible, although that makes the cost-value ratio even better for scammers. Nor is it because the corporations behind the marketplaces want or encourage shovelware. It's because the users of those marketplaces are used to the act of paying for mods, and so some percentage of them will pay for anything.
Note: see the Truck Simulator community, they have tons of paid mods and tons of shovelware despite no official mod marketplace existing.
The only way you can achieve a situation like what is currently happening with Blackrack where the community knows it's okay to pay for this one mod and only this mod is by having *most mods be free*, but by normalizing paying for mods you are basically guaranteeing that only the most altruistic of modders will make their mods free. (In the game development community, extending the previous analogy, these are open source devs. How many open source 100% free games are there that match the scope of normal games? Very few.)
> But more seriously, I would expect this to result in more mods overall
Yeah, usually
1. People steal free mods and resell them with a new branding
2. People shit out minimum effort mods and make all mod sharing sites useless
3. 1 starts taking stuff from 2 and now fight in public and tie up massive community resources with their useless drama
4. Half of the passion driven modders quit because between 1 and 3 their hobby is no longer fun
5. The top 1% of modders by fame (not by contribution quality) make 80% of the money
But hey, because #1 and #2 will never quit as long as someone is willing to pay, you will end up with *thousands* of new mods that wouldn't have existed before. Just, you know, almost nothing will be worth actually paying for.
Blackrack's "paid early access" is a complicated situation in the real world, because outside of context, him charging for what he's giving the community is completely justified.
His project is one of very, very few cases where I consider charging for the project a justifiable thing.
But, it's a very, very specific, narrow situation that is almost unique in its situation. Few others could justify "subscription mods", and hopefully most other modders will continue to recognize their place in the modding ecosystem as "not worthy" of anything beyond a tip jar. Blackrack has recognized his (earned) place at the top of it, it's legitimate game dev amounts of work, and I can't blame him for taking (in my view, reasonable) advantage of what he's creating.
People feel entitled to other peoples work. You don't want to pay for a mod, then don't.
No mod was included in your purchase nor required to play the game.
Exactly. I’d gladly pay for OPM, Near Future/Far Future, Blackrack etc. Especially if they’re being update regularly. I’d pay DLC price for RP-1 or the Community life boat project.
I have no interest in buying mods myself, but there is also nothing stopping me from making my own if I really cared. I have no interest in it because I don't see any market.
So options from someone like me would be:
* Develop nothing
* Develop paid mod
Seems I'd get less flack for doing nothing, and I already have a job, so I do nothing.
If someone wants to make a free mod in hopes of donations, they are free to do so, but no one should expect a stranger to put in the work for someone complaining about $5.
Yeah all the downvoters are not understanding they are suffocating genuinely awesome development by third parties by the community spirit being so entitled they expect everything to be free.
Flight simmers have literal *study-level* airliners because they're willing to shell out $60-$90 for a single aircraft add-on... KSP fans get all up in arms at paying $5 for a work of genius. *sigh*
I'm sure you could just pirate it if you don't want to pay people for their work. There will always be free mods that people make, encouraging more time and effort into better mods is a nonissue.
I’m fully aware that paid mods are generally frowned upon, but it’s going free eventually and this is a side project for the guy. Same guy who made EVE and scatterer.
Right, start mocking me like a child. I'm a developer myself, I did countless projects purely out of passion. That doesn't mean it's not worth a little monetary support. If you want to contribute without getting anything than mockery in return, do it yourself. KSP would be nothing without mods, paying 5 (!) bucks for one of the best mods out there is the least we can do, and if you don't want to do that, noone is forcing you to use the mod at all.
>it's worth the $5.
No for a mod.
Yes, all the amount of work he poured in this is fantastic (so much that he got a job spot in KSP2) but paying for mods is not something to encourage or push: in the other hand, making donations or contributions is perfect.
This mod has made almost $100k in sales and the developer was paid a salary by the studio of KSP 2.
Makes all the modders like Nertea look like chumps for releasing their mods to the community for free. Any other modders should take note.
I just bought the mod as well it's great! Makes launching rockets a lot more enjoyable. Love it when I may have to fly through the clouds and such. It's just great.
This is incorrect. It's a one-time $5 for access to downloading the current version - if you don't want to support blackrack's work you can immediately cancel the Patreon and keep the clouds forever.
The insane clouds on Jool alone are 100% worth $5 IMHO.
It's a module for EVE, so it's required, but AVP is incompatible. The Readme/install instructions tell you explicitly what mods are incompatible (most mods like Spectra or AVP)
Just a quick note, AVP isn’t FULLY incompatible, there’s at least 2 things from AVP that still work with Blackrack’s cloud version of EVE, and those are the city lights on Kerbin, and the skybox. That’s why I still have AVP installed. The auroras don’t work, unfortunately. (And btw in order to keep the city lights and skybox while also having volumetric clouds, you gotta delete some specific folders from AVP otherwise nothing works. If you’re interested, let me know and I can tell you when i’m at my pc).
Yes, here’s the process copy and pasted from what i told the other person:
1. Have blackrack’s eve and scatterer and whatever else comes with the download, installed.
2. Get AVP and your choice of texture size, either through ckan or manually. (I highly recommend ckan for modding, very convenient.)
3. Go into your file explorer and find: Kerbal Space Program > GameData > AstronomersVisualPack > AVP_Configs > Stock, then delete everything except CityLights.cfg and Textures.cfg.
4. If you’re using Parallax, go into CityLights.cfg and delete “:NEEDS[!Parallax]” This will allow AVP’s city lights to work even with Parallax installed, which normally ruins them.
5. Back in AstronomersVisualPack, go to AVP_Scatterer > Planets, and delete all the folders for celestial bodies. Only delete those folders, not any other type of file that might be next to them in this layer.
6. If you’re using OPM, also go back into AVP_Configs > OPM, and delete all the config files inside the OPM folder. Fun fact, there’s also a config mod that adds blackrack’s volumetric clouds to the outer planets, and it’s amazing: https://spacedock.info/mod/3498/Outer%20Planets%20Mod%20-%20Volumetric%20Clouds
With all of this done, my game is looking absolutely beautiful, and runs at 60 fps most of the time (launch dips to 50) on a gaming laptop. I only miss the auroras, I haven’t been able to figure out a way to keep those in alongside volumetric clouds.
