Windows 64 bit community workaround

[WWEdeadman]

So, since 1.0 has no official Win64 version, because of obvious instability and buggyness of Unity in 64 bit, I though I might as well try whether the old community hack we used back in .23.5 still works. And what should I say: Yep. You can still do the same workaround. Now, I haven't tested this much, and some bugs and crashes certainly are still very common with this (for instance the left mouse button works as right mouse button when leaving the game thingy), but the game launches in 64 bit just fine for me. I haven't had many problems with previous (official or non-official) 64 bit versions of KSP, so this still might crash on start up for you. Also, should you try this I do not take any responsibility on any of the results of you doing so. You should really only try it if you use a bajillion mods, and run out of memory otherwise. There is no real advantage of 64 bit, other than the increased memory capabilities, so think twice if you need it. Also, PLEASE do not report any bugs you find in this workaround as bugs with the game. Squad had good reasons not to release a 64 bit version with 1.0, and I'd like to keep the win64 bit discussion in this thread only. Please don't confuse Squad or modders with bugs that have nothing to do with what they are giving you.

OK, so how do you do it:

Try this on a separate install of KSP, or back up the game files before doing anything.

You'll need Unity version 4.6.4, which is the version KSP 1.0 uses. Download it from https://unity3d.com/ and install it, since I can't redistribute the 2 files you'll need alone. After you installed it, go to the installation folder and to the path "Editor/Data/PlaybackEngines/windowsstandalonesupport/Variations/win64_nondevelopment"

There you copy the "player_win.exe" to the KSP folder, and rename it "KSP.exe". You should backup the already existing KSP.exe before that.

Then you also need to open "Editor/Data/PlaybackEngines/windowsstandalonesupport/Variations/win64_nondevelopment/Data/Mono" in the Unity install, and copy the "mono.dll" to your KSP folder under "KSP_Data/Mono". The mono.dll there should also be backed up before overwriting it.

And boom, if you open your new KSP.exe, KSP will start in 64bit mode.

Now, again: This will most certainly be buggy as hell and prone to crashes, so don't come running to squad or any mod creators if anything doesn't work with this hack. Nothing is supposed to work with this. Anything that does work is just pure luck.

Now, a small list of notable things:

-The "left click is right click" issue after leaving the game is still a thing. Fixable by just right clicking once.

-The bug with buildings appearing fully upgraded, but not working as such in career mode isn't consistent now. You sometimes get fully upgraded buildings on the KSC screen, but they change back to the actual tier they're on if you leave the to the main menu and go back into the save. Also sometimes if you just go into a building and go back out.

-Screen transitions still have the inside view of e.g. the astronaut complex pop up for a few seconds sometimes, but that is just a visual bug that has no effect on gameplay.

-Mods that used to disable themselves on the official x64 experimental builds, still do so in this workaround. (e.g. FAR, the toolbar still gives you Nyancat on the loading screen and the warning about you using 64 bit on windows, etc)

(more to be added as people test this out)

Edited June 1, 2015 by WWEdeadman
Added full path of mono.dll file, since some people seem to have gotten confused

[Eddie Rod]

Going to test this on 1.0.2 right now because 64 bit never gave me any major issues. Crashes after an hour or so are ok to take a break anyway! lol

[Eddie Rod]

Oh god works like a dream in 1.0.2!! Only bug I have is the fire effects when switching screens but that's nothing! I think it runs better than .90 and .25 combined!! Going to do some heavy testing right now! :-) Thanks man!!

[problemecium]

I'm too lazy to bother downloading Unity 4.6.2 again to test this, but I'm with you in spirit and eagerly await the return of an official 64-bit KSP.

[Dre4dW0rm]

The UNITY x64 instability is a myth, all major issues have been fixed a while ago. There's a multitude of Unity games on both 32/64-bit architectures and they work fine. THE most obvious problem is in the game code outside of the Unity's engine, and the problem with projects like KSP is that if it's not designed very well, it's sometimes hard to make it 64-bit compatible without code re-design.

