(written by dtolman)
Did you know that the planets.nu site supports the use of javascript mods to enhance your VGA Planets experience? The steps to installing a mod are simple – just follow along:
First – are you running Firefox or Chrome? Depending on the version you need to install a different add-on for your web browser – Greasemonkey (Firefox) or Tampermonkey (Chrome)
If you already have these installed on your browser, feel free to skip to the next section below.
Firefox: Go to the site https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/
Adding Greasemonkey to FF
Click on the box +Add to Firefox.
FF install popup box
It will download the greasemonkey addon, and popup a box asking you to install. Once the install is done, it may ask you to restart.
The new icon on your menu bar
Once it is installed you will see a new icon on the top right of the menu bar of your browser. If its greyed out, then its inactive. Click on the icon to activate or deactivate it.
You’re now ready to download a mod and install it!
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Chrome: Go to the site https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/tampermonkey?hl=en
Adding Tampermonkey to Chrome
Click on the button next to Tampermonkey called Add to Chrome on the top of the screen.
Install popup box in Chrome
It will popup a box asking you to add or cancel. Select Add.
The new icon
Once added you will see the tampermonkey icon appear on the top right of the Chrome browser.
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Finding Mod Scripts for Planets.nu
There are two good places to find mods for planets.nu. You can look on the planets.nu site itself under the developer forum: http://planets.nu/talk/channel/developers, and click on individual threads to find mods you may find interesting.
Searching for planets.nu scripts
Another way you can find mods is to go to the site that stores almost all mods for planets.nu, http://userscripts.org. On the userscripts site, go to the search box on the right and type in planets.nu and hit search. The planets.nu related mods will appear in the list.
Click on one of the mods that looks interesting, and it will open up the scripts homepage.
The install button on a script’s screen
Whether you got to the script from the planets.nu forum, or the userscripts.org site, you should eventually end up on a script page. Click on the install button on the top right to install the mod.
On firefox it will popup a box asking to install. Click the install button on the bottom left of the popup. On chrome it will load a new screen, then popup a box with the choices OK and Cancel. Select OK.
It should then install the mod into Tampermonkey (Chrome) or Greasemonkey (Firefox).
Go to the planets.nu site, hit reload (the F5 button on the keyboard in Windows, or the reload icon in your browser bar), and click on the tampermonkey or greasemonkey icon on the top right of your browser.
If the mod is installed successfully and active it will appear in the dropdown list with a checkbox (firefox) or with a green dot next to it (chrome). If it doesn’t have a checkbox/green icon, just click the mod name to activate it, then reload the planets.nu site again to make sure the mod loads.
Firefox/Greasemonkey with an activated script.
Firefox with script running
Chrome/Tampermonkey with an active script
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Planets Magazine 
I’ve installed Tampermonkey and a couple scripts. With an script active (any combination or any on its own) the game halts at the “travelling to the echo cluster” screen before you get to the game dashboard. :S I’m not sure what to do
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After further testing I realized that it is the Draw script by Big Beefer, Somehow I didn’t realize I had it on in every other combination. So that script creates the result described above. My bad.
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Good point! Since we had a version change in the game in april 2013, some of the older scripts may have to be updated. If your game freezes on startup i recommend to switch off the Add-Ons and to step-by-step switch them on to find out which one makes the game freeze.
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Good call thin. Unfortunately with the host changes, most scripts won’t work on the play.planets.nu interface anymore – most of them still work on the original though if you want to stick with that.
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Makes sense. Well since the update is so incredible I’ll just have to do without some scripts until they’re updated!
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Hi, I like the new NU site, but still miss many of the scripts. Do you think they will get updated to work at play.planets,nu?
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Its up to the individual developer to update them.
I’ve updated all of mine (color coding, improved ship list, etc) will work with the old or new site.
I’m going to work on creating an article that goes through all the extant mods, and what version of the game they work with – look for it in the next few weeks.
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Dtolman, this is an excellent article on how to install userscripts! I was hoping someone would put something like this together.
Also, as the author of a number of scripts, I can say that none of mine have been updated for the new version. Whether some might still work I don’t know. I admit I’ve been procrastinating on updating them. It’s just not the most interesting project. But I would like to get them all up to date someday…
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So these scripts don’t work in Explorer?
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have you looked if there is a plugin such as tampermonkey or greasemonkey for the IE? if yes it should work to install the scripts.. i found btw that chrome is the fastest browser fur .nu ..
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Probably this article needs a tweak to take out the userscrips.org URLs (or update them)
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