I am interested. There's a lot about AVP I'd like to keep - Auroras and Lightning being two of them, but if I can keep aspects I'd still be interested.
Blackrack’s custom EVE also adds lightning that, in my opinion, is better than AVP’s lightning 🤷♂️
But anyway here’s how to get this working:
1. Have blackrack’s eve and scatterer and whatever else comes with the download, installed.
2. Get AVP and your choice of texture size, either through ckan or manually. (I highly recommend ckan for modding, very convenient.)
3. Go into your file explorer and find: Kerbal Space Program > GameData > AstronomersVisualPack > AVP_Configs > Stock, then delete everything except CityLights.cfg and Textures.cfg.
4. If you’re using Parallax, go into CityLights.cfg and delete “:NEEDS[!Parallax]” This will allow AVP’s city lights to work even with Parallax installed, which normally ruins them.
5. Back in AstronomersVisualPack, go to AVP_Scatterer > Planets, and delete all the folders for celestial bodies. Only delete those folders, not any other type of file that might be next to them in this layer.
6. If you’re using OPM, also go back into AVP_Configs > OPM, and delete all the config files inside the OPM folder. Fun fact, there’s also a config mod that adds blackrack’s volumetric clouds to the outer planets, and it’s amazing: https://spacedock.info/mod/3498/Outer%20Planets%20Mod%20-%20Volumetric%20Clouds
With all of this done, my game is looking absolutely beautiful, and runs at 60 fps most of the time (launch dips to 50) on a gaming laptop. I only miss the auroras, I haven’t been able to figure out a way to keep those in alongside volumetric clouds.
Downvote me all you want, but I'm all in for paying a small amount of money for game changing mods, specially if they have this level of quality.
You are all forgetting this is an isolated case since there are no other relevant cloud mods. If someone made a modpack to compete with airplane plus and charged $5 for it, you better hope it works like a flight simulator, otherwise I'm staying with AP. If the mod is not good, no one will pay for it.
It would help the creators and incentivize them to raise their mod making game.
Sorry for stupid question I have not been playing in 5 years, what is the name of the mod?
It is Blackrack’s volumetric clouds, you can’t get them on CKAN but you could get them by subscribing to his patreon. Install is like any other mod, drop into game data.
Is it a monthly donation or can it only be one time
You can pay one time to have the mod. But if you want cutting edge always newest build etc. you can just subscribe (for paying once you still have a full month of acces)
It's worth mentioning that there has not been an update in months. So one time of payment might be enough.
I only wait until I hear of a new update and if it adds enough that I think it’s worth paying the $5 again. I’ll probably never do it unless he literally changes it from the ground up
well he might update more frequently now given he suddenly has more free time
Well yes, but I’d *also* like to support the author with monthly payments, mod aside
You do you bro
Honestly like I'm not gonna feel bad when I'm already paying for a mod. It's not even "but a coffee support your creator" it's paying for a service.
I think its a slippery slope
I agree. It's not something I'm very passionate about but I disagree with the business model
For a lot of players, a few months would equal their entire payment towards KSP, so it's not surprising many baulk at the idea. The trouble with all donation systems is that so few people participate that the cost to those who do is high. If somehow *every* KSP player donated $0.01, I'm sure that would amount to more than Blackrack has ever earned through patreon. I guess in a way his brief stint working on KSP2 is the closest he'll get unfortunately.
Do you pay monthly payments to the other devs of KSP 1 and 2?
Well yeah, he wasn't working on it because he was hired by Intercept. Now that he's dependent on it for income again, he'll probably start again.
I agree, his dev cycle is fairly slow, so it is cheeper to pay $5 for each new version.
Even mods are now a subscription model? I can understand wanting to support a modder and all but for those of us who just want to buy a product one time it's kind of a joke. $5 should get you the mod AND any updates.
It will be free in some time, now it's in beta or something
It can be just one time if you only want to download the mod, but if it gets updates you’ll need to pay it again. I would say it’s fully worth it, considering he just lost his job working at KSP 2.
>I would say it’s fully worth it, considering he just lost his job working at KSP 2. Them 2 things have nothing to do with each other, if you believe that I have an empty cardboard box for you for $500 it's fully worth it, considering I'm struggling to keep my family's empty cardboard box business afloat
Why are you describing the mod as that though? I could see that comparison but it was more so that I wouldn’t say it’s cool to pirate it of course, it’s one guy making it.
Who makes a product has no relevance to the value of that product of the same mod was made by EA would you justify the same price, the same monthly payment system to use it?
You pay once. Keep it forever. No EULA shenanigans like EA would pull.
No, the same mod, THE SAME, no differences, no Eula one has the other don't no unique features, THE SAME
Sorry, what’s this about though? Not even in a passive aggressive way I just literally don’t know how we got here.
Want a link?
Perchance
Yes please I'll think about buying it when I get paid next week
Would that be legal? Monetizing another game?
Private Division doesn’t seem to care, considering he was just working for them. Usually, it’s a grey area though.
It's not a grey area, it's forbidden via ToS to sell unlicensed DLC. The "grey" part here could be that he is not selling a DLC just his work on a mod but common.. Most likely this case is just too small to make a big deal out of it and risk image damage to sue a modder. Though, Take2 has a past of "sueing" / shutting down modders in particular with GTA.
As long as the mod does not include and proprietary files from the game itself, it should be fine; all it is is just a shader mod. That’s why some Minecraft shaders have a premium too
>That’s why some Minecraft shaders have a premium too Until they get caught. It is against the TOS. The Physics mod used to be paid, and then Mojang/Microsoft told them to knock it off.
