My main (humorous I hope) frustration with KSP

[Wallygator]

I've only been through this process once. But have seen others out there experience the same...

It is what it is... I continue to enjoy the game very much, play almost every day and continue to refer people to check KSP out and pass on word. It's the finest game I've seen in decades.

But... I do await the day when the current situation with memory management is solved once and for all. I do sincerely hope our Devs have this on their top target list. As always, keep up the good work!

Cheers,

W.

[Alshain]

If you are not using mods, you shouldn't need Active Texture Management. If you do need active texture management without mods the tree should branch out into a "upgrade your old piece of junk computer". Sorry to say, the tree doesn't work this way.

Edited February 2, 2015 by Alshain

[Wallygator]

late 2013 macbook pro here. I consider your recommendation of "Upgrade your old piece of junk computer" to be out of scope.

[Alshain]

late 2013 macbook pro here. I consider your recommendation of "Upgrade your old piece of junk computer" to be out of scope.

System Requirements recommend 4GB of ram. If you have 4GB, the stock game will not crash due to being out of memory (it may crash for other reasons, it's a beta). If you don't, you may not have a computer capable of playing this game. It really is that simple.

[cantab]

I run the Linux 64-bit version of KSP with a fair few mods and have crashes very rarely. I've maybe had one or two in 0.90. But I've seen and heard many other players , who I assume are running a Windows version of KSP, having crashes like you describe and/or considering it normal to need to restart the game periodically. It does seem like 0.90 on Windows has a memory leak bug.

EDIT: And now you say you use a Macbook Pro. What Operating System are you playing KSP on, and is it practical to try a different OS?

As Alshain says, if you are playing stock you shouldn't need ATM unless you're trying to play KSP on a computer with 2 GB of memory.

[Wallygator]

Thanks for that. That was helpful.

Apologies to all if the intended little bit of humor seems to not make it thru... My mistake.

Can I request that a moderator kindly delete this thread?

[Alshain]

Thanks for that. That was helpful.

Apologies to all if the intended little bit of humor seems to not make it thru... My mistake.

Can I request that a moderator kindly delete this thread?

I meant no offense but you presented it as if you expected the situation to change, and I doubt it will. If anything the game is going to grow so more of the 4GB cap is filled up. Even if they manage to free up memory through optimization, they will likely take that opportunity to add more stuff.

[Wallygator]

I meant no offense but you presented it as if you expected the situation to change, and I doubt it will. If anything the game is going to grow so more of the 4GB cap is filled up. Even if they manage to free up memory through optimization, they will likely take that opportunity to add more stuff.

No offense taken at all. I've always appreciated your point of view on many other threads. ;-)

I was not intending this to be a request for support otherwise I would have posted it in the support forum. My mistake for not being more clear.

Edited February 2, 2015 by Wallygator

[GoSlash27]

I've been playing KSP since 23.5. I have never had KSP crash on me. *shrug*

-Slashy

[Wallygator]

This is now starting to remind me of an old software support guy I worked with back in the Late 80's. He supported our enterprise applications on an old DEC VAX under VMS. His scripted series of responses to any software issue or support request worked like this...

1. It should work

2. It works for me

3. Well, person X has been using it forever and has no problems

4. It is clearly working, but not properly

5. Nobody else has your problem, so we will ignore it until we get more complaints

He also never washed his coffee cup and loved to bowl - not relevant, but made me chuckle upon reflection :-)

[Voidryder]

^^ I think he now works at a software vender the State mandates my company to use. Those are his exact responses to everything.

[Sirrobert]

Did you try not using so many mods?

[Rocket Farmer]

Strangley enough I think his son is our IT guy.

Today after coming in early to update some software with our vendor when the vendor went to access some of the files we got a "administrator and password required" screen. So I emailed IT indicating I needed admin access as we were blocked by an admin user request.

His response: That shouldn't be necessary.....

On the KSP front the only crashes I have ever suffered in 800 hours of playing mod free on Windows have been after the occasional bad Spaceplane crash into the runway. I chuckle as a crash causes a crash but I've had maybe 8-10 of these in total (crashes I mean. .

[ColourOfFire]

I run KSP on an early 2011 macbook which borderline meets minimum requirements, it runs a bit hot and I had some issues with an install with 20 or so mods on it (I suspect those were mainly caused by mods messing with each other), but vanilla never crashed on me. Slow frame-rate because of huge part counts, but never a crash to desktop. I used to play on 10.6.8, recently upgraded to Yosemite, it runs even better now as long as I don't go too crazy on the part packs. I think you should look at mods as the culprit.

[Wallygator]

Did you try not using so many mods?

OMG I almost spit up my Martini when I read this. Well done sir!

[JordanL]

System Requirements recommend 4GB of ram. If you have 4GB, the stock game will not crash due to being out of memory (it may crash for other reasons, it's a beta). If you don't, you may not have a computer capable of playing this game. It really is that simple.

It will if you're running a 32bit operating system, as KSP can only address about 1.75GB of memory on a 32bit operating system, and 3.5GB on a 64bit operating system (with the 32bit executable).

[r4pt0r]

are CTD's really a common thing for people? I've had 3 over a year and a half.

[Renegrade]

are CTD's really a common thing for people? I've had 3 over a year and a half.