[sarbian]

Please list those multitude of games working on x64 with unity 4.x (not 5) with more than 4 GB used.

[Eddie Rod]

Day 2 and still not one crash! Running at least 20 mods so far and trying to build a MASSIVE space station! I love it! I swear 1.0 has fixed 64 bit for some reason! Remember how the kerbals pictures in the bottom right used to move slow like? No more in 1.0 and also the white halo in the ocean when looking at Kerbin from orbit...GONE! I think the 64 bit issues was SQUADs bugs that were just showing up more in 64 bit!

- - - Updated - - -

Someone quick give me a bug that used to be 64 bit only so I can see if it's fixed or not.

[Eddie Rod]

I cannot replicate the bug where fresh career mode buildings start fully upgraded. Is their something that I must do to invoke this particular Kraken? Also am I the only one testing this right now?

[RobotsAndSpaceships]

Please list those multitude of games working on x64 with unity 4.x (not 5) with more than 4 GB used.

None, because anyone who's developing a complex enough game to use more than 4gb of RAM, is smart enough not to use Unity as their engine.

[Bilfr3d]

None, because anyone who's developing a complex enough game to use more than 4gb of RAM, is smart enough not to use Unity as their engine.

this ^^ I so agree.

In other news! I'm going to try out the 64-bit hack tonight, and we'll see how it works. I might use openGL with the 64-bit too, and see how that works. I shall report back here if anything worth mentioning arises.

[Jim Kernan]

I cannot replicate the bug where fresh career mode buildings start fully upgraded. Is their something that I must do to invoke this particular Kraken? Also am I the only one testing this right now?

Nah, I'm testing too

[Renegrade]

None, because anyone who's developing a complex enough game to use more than 4gb of RAM, is smart enough not to use Unity as their engine.

Yeah, I did some research into that back in the day - all the Unity 4 games that I found that were definitely 64-bit didn't even come close to touching 4 gigs except for 7 Days to Die, and 7DTD only uses about 3.5gb (which is a lot closer than others, but still below the redline for x86-64 Unity).

Anyhow, I'm hoping that Unity 5 can provide us with a stable x86-64 experience comparable to 32-bit KSP, it would be nice to be able to use more than ten percent of my memory at once.

[raxo2222]

Cities Skylines is 64bit (doesn't have 32 bit version) game made in Unity.... idk if they used Unity 5 though.

So its possible, but laptop/mac/linux users are out of luck - its less stable on these platforms.

But on Windows 7 64bit, that I have it works perfectly.

[Eric S]

Yeah, I did some research into that back in the day - all the Unity 4 games that I found that were definitely 64-bit didn't even come close to touching 4 gigs except for 7 Days to Die, and 7DTD only uses about 3.5gb (which is a lot closer than others, but still below the redline for x86-64 Unity).

More specifically, if the game's not using a fairly comparable set of Unity features, it woudn't be a fair comparison. I check out the Unity dev logs from time to time, and some of the bugs that have already been fixed are incredibly specific to certain features. Random crashing in the raycasting code in the Win x64 client. Yeah, there was no way KSP could use that client before it got fixed because KSP uses a lot of raycasting. FWIW, that bug was fixed before the first round of community x64 stuff, but after Squad had said that Win x64 KSP was crashing every few minutes.

Cities Skylines is 64bit (doesn't have 32 bit version) game made in Unity.... idk if they used Unity 5 though.

Yes, they converted to U5 in beta. In fact the devs went to Unity 5 because of their 64bit U4 issues, if I remember right.

[jfx]

Cities: Skylines does indeed use Unity 5 (And - SCNR- was released a week after the official Unity 5 release)

[Bloodbunny]

Cities Skylines is on U5, currently when I fire it up, I use around 12 GB of RAM total, no stutters, smooth as glass gameplay. Since I've played it, I've had a total of maybe 2 crashes, both related to mods. The future of KSP is VERY bright if/when they go to the new engine.

[Bilfr3d]

So its possible, but laptop/mac/linux users are out of luck - its less stable on these platforms..

Linux currently has a supported 64-bit KSP build, just FYI...