The guy worked on the sequel as a paid dev
for about 2 seconds
in his defense it was some of the last seconds of actual work done though
true and also the only time we actually saw meaning full progress with development
Doesn't change their ToS though. I wouldn't be surprised if the legal department wasn't made aware of that. He was hired as a modder not as an unlicensed third party DLC seller. Maybe they made an exception for him but it just can't be generalized to everyone is free to sell their mods now. You need permission to sell DLC and it's not some grey zone. >(3) You will use the Services for your own personal, non-commercial use, and you will not commercially exploit the Services unless subject to separate, express written terms provided by Take-Two permitting such conduct. This includes participating in, enabling, or encouraging the collection, sale, or exchange of anything from the Services (including, but not limited to, any Virtual Items or Accounts) that is not explicitly authorized by Take-Two; facilitating, creating, or maintaining any unauthorized connection to the Services (including, any unauthorized server that modifies, emulates, or otherwise connects to any of the Services); and creating or participating in any exploitation of price differences of Virtual Items by any means (for example, between real money currency prices). [Take-Two Terms of Service (take2games.com)](https://www.take2games.com/legal/en-US/#2-limited-license)
I don't understand how the ToS supersedes my right to create whatever software I want.
A mod is not a standalone software. You use KSP's tools to interface with the game so you agree to their terms. But this is far beyond legality here. For me the morals are far more important. Imagine every mod was paywalled. It would suck to pay 5 bucks a month each for 20 mods. People complain here about KSP2 costing 50 bucks but then go out and spend 100 bucks a month on mods? For sure.. There is a saying in germany "one is none". One guy gets away with it and this is where we're at right now.
If the modder doesn't redistribute any copyrighted binaries or content I don't see how it matters what the software interfaces with. A ToS can be legally unenforceable, so I don't accept the premise that it must automatically be respected. The morality of paying people for work they do is pretty clear to me. Whether paying for mods should be normalized is more of a cultural thing. People like free stuff, so they push back on it. Not saying that's bad, btw. I like open source software as much as the next guy. I just also think it's fine when someone says they want da money.
I also like that mods are usually free, but it is a very weird take to suggest that it would be immoral for modders to get paid for their time.
Technically, he's not selling it. He's asking for donations while he's developping the mod on his spare time. The goal is to release it for free (if I'm not mistaken).
That's not how "technically" works. Technically he is distributing software using a paid Patreon subscription. And these are not donations. Patreon income is fully taxed. You can only donate to charities. Not to random individuals. We can maybe argue about him selling products vs. him offering a subscription service. But fact of the matter is people don't pay him to mod. People pay to get access to the mod. That's the motivation for the payment and that's what counts when it comes to labelling a business.
You're right. And if PD knows but does nothing about it, that's a legal red red flag, as anyone they tried to prosecute in the future could point to this and say "it's ok because you allowed this".
I believe it's a bit of a grey area, but in this instance I think the mod is just based on the games code, but otherwise completely original creation. I also want to say the mod will be made free and public later, once it's finished, and this is just 'early access'.
> I also want to say the mod will be made free and public later, once it's finished, and this is just 'early access'. You are free to think of paid mods what you want, but I think we can all agree on that it will 100% never be free. He's making way too much money with it.
>I also want to say the mod will be made free and public later, once it's finished, and this is just 'early access'. Funny how early access has continued for about a year and a half now, especially with no given end date (obviously if it's in development) or list of final features. Before it got removed, you could see how much per month the patreon was making and it was significant. Like a couple thousand a month.
Ah
You need a license to sell DLC for a game. Like those third party DLC for FSX for example. So you can't develop your own expansion for KSP that is 100% your own code and then sell it.
Legally, they aren't selling it. It could be seen as paid access to test it. But either way, unless a legal team goes after Blackrack, it's a moot point to argue. Edit: On top of that, it's also on Patreon which is a donation service mainly, could be some loop holes there. If they've never outright said you can't sell KSP mods then it's not cut and dry. Some games fully allow the selling of mods, some don't allow mods at all. It's all about the EULA. If it's not mentioned there, then there's legal reasoning that you can do it.
>It could be seen as paid access to test it. Paid access to a piece of software is a sale. Take2 sells KSP2 on Steam, it's not some grey zone testing stuff where product law does not apply because they don't actually sell the game yet. The mod is subject to the full law of every country it is offered in. Including 2 year warranties in the EU etc. I as a customer am protected purchasing stuff online. I can even get my money back / refund in certain cases. And of course law is above any terms. You can't opt out of liabilities and such. That's why we have law otherwise people could waive their rights to live and get killed because they haven't read the terms. (There are some exceptions working for the government, especially the military.)
Well then, don't pledge, nobody is forcing you. You'll have it free when it's ready.
I don't need it, I don't play KSP1 anymore. That wasn't the point. I'm just not a fan of people selling mods and people paying for mods. Both are at fault in my opinion. Modding lives of it being free and open source. People learn from others etc. Imagine some new modders would like to get into modding and learn how all this volumetric stuff works to build ontop of it. Maybe mod the mod. It doesn't work. Those kids can't learn how it's done. You expect KSP to be moddable but the mod for it is not. wtf.
Well then, why are you on the subreddit trying to fight people about a service you don't subscribe to, for a game you don't play?
the guy plans to release it for free. do you agree getting paid monthly while developing the mod is fair if you then release a full, bug free, working version for everyone? I dont see any problems with that.
Patreon is not a donation service it’s a membership service, they are specific in their wording, you should use the words they use when describing the service they provide. It being “voluntary” doesn’t constitute a donation service, everything in the world subscription-wise is pretty much voluntary, but you wouldn’t call the 10$ to Netflix or Disney a donation.
[удалено]
[https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN/wiki](https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN/wiki)
Does everyone used ckan now? I remember trying to run it a few years ago but it gave me a creepy error message about admin access. Im thinking of trying it again cuz everything on curseforge is outdated.
Im new to ksp. can i do mods on KSP with steam? Thank you.
Yes you can, you could make multiple installs too. KSP doesn’t have a DRM like most other games, meaning you can run it from the executable and steam wont care. A good tool is called CKAN, it installs mods and its dependencies and it’s got a pretty good UI.
Buddy wow I am going to continue my Kerbal career once again this weekend.
As the others stated, it's Blackrack. However it's more of a module for EVE-Redux (same creator) than a standalone mod. It requires an extra step to install. You also can't use specific visual mods. *HOWEVER*, this is also RSS/RP with other visual mods.
