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For players

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Ishiaki edited this page Oct 12, 2026 · 3 revisions

For players

  • Install: copy the Keystone folder into GameData, next to the mod that needs it. One copy serves every mod that uses it.
  • The window opens from the keystone button on the game's toolbar, or with the modifier key and K (Option-K on a Mac, Alt-K elsewhere), in every scene. The key can be changed on Keystone's own page. Drag it by its top edge. While the pointer is over it, a click or the wheel is the window's and does not reach the game under it. (Until 0.7.2 the window blinked for as long as it was dragged, and a turn of the wheel over it zoomed the camera as well as scrolling the list: both put right, and tried with the pointer.)

The list of mods

The window opens on a list of every mod installed in the game.

  • First, the mods with settings here (Keystone's own family). Each has a switch at its left: it is the mod's own on/off setting, the same one as on its page, so a mod switched off here is off everywhere. The line under its name says how it is doing, or whether its settings are as installed or how many you have changed.
  • Then every other mod in GameData, Keystone itself included. For each: its name and version, and the line its makers describe it with. Marks after the version: library (something other mods are built on), needs ... (something it depends on is not installed), did not load (its library is in GameData but the game did not load it: KSP.log says why), made for KSP ... (its own files say it was made for other versions of the game; that is a warning, not a fault), and, if you allow looking online, newer: ....
  • Search with the box at the top (names, makers, descriptions, folders), or show only the mods with settings. The line under the box is the game itself and its expansions.
  • Click a mod for its page. For the mods with settings, their settings: hold the pointer over one to read what it does at the foot of the window; drag a slider or type a number; click a colour to choose one on a gradient; click a key and press the key you want (Esc leaves it as it was, Backspace takes it off). Defaults puts a page back as installed. For every mod, under that: who made it, its licence, buttons for its addresses (its home page, its source, where to report faults; each opens in your web browser), what it needs and what needs it, which versions of the game it is made for, whether CKAN installed it, and its folders and libraries. < and > go to the mod before and after it in the list.

What is known of a mod comes from the mod itself and from your computer only: what CKAN wrote down when it installed it (if you use CKAN, its registry is in the game's CKAN folder), the mod's .version file (the form KSP-AVC reads), and its libraries. A mod that has none of these is shown with its folder's name.

A mod that is not one of Keystone's cannot be switched off from inside the game: the game loads every mod when it starts and cannot let one go. To leave one out, take its folder out of GameData (or use CKAN) and start the game again.

Newer versions

At the foot of the list: Look for newer versions online, off as installed. Switched on, while the window is open and no more than once a day for each mod, Keystone asks each mod's own address for its newest version, one request at a time: the copy of its .version file its makers keep online (the address in its .version file or in CKAN's record), and its latest release on GitHub, whose notes are shown on its page. Nothing about you is sent with these requests; the sites see that this computer asked, as with any web page. What is learnt is kept in GameData/Keystone/PluginData/online.json. Nothing is ever downloaded or installed: to update a mod, use CKAN or its page. Look now asks again (at most every ten minutes).

What each mod costs

At the foot of the list: What each mod costs. Its page has a switch, Measure the game's main thread, off until you switch it on. While it is on, every mod's own work is timed, and the page shows, for each, how many milliseconds of a frame it takes on average over three seconds, as a share of the frame, and its worst frame; the list shows the same figure beside each mod. Switching it on holds the game still for a moment while it is set up; it goes off by itself when the window closes, and then nothing of it is left running. It needs the Harmony mod (HarmonyKSP), which many mods already need; without Harmony the page says so. How it is measured, and what it leaves out.

Under that, with nothing switched on: what each mod loaded through the game from its folder (pictures, models, sounds) and roughly how much memory that takes.

Settings

Kept in GameData/Keystone/PluginData/<mod>.cfg, written a second after you change something; Keystone's own (its key, looking online) in Keystone.cfg. Deleting a file there puts that mod back as installed. (They are kept in PluginData because the game does not read that folder as part of its own data, so saving a setting never makes it, or ModuleManager, rebuild anything at the next start.)

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