I've had a couple, not many though. Stock generally runs fine on it's own, although it will occasionally NaN itself crazy (rolling altimeter number, etc), causing me to restart it as a precaution..

[problemecium]

My version would have a branch before "Diagnosis: Out of Memory" where some other bug happened (Kraken, null ref, klaw, changed ships too many times and make KSP forget the Space Center existed...).

[rynak]

http://i.imgur.com/INnczY0.jpg

...

W.

Your problem - at the very least since 0.90 - is split in two: KSP itself, and mod textures.

KSP itself doesn't have the best optimized textures (especially the dozens of kerbals in the assets - who needs those resolutions? And up to this day, what is the megalomaniac MATRIX texture actually doing?). But since 0.90, there is another aspect to it: KSP itself consumes not just hundreds but over a GB of memory, ignoring textures. And there seem to be leaks that result in an inevitable out-of-memory after some time. ATM will neither fix the assets (it doesn't compress those), nor the memleaks. I run a highly optimized install of KSP - more than i suppose 99% of players are capable of achieving. Yet even my playtime is limited by: A) Initial wasteful base mem requirements. Memory leaks.

The other aspect is textures of mods. By now, this for fairness has to be split into at least three considerations:

1) No on demand loading and unloading of textures. I suppose argument in favor of this is: If your puter cannot handle loading ALL textures at the same time, then it would eventually crash anyways, as soon as there are enough vessels loaded into "physics range" (a pitiful and laughable 2-something kilometres distance - what is this - the 80ies?). That might be so, but potential of crashing does not justify performance at a given point in time: When i design a puny probe in the VAB, i do not expect ALL textures of ALL parts, plus the entire vicinty of the KSC and kerbin, AND its oceans, to be loaded into memory... yet, that is what is the case. And it does matter, because FPS in the editor matters perhaps more than inflight - after all, you interact much more frequently with your craft in the editor, than in flight.

2) Texture memory: I could write a long story here, but i think by 0.90, there are only two things to mention. First, neither squad nor modders care anymore by now about texture memory (most of them: I honestly apologize, if you're one of the exception - you'll get karma points in a few secs). This might seem like a bold claim, so to debunk any myths, let me tell you this: I have seen plenty of times SINGLE COLOR TEXTURES, of 1024x1024 or more... often 2048x2048.... MILLIONS OF PIXELS OF THE SAME ONE COLOR. DOZENS OF MEGABYTES (multiplied by THREE in VMEM), that can be expressed in THREE BYTES. I'm not kidding - i'm talking about a BLANK SINGLE COLOR IMAGE, wasting dozens of megabytes of VRAM. And that's not a singular case. I've seen it many times, and i see it regularily for two or three color textures. To put it bluntly: Some devs with overly expensive rigs, seem to think that since they have a machine that can abundantly waste memory (probably on linux, without 32bit limits), they seem to think all it's users can afford to not give a ***** about VRAM too.

There's a quite devious twist to this: It would appear that at least with regards to icons, some modders have adopted more efficient goals. Unfortunatelly, they now are punished for it - and forced to allocated larger textures than neccessary. This is because before 0.90, KSP used to not rescale textures in PNG format. So, modders started assuming, that if they store their textures in PNG, they will not be rescaled. THIS NO LONGER IS TRUE IN 0.90, and it is the reason for the pixelated or nonexistant icons reported in various threads. In theory, this is actually a feature, since normal part textures now are properly rescaled even if stored in PNG. It however stops being a feature, when apparently SQUAD did not inform the modders at all about this, nor about how to mark icons as non-rescalable. (Squad, you reading this? If you had spent 5 minutes of devtime, to set a lower limit - say, that textures smaller than 128x128 should not be downscaled... you wouldn't even have had to bother informing modders, and would have established forwards compabibility in uncountable cases.)

3) This is a new thing, especially in 0.90. It used to be that KSP requires an excessive amount of RAM, but a rather fixed - and in terms of 32bit VMEM manageable - amount of VMEM. So, even though the "fixed base costs" were significant, they were mostly static. This no longer applies in 0.90, because of memory leaks: No matter how carefully you pick your mods - no matter how much time you spend on handoptimizing textures (or letting ATM do it) - KSP will inevitable run out memory no matter what you do (on 32bit - much later on 64bit if you have enough mem), because of memory leaks. For example, on my setup, KSP will lose half a gigabyte in 20-25mins of playtime... so, no matter what optimizations i apply, i will have to reboot it from time to time.

Edited February 3, 2015 by rynak
embassassing addition about 128x128 downscale limit: cost <5 minutes devtime.

[Superfluous J]

Note that the stock game WILL crash eventually due to running out of memory. There are at least 2 well-documented memory leaks in 0.90. In stock, you should be able to play for HOURS before this happens unless you're actively doing those things that the bug reports say cause the leaks.

ATM will let you play for a little while longer, but won't stop the crashes from happening.

[Brotoro]

If you have 4GB, the stock game will not crash due to being out of memory (it may crash for other reasons, it's a beta). If you don't, you may not have a computer capable of playing this game. It really is that simple.

This is not true. 5thHorseman above is correct.

[justidutch]

I've been playing KSP since 23.5. I have never had KSP crash on me. *shrug*

-Slashy

I resemble this remark. No crashes for me, but I have only ever played stock so far.