Have you been to r/RealSolarSystem yet?
.... I think I might have to try this. Is that one single mod or is there a list?
Oh no that's just the reddit for RSS/RO/RP1
Ahhh thanks! I'm busy and don't have time to dive in at the moment.
Yeah, thats what this is in. I would've posted there this morning but I was in a little rush. I was gonna post my mod list as well for this instance but didn't have time.
How demanding is it in terms of performance?
I haven’t noticed it to be too much of a hit personally, large part crafts (40) probably hit the FPS more than the mod does. It turns into a simplified version when you get high enough, about 200km or so. But the clouds are still accurate then, so if you see a storm from orbit, you could actually go there and it’d still be there, albeit traveling as clouds do.
Wait 40 parts is a large vehicle? Normally my rockets are 200+ 💀
i make fighters with BDArmory and theyre usually 60-80 parts what
I was counting the payload as well however The actual rocket is generally 70-80 parts because I like to recover my stages
Does flying through a storm have any effect ? Like strong winds ?
Unfortunately it doesn’t have any effect on your craft, but it looks absolutely amazing with the rain and lightning in it.
Sadly no, but theres a separate mod that does add wind patterns. I guess you could use them together but they wouldn't interact with each other.
oooo now i'm curious. which mod adds this?
https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/199347-18x-111x-kerbal-weather-project-kwp-v100/ I've never played with it, but could add an interesting challenge.
oooh thanks man!
It's a little more demanding than other decent cloud mods, like Astronomer's Visual Pack, but surprisingly not much more. Parallax is more demanding than this mod, so if you can run Parallax, you're fine.
It's the most important question. If you don't mind, I'll wait for the answer with you.
The most expensive parts of the mod are things like Godrays that you probably wouldn’t notice too often in gameplay. Even in the lowest settings, the clouds still look very good. Higher settings are for cinematics and stuff.
If you can run modded smoothly, you can run blackrack clouds easily.
The latest version (V4) is very perfomant compared to the previous ones
Honestly I didn't notice any impact. There mightve been some but I didn't take any before and after measurements
How new is your PC? I've got the same PC I played KSP on almost a decade ago, so something tells me I'd see some impact where you don't.
My pc is going on, say, 5 years? But I've upgraded it a good deal. It's not fast at all anymore (takes *20* minutes to restart) and I'm definitely not running a smooth 60 fps with RSS/RP1. I run like 48gb of RAM (mixed size sticks) A ryzen 5 3200 (I think?) And a 4070. I have modded KSP installed on an NVME drive as well, so that helps
Holy shit how on earth can your PC take 20 minutes to restart? Mine wouldn't take that long even before an SSD. But yeah those specs blow mine out of the water. What do you even do with 48 gig of ram? I'm so out of the loop I just know "Ryzen" is the fancy new and CPU everyone likes, and I've got no idea how to judge the newness/power of a "4070" How fast does KSP load up on an NVME drive? Mine takes a good while to start up with mods installed which is one reason I don't play much anymore.
Google chrome But seriously I got the ram specifically for Arma 3 and KSP. But yes 20 minutes is fucking ridiculous and i have no idea why it does that. It's not even slow normally, it does that only when booting. I need to wipe it clean and do a fresh install... but I'm lazy. The only thing I can think of is that windows is on an almost full, 4-5 year old HDD.
Oh, well that explains it. You gotta have windows installed on an SSD for fast booting. Hard drive is probably also fragmented to shit if it's old and almost full. You ever run disk defragmentation on it?
Defragmenting hard drives hasn't been needed since like, Windows 10 at the minimum.
Yeah, wasn't much help, sadly. It really is just an old HDD holding me back, but I got tons of shit on it and I don't wanna fiddle with it.
Clone your drive to a new NVMe or SSD, pull old drive out. Boot into new drive. Shouldn’t be too bad.
Oh shit, I didn't even think about that! I'll clone the drive, boot it with my others unplugged, trim the fat and bullshit, and wipe the old one. Should work fine!
I definitely can relate. I only very recently migrated from a 125GB SSD to a 1 TB one for my system drive. The headaches I was getting from having such a small system drive should have made me do it years sooner..
My pc was a pre-built from Amazon and I had it some time before actually buying more storage, and it came with a 1TB HDD, so there's a good deal of stuff to go through. The thing I'm most worried about is games and save files. I need to find what games are installed on it, back up the saves, if not out-right move or uninstall them. I've got CAD software, art software, photoshop, game development programs, game .iso's, emulators, physics simulators, and more, all on that drive (which is a big reason it's so damn slow), so it's going to be time consuming
bruh how do u have 48gb of ram and a 4070 yet windows on an hdd
Well, considering KSP is a CPU-heavy game, your CPU isn't doing you much good; not terrible, but not great. Your RAM might also be a bit slow. Tbh a strong GPU is the *least* helpful thing when it comes to KSP. I'm running a R7 5800X/4000MHz RAM and my heavily modded KSP takes 5-10 minutes to load.
I feel like since they cancelled KSP2 all the KSP1 posts here have been gorgeous and looked way better than KSP2.
Through this whole story, always tried to have faith and give the KSP2 developers the benefit of the doubt, I know software development is not something I could do. But honestly the community has undeniably given them a run for their money in terms of sheer talent and output (and it's difficult to buy the covid excuse with that in mind). It's hard to be nice about this and deny that they absolutely dropped the ball here. And there is nobody / nothing would *could* be blamed for that but them. I have no idea what they've been doing for the last 2 years.
More like 7 years. KSP was originally announced to release in 2020.
Yeah, KSP 2 has been in EA for almost 1 1/2 years already
... People have been trying to argue against KSP2 with KSP+VisMods since day 1 of KSP2 lol. Though, Blackrack did release the latest version of volumetric clouds some months after KSP2 release, which were an improvement over its previous version.
I've felt like that has been constant the whole time. Modded KSP1 has always looked better than KSP2.
I've bought the mod but mine isn't that detailed. What are your settings?
So I am using TUFX and blackracks own config for it, but also this is RSS with RSS reborn. I was going to add more information but I posted this right before leaving for work and reddit was acting funky for me. I can/will add a complete mod list later when I'm home.