- - - Updated - - -

Cities Skylines is on U5, currently when I fire it up, I use around 12 GB of RAM total, no stutters, smooth as glass gameplay. Since I've played it, I've had a total of maybe 2 crashes, both related to mods. The future of KSP is VERY bright if/when they go to the new engine.

You need to remember that KSP is very different to Cities Skylines, and that U5 may not be the saving grace for KSP 64-bit

[Jim Kernan]

So far the only complaint is with a mod I rely on to stiffen up tall rockets and wobbly wings that disables itself under Win-64 bit KSP. Everything else works fine. So far. And this is only with a few hours of gameplay using the hack. I tried dual booting with Linux for he official 64-bit KSP. However the video drivers were a bit wonky and framerates suffered. I only tried the latest LTS version of Ubuntu. Another distro may very well run it better. Anyway, I'm happy so far using this hack under Windows. I did make sure to copy my current 32-bit game to another location to test the hack, just in case the save gets corrupted by the hack.

[Lilleman]

The hack is working mostly fine (at least for me, but we know how random this build can be). Only problems are, sometimes, buildings upgrading themselves on career mode, and the "pod" icons not visible in VAB/SPH.

For both issues, a quick workaround: save, and reload your save. Most of the time, buildings will go back to their original level, and the missing icon will be back, (it can take several try, though).

Also, the right-click bug is still here (when this happen, parts animations are also very slow). No workaround for that.

Other than that, it seems waaaaay more stable than 0.90 x64 was.

I did have a few crashes. But nothing related to memory (apparently), only weird freezes during gameplay, with no useful informations in the logs.

Edit: to trigger the building-upgrading bug (as it was asked earlier): just enter and leave the tracking station until you got it.

Edited May 5, 2015 by Lilleman

[rtxoff]

Linux currently has a supported 64-bit KSP build, just FYI...

Yes but it is pointless, they support only an unmodded installation however if you begin to use mods and you reach the 4GB limit it is as unstable as the Windows 64bit version.

However it is more difficult to reach 4GB under Linux because of OpenGL. Also overall performance under Linux is not as good as on Windows.

[V8jester]

The hack is working mostly fine (at least for me, but we know how random this build can be). Only problems are, sometimes, buildings upgrading themselves on career mode, and the "pod" icons not visible in VAB/SPH.

For both issues, a quick workaround: save, and reload your save. Most of the time, buildings will go back to their original level, and the missing icon will be back, (it can take several try, though).

Also, the right-click bug is still here (when this happen, parts animations are also very slow). No workaround for that.

Other than that, it seems waaaaay more stable than 0.90 x64 was.

I did have a few crashes. But nothing related to memory (apparently), only weird freezes during gameplay, with no useful informations in the logs.

Edit: to trigger the building-upgrading bug (as it was asked earlier): just enter and leave the tracking station until you got it.

Hey I got the pod icon disappearing all the time too. A faster work around than save / reload, is open the subassembly tab and close it. That instantly rematerializes the pod icon again.

[boxman]

None, because anyone who's developing a complex enough game to use more than 4gb of RAM, is smart enough not to use Unity as their engine.

Yet one of the biggest selling games on steam this year was cities skylines that only had a 64bit build and did both multicore and 64bit/above 4gigs of ram just fine even though it was developed in unity.

[Fraggle]

I shall have to try this hack as a stopgap until they release us a shiny x64 bit version of KSP which probably is not far off.

Im sure its more licensing than "code work" lol.

[Eric S]

Yet one of the biggest selling games on steam this year was cities skylines that only had a 64bit build and did both multicore and 64bit/above 4gigs of ram just fine even though it was developed in unity.

Yes, and according to the devs of that game, they had to upgrade to Unity 5 in order to ship a decent product. It wasn't as critical to KSP, so the devs didn't switch over to U5 as soon as it came out because they were in mid-dev-cycle for 1.0.

[Kerr_]

I never had an issue with the official 64 bit version. Only until career building were un-upgradable did I run into my first 64 bit bug