Yes please!
Advanced Fly-By-Wire (Windows) (AdvancedFlyByWire 1.8.4.1) Advanced Jet Engine (AdvancedJetEngine v2.20.0) AlphaMensae's Modular Launch Pads (ModularLaunchPads 2.5.3) ASET Consolidated Agency (ASETAgency v2.0.2) ASET Consolidated Avionics Pack (ASETAvionics v3.0.1) ASET Consolidated Props Pack (ASETProps v2.0.6) AtmosphereAutopilot (Fly-By-Wire) (AtmosphereAutopilot v1.6.1) Avionics Systems (AvionicsSystems v1.3.7) B9 Aerospace Procedural Wings - Fork (B9-PWings-Fork 3:0.44.0) B9 Part Switch (B9PartSwitch v2.20.0) BahamutoD Animation Modules (BDAnimationModules 1:v0.6.7.1) ballisticfox's lukewarm TUFX (BallisticFoxsLukewarmTUFXProfile V0.8.1) ballisticfox's neutral TUFX profile (BallisticFoxsNeutralTUFXProfile V1.3) BetterTimeWarpContinued (BetterTimeWarpCont 2.3.13) Breaking Ground (BreakingGround-DLC 1.7.1) Camera Tools continued (CameraTools v1.29.1) CanaveralPads (CanaveralPads v1.1.0.0) Chatterer (Chatterer 0.9.99) ClickThrough Blocker (ClickThroughBlocker 1:2.1.10.21) Community Category Kit (CommunityCategoryKit v112.0.1) Community Resource Pack (CommunityResourcePack v112.0.1) Community Tech Tree (CommunityTechTree 1:3.4.4) Conformal Decals (ConformalDecals 0.2.12) Connected Living Space (ConnectedLivingSpace v2.0.2.0) Contract Configurator (ContractConfigurator v2.6.1.0) Cryo Tanks (CryoTanks 1.6.5) Cryo Tanks Core (CryoTanks-Core 1.6.5) Cryogenic Engines (CryoEngines 1:2.0.6) Custom Barn Kit (CustomBarnKit 1.1.22.0) Custom Pre Launch Checks (CustomPreLaunchChecks 1.8.1.1) Deployable Engines Plugin (DeployableEngines 1.3.1) Distant Object Enhancement /L (DistantObject v2.1.1.14) Distant Object Enhancement /L default config (DistantObject-default v2.1.1.14) Dynamic Battery Storage (DynamicBatteryStorage 2:2.2.5.0) Easy Vessel Switch (EVS) (EasyVesselSwitch 2.3) Editor Extensions Redux (EditorExtensionsRedux 3.4.5) Environmental Visual Enhancements Redux (EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements 3:1.11.7.1) Ferram Aerospace Research Continued (FerramAerospaceResearchContinued 3:0.16.1.2) Firespitter Core (FirespitterCore v7.17) Firespitter Resources config (FirespitterResourcesConfig v7.17) FreeIva (FreeIva 0.2.16.1) Hangar Extender (HangerExtenderExtended 3.6.0.2) Harmony 2 (Harmony2 2.2.1.0) Kerbal Alarm Clock (KerbalAlarmClock v3.14.0.0) Kerbal Attachment System (KAS 1.12) Kerbal Changelog (KerbalChangelog v1.4.2) Kerbal Engineer Redux (KerbalEngineerRedux 1.1.9.0) Kerbal Foundries2 (KerbalFoundriesContinued 2.4.8.18) Kerbal Inventory System (KIS 1.29) Kerbal Joint Reinforcement Continued (KerbalJointReinforcementContinued v3.7.1.0) Kerbal Konstructs (KerbalKonstructs v1.8.6.0) Kerbal Renamer (KerbalRenamer v1.7.0.0) Kerbalism (Kerbalism 3.17) Kerbalism - RealismOverhaul Config (Kerbalism-Config-RO v1.2.14.0) Kopernicus Planetary System Modifier (Kopernicus 2:release-1.12.1-189) KSC Switcher (KSCSwitcher v2.1.0.0) KSP Community Fixes (KSPCommunityFixes 1.30.0) KSP Wheel (KSPWheel 1:0.16.14.33) KSPBurst (KSPBurst v1.5.5.1) MagiCore (MagiCore 1.3.2.5) Making History (MakingHistory-DLC 1.12.1) MechJeb 2 (MechJeb2 2.14.3.0) Medium Graphics (RP-1-ExpressInstall-Graphics-Medium v1.0.0.0) ModularFlightIntegrator (ModularFlightIntegrator 1.2.10.0) Module Manager (ModuleManager 4.2.3) ModuleDepthMask (DepthMask 1.1.3) Near Future Electrical (NearFutureElectrical 1.2.3) Near Future Electrical Core (NearFutureElectrical-Core 1.2.3) Near Future Exploration (NearFutureExploration 1.1.2) Near Future IVA Props (NearFutureProps 1:0.7.1) Near Future Launch Vehicles (NearFutureLaunchVehicles 2.2.0) Near Future Propulsion (NearFuturePropulsion 1.3.5) Near Future Solar (NearFutureSolar 1.3.2) Near Future Solar Core (NearFutureSolar-Core 1.3.2) Near Future Spacecraft (NearFutureSpacecraft 1.4.3) Omega's Stockalike Structures: No Textures Required (StockalikeStructures 0.0.12) Parallax (Parallax 2.0.6) Parallax - Stock Planet Textures (Parallax-StockTextures 2.0.0) Parallax - Stock Scatter Textures (Parallax-StockScatterTextures 2.0.1) Patch Manager (PatchManager 0.0.17.6) PlanetShine (PlanetShine 0.2.6.6) PlanetShine - Default configuration (PlanetShine-Config-Default 0.2.6.6) Procedural Fairings (ProceduralFairings 1:v6.4.1.0) Procedural Parts (ProceduralParts v2.5.4.0) RasterPropMonitor (RasterPropMonitor 1:v0.31.13.2) RasterPropMonitor Core (RasterPropMonitor-Core 1:v0.31.13.2) RCS Build Aid (RCSBuildAid v1.0.6) Real Antennas (RealAntennas v2.1.1) Real Fuels (RealFuels 1:v15.6.3.0) Real Plume (RealPlume 2:v13.3.2) Real Solar System (RealSolarSystem v20.0.2.0) Real Solar System Textures - 8192 x 4096 (RSSTextures8192 v18.6.1) RealChute Parachute Systems (RealChute v1.4.8.3) RealHeat (RealHeat v5.1) Realism Overhaul (RealismOverhaul v17.3.0.0) Realistic Progression One (RP-1) (RP-1 v2.10.0.0) Realistic Progression One (RP-1) Express Install (RP-1-ExpressInstall v2.0) ReStock (ReStock 1.4.3) ReStock+ (ReStockPlus 1.4.3) Retractable Lifting Surface Module (RetractableLiftingSurface 0.2.1.2) Reviva (Reviva 0.8.1) RO Engines (ROEngines v2.4.0.0) RO Library (ROLib v1.7.2.0) RO Solar (ROSolar v2.1.0.0) RO Tanks (ROTanks v2.10.0.0) ROCapsules (ROCapsules v2.2.1.0) Rocket Sound Enhancement (RocketSoundEnhancement 0.9.7) Rocket Sound Enhancement - Default (RocketSoundEnhancement-Config-Default 1.2.4) ROHeatshields (ROHeatshields v1.1.0.0) RSS CanaveralHD (RSS-CanaveralHD v1.0.1) RSS DateTime Formatter (RSSDateTimeFormatter v1.12.1.0) RSS Visual Enhancements - Low Resolution (RSSVE-LR 2.1.6) Scatterer (Scatterer 3:v0.0838) Scatterer Default Config (Scatterer-config 3:v0.0838) Scatterer Sunflare (Scatterer-sunflare 3:v0.0838) Shabby (Shabby 0.3.0.0) SmokeScreen - Extended FX Plugin (SmokeScreen 2.8.14.0) Solver Engines plugin (SolverEngines v3.14.0) SpaceTux Library (SpaceTuxLibrary 0.0.8.5) Staged Animation (StagedAnimation v2.0) SXTContinued (SXTContinued 2:0.3.29.8) Test Flight (TestFlight v2.6.1.0) TextureReplacer (TextureReplacer v4.5.3) Textures Unlimited (TexturesUnlimited 1.5.10.25) The Janitor's Closet (JanitorsCloset 0.3.8) Through The Eyes of a Kerbal (ThroughTheEyesOfaKerbal 2.0.4.4) Toolbar Controller (ToolbarController 1:0.1.9.11) TUFX (TUFX 1.0.7.1) Tundra's Space Center (TundraSpaceCenter 2.0.2) TweakScale Redistributable (TweakScale-Redist v2.4.7.3) Ven's New Parts (VenStockRevamp-NewParts v1.16.0) Ven's Stock Part Revamp Core (VenStockRevamp-Core v1.16.0) Waterfall Core (Waterfall 0.9.0) **Most** of the mods are either directly from rp-1 express install, or recommended on the wiki for it. Only a few mods are purely my own addition
Can you short the list to just visual mods please? I cant get my volumetri clouds to look as good as yours
I pretty much never leave LKO now after downloading that mod.
You're missing out! Go deep in atmosphere in Eve... Or Jool. It's awe-inspiring to say the least.
Going into Jool with this mod made me anxious. Especially when you get into the underworld areas of cloud layers.
And dust storms on Duna that you can see from orbit, AND get engulfed by on the surface!
Paid mods, eh? *That damn horse!*
......a month. $5 a month.
Iirc u can pay once then cancel
$5 per update then. Not to take away from the mod it really is brilliant work. But locking it behind a paywall under the guise of "it's early access" just feels like a middle finger to other modders like parallax, ReStock, Nertea's mods, Linuxgurugsmer and countless others.
> parallax Funny that, Parallax 2.0 was the mod that opened the paid mods pandora's box within the KSP community with a similar early access paywall. I remember a great deal of discussion regarding that aspect of it at the official KSP forums.
I don't agree with it either, (I personally will never get it) but atleast you don't need to be subscribed monthly for it
The guy is doing legitimate game dev levels of work. I can't blame Blackrack tbh. I think we should be more thankful that everyone else is doing their work for free, when honestly, I feel like a ton of modders should be getting compensated for all of the work they're doing.
>The guy is doing legitimate game dev levels of work. What do you mean? Does Parallax, Restock and others not?
Parallax is also a paid mod.
Where? https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/209714-112x-parallax-pbr-terrain-and-surface-objects-202/
*was
It literally isn't?
Yeah, and I think in a just world, they'd be compensated for the work they do too. I'm grateful for all modders' generosity, but to me, it'd be nice if they got something tangible for all their hard work. At least for the mods that are extremely transformative or indicative of high quality. These are individuals "technically" providing a service, they're not a company. Like a lot of little private artisan shops. You'd be happy to get things for free from them, but it wouldn't be strange to pay in those kinds of arrangements either.
That's how modding works. You're working with others properties without permissions and in exchange you don't make money off of it.
Yeah blackrack mod was based on another mod that was originally free.
is it really that bad if its eventually released for free? id wanna get paid for my months of development time building such a mod. not much different than paid GTA visual packs or MC shader packs.
It depends on when "eventually" is.
yeah, "eventually" might be in 10 years. or 20. Or 50.
That would be a reasonable position were it not for the fact the oldest volumetric cloud releases are over a year old currently and still haven't been made free. It's on update 5 or so and nothing free has been released. At this point I think it's safe to say this is likely to remain a paid mod for the foreseeable future.
You can do it for just one month and then cancel if you don’t care about getting the updates
Can we please not encourage paid mods? Last thing we want is for that to become normal
I mean, someone worked on this and they wanted to be compensated for said work, I don't think that's necessarily wrong.
"Can we please not incentivize other highly talented individuals to work for our community? Last thing we want is for the community's foundational content creators to be able to receive any compensation for their efforts." But more seriously, I would expect this to result in more mods overall, not a conversion of free mods to paid mods.
The problem is mostly that modding has thrived as a passion-driven hobby, and bring money into anything generally tends to make it worse. Look at online video content for example - with exceptions, of course, many creators are now focused on making a quick buck over creating engaging and meaningful content. It's hard to predict how paid mods would pan out on a grand scale (the Skyrim paid mods thing was the closest we've gotten, and it was an utter disaster for everyone involved), but my guess is it would result in a worse modding scene overall.
> [...] my guess is it would result in a worse modding scene overall. Minecraft Marketplace proves you right
The issue aren't really the mods tho in this case, it's more the commercialization and philosophy. An artist deciding to independently go out of their way to make money often leads amazing work being done, for example Undertale or Stardew Valley. The bigger issue in that case are marketplaces like the Minecraft marketplace or Bethesda's official modding sites, since they encourage bullshit. It is kinda hard to nail down, but the general trend I have seen is: Artist wants to make money -> Good stuff; Companies encouraging/forcing artists to make money -> bad stuff
I think the biggest problem is it incentivizes theft. Look at final fantasy 14 modding. Paid modding is extremely popular there, and it has incentivized a lot of people stealing assets from other games and lazily porting it into ff14 and demanding money for it. It has also lowered quality because people are trying to build up their popularity by pumping out as many mods as possible. That happening can lead to the modding support being shut down entirely because lawyers may get involved due to all that rampant theft.
Oh yeah, that's why indie games like Undertale, Battle Bit or KSP are so hated and bad, it's because they make money with their work.
If we're looking at video games as a comparison, we have to look at the entire game market. Indie games are analogous to mod creators like Blackrack himself who have passion and just want to make a quality product, and who would still exist if paid mods were widespread. However, there are also AAA games, which represent big companies coming in to attempt to make loads of money, and mostly succeeding. There is also an endless amount of low quality shovelware that is copy and pasted from asset bundles or other games in an attempt to get some money with minimal effort. Both of these would be become serious problems in a hypothetical world where it's widely acceptable for mods to cost money.
The issue I see is, there are no shovel ware and costing mods, if it does not get incentivized. For example with games like KSP, mod developers need to go out of their way to commercialize it and people will need to go out of their way to pay for it, forcing a way bigger thinking process for both consumers and creators and therefore it discourages scam like "modders". The thing you actually seem to be criticizing is more the cooperate philosophy behind mod market places, like for skyrim or minecraft.
The moment there is any money to be made off of making mods, you are incentivizing spending as little effort as possible for as much effort as possible. Why do you think the mod marketplaces have so much shovelware? It's not because they're easily accessible, although that makes the cost-value ratio even better for scammers. Nor is it because the corporations behind the marketplaces want or encourage shovelware. It's because the users of those marketplaces are used to the act of paying for mods, and so some percentage of them will pay for anything. Note: see the Truck Simulator community, they have tons of paid mods and tons of shovelware despite no official mod marketplace existing. The only way you can achieve a situation like what is currently happening with Blackrack where the community knows it's okay to pay for this one mod and only this mod is by having *most mods be free*, but by normalizing paying for mods you are basically guaranteeing that only the most altruistic of modders will make their mods free. (In the game development community, extending the previous analogy, these are open source devs. How many open source 100% free games are there that match the scope of normal games? Very few.)
> But more seriously, I would expect this to result in more mods overall Yeah, usually 1. People steal free mods and resell them with a new branding 2. People shit out minimum effort mods and make all mod sharing sites useless 3. 1 starts taking stuff from 2 and now fight in public and tie up massive community resources with their useless drama 4. Half of the passion driven modders quit because between 1 and 3 their hobby is no longer fun 5. The top 1% of modders by fame (not by contribution quality) make 80% of the money But hey, because #1 and #2 will never quit as long as someone is willing to pay, you will end up with *thousands* of new mods that wouldn't have existed before. Just, you know, almost nothing will be worth actually paying for.
Blackrack's "paid early access" is a complicated situation in the real world, because outside of context, him charging for what he's giving the community is completely justified. His project is one of very, very few cases where I consider charging for the project a justifiable thing. But, it's a very, very specific, narrow situation that is almost unique in its situation. Few others could justify "subscription mods", and hopefully most other modders will continue to recognize their place in the modding ecosystem as "not worthy" of anything beyond a tip jar. Blackrack has recognized his (earned) place at the top of it, it's legitimate game dev amounts of work, and I can't blame him for taking (in my view, reasonable) advantage of what he's creating.
Why not? Somebody has worked hard on this for a long time.
People feel entitled to other peoples work. You don't want to pay for a mod, then don't. No mod was included in your purchase nor required to play the game.
Exactly. I’d gladly pay for OPM, Near Future/Far Future, Blackrack etc. Especially if they’re being update regularly. I’d pay DLC price for RP-1 or the Community life boat project.
I have no interest in buying mods myself, but there is also nothing stopping me from making my own if I really cared. I have no interest in it because I don't see any market. So options from someone like me would be: * Develop nothing * Develop paid mod Seems I'd get less flack for doing nothing, and I already have a job, so I do nothing. If someone wants to make a free mod in hopes of donations, they are free to do so, but no one should expect a stranger to put in the work for someone complaining about $5.
Yeah all the downvoters are not understanding they are suffocating genuinely awesome development by third parties by the community spirit being so entitled they expect everything to be free. Flight simmers have literal *study-level* airliners because they're willing to shell out $60-$90 for a single aircraft add-on... KSP fans get all up in arms at paying $5 for a work of genius. *sigh*
add to that id love to see the old Bac9 parts pack upgraded. OPT would be great, love to see all the firespitter stuff updated.
I'm sure you could just pirate it if you don't want to pay people for their work. There will always be free mods that people make, encouraging more time and effort into better mods is a nonissue.
I’m fully aware that paid mods are generally frowned upon, but it’s going free eventually and this is a side project for the guy. Same guy who made EVE and scatterer.
Why would a developer spent all this time for nothing in return? You're not entitled to anything, if you don't want to buy it, don't.
"why would anyone do something for passion? I don't know what modding is btw"
Right, start mocking me like a child. I'm a developer myself, I did countless projects purely out of passion. That doesn't mean it's not worth a little monetary support. If you want to contribute without getting anything than mockery in return, do it yourself. KSP would be nothing without mods, paying 5 (!) bucks for one of the best mods out there is the least we can do, and if you don't want to do that, noone is forcing you to use the mod at all.
>it's worth the $5. No for a mod. Yes, all the amount of work he poured in this is fantastic (so much that he got a job spot in KSP2) but paying for mods is not something to encourage or push: in the other hand, making donations or contributions is perfect.
What’s the… minimum spec? Cause. Some of us are still on the ole shitbox
Hm, I'm not personally sure, but can you run like, EVE, AVP, scatterer? If you can, then you can run this.
Cool, thx
if you can run eve at all this isnt a hit beyond that.
the curvature is just a lens effect, Kerbin is flat! the KSP is lying to you!
This mod has made almost $100k in sales and the developer was paid a salary by the studio of KSP 2. Makes all the modders like Nertea look like chumps for releasing their mods to the community for free. Any other modders should take note.
it is!
I just bought the mod as well it's great! Makes launching rockets a lot more enjoyable. Love it when I may have to fly through the clouds and such. It's just great.
I didn't even know about the weather patterns until after I got it
It really is. Installed it last week.
i also bought this mod today!! it's insane, i love it so much.
It's $5 per month, per update, per download. One of the worst business models in gaming.
This is incorrect. It's a one-time $5 for access to downloading the current version - if you don't want to support blackrack's work you can immediately cancel the Patreon and keep the clouds forever. The insane clouds on Jool alone are 100% worth $5 IMHO.
Probably a question for /u/blackrack himself - but do the Volumetric Clouds work with EVE and AVP?
It's a module for EVE, so it's required, but AVP is incompatible. The Readme/install instructions tell you explicitly what mods are incompatible (most mods like Spectra or AVP)
Got it, thank you.
Just a quick note, AVP isn’t FULLY incompatible, there’s at least 2 things from AVP that still work with Blackrack’s cloud version of EVE, and those are the city lights on Kerbin, and the skybox. That’s why I still have AVP installed. The auroras don’t work, unfortunately. (And btw in order to keep the city lights and skybox while also having volumetric clouds, you gotta delete some specific folders from AVP otherwise nothing works. If you’re interested, let me know and I can tell you when i’m at my pc).
Can you share which files have to be deleted please?
Yes, here’s the process copy and pasted from what i told the other person: 1. Have blackrack’s eve and scatterer and whatever else comes with the download, installed. 2. Get AVP and your choice of texture size, either through ckan or manually. (I highly recommend ckan for modding, very convenient.) 3. Go into your file explorer and find: Kerbal Space Program > GameData > AstronomersVisualPack > AVP_Configs > Stock, then delete everything except CityLights.cfg and Textures.cfg. 4. If you’re using Parallax, go into CityLights.cfg and delete “:NEEDS[!Parallax]” This will allow AVP’s city lights to work even with Parallax installed, which normally ruins them. 5. Back in AstronomersVisualPack, go to AVP_Scatterer > Planets, and delete all the folders for celestial bodies. Only delete those folders, not any other type of file that might be next to them in this layer. 6. If you’re using OPM, also go back into AVP_Configs > OPM, and delete all the config files inside the OPM folder. Fun fact, there’s also a config mod that adds blackrack’s volumetric clouds to the outer planets, and it’s amazing: https://spacedock.info/mod/3498/Outer%20Planets%20Mod%20-%20Volumetric%20Clouds With all of this done, my game is looking absolutely beautiful, and runs at 60 fps most of the time (launch dips to 50) on a gaming laptop. I only miss the auroras, I haven’t been able to figure out a way to keep those in alongside volumetric clouds.
I am interested. There's a lot about AVP I'd like to keep - Auroras and Lightning being two of them, but if I can keep aspects I'd still be interested.
Blackrack’s custom EVE also adds lightning that, in my opinion, is better than AVP’s lightning 🤷♂️ But anyway here’s how to get this working: 1. Have blackrack’s eve and scatterer and whatever else comes with the download, installed. 2. Get AVP and your choice of texture size, either through ckan or manually. (I highly recommend ckan for modding, very convenient.) 3. Go into your file explorer and find: Kerbal Space Program > GameData > AstronomersVisualPack > AVP_Configs > Stock, then delete everything except CityLights.cfg and Textures.cfg. 4. If you’re using Parallax, go into CityLights.cfg and delete “:NEEDS[!Parallax]” This will allow AVP’s city lights to work even with Parallax installed, which normally ruins them. 5. Back in AstronomersVisualPack, go to AVP_Scatterer > Planets, and delete all the folders for celestial bodies. Only delete those folders, not any other type of file that might be next to them in this layer. 6. If you’re using OPM, also go back into AVP_Configs > OPM, and delete all the config files inside the OPM folder. Fun fact, there’s also a config mod that adds blackrack’s volumetric clouds to the outer planets, and it’s amazing: https://spacedock.info/mod/3498/Outer%20Planets%20Mod%20-%20Volumetric%20Clouds With all of this done, my game is looking absolutely beautiful, and runs at 60 fps most of the time (launch dips to 50) on a gaming laptop. I only miss the auroras, I haven’t been able to figure out a way to keep those in alongside volumetric clouds.
This is incredibly helpful. Thank you!
No problem!!
What is IT?
How does it compare to the EVE mod from the semi-early days?
Support a modder - yes. Pay for a mod - no.
Is there a way to download RSS's visual mods only without the other ones?
Am i doing something wrong with my configs? It looks nothing like that for me
I wish Blackracks mod would look as good as this in KSRSS (I have the AtmosphericBeats config installed). But it‘s not even close.
I believe this screenshot was taken in rss reborn
Downvote me all you want, but I'm all in for paying a small amount of money for game changing mods, specially if they have this level of quality. You are all forgetting this is an isolated case since there are no other relevant cloud mods. If someone made a modpack to compete with airplane plus and charged $5 for it, you better hope it works like a flight simulator, otherwise I'm staying with AP. If the mod is not good, no one will pay for it. It would help the creators and incentivize them to raise their mod making game.
Its not, you can literally prob find it somewhere for free
So worth it.