Memory management in KSP 1.0?

[SpacedInvader]

So I'm still on KSP 0.90 waiting for all of my favorite mods to get updated to the new version, but in the meantime, I've begun wondering if the new version has alleviated any of the memory issues from the previous versions? Being the type to run a heavily modded game, I'm still looking forward to the day that I don't have to babysit the memory monitor to play a couple of hours at a time. I've read through the changelogs for the new versions (1.0-1.02), but the only reference I've seen towards memory is a leak associated with terrain scatters.

[NFUN]

So I'm still on KSP 0.90 waiting for all of my favorite mods to get updated to the new version, but in the meantime, I've begun wondering if the new version has alleviated any of the memory issues from the previous versions? Being the type to run a heavily modded game, I'm still looking forward to the day that I don't have to babysit the memory monitor to play a couple of hours at a time. I've read through the changelogs for the new versions (1.0-1.02), but the only reference I've seen towards memory is a leak associated with terrain scatters.

KSP stock now incorporates some of the features from Active Texture Management, so the footprint should be lower than in .90

[Linear]

KSP uses ~2.4GB for me (Mechjeb/KER).

[Eric S]

There were several (8-12) memory leaks fixed between 0.90 and 1.0. Not sure if that was all the memory leaks, but Maxmaps said that it was all memory leaks known at that time. Then another memory leak snuck in in 1.0.1 or 1.0.2.

As for other improvements in memory management, the game no longer needs a plugin to use DDS textures and all the stock textures got converted over. Those use about 1/3 the memory of the previous textures. Mods can now use DDS textures as well, meaning that they shouldn't add as much memory. I don't know if squad is turning on read-only for those stock textures it would be appropriate for.

Once the memory leak is closed, I think we'll be pretty stable memory-wise, and we should have plenty of room for mods.

[vej]

The temperature gauges still leak but we have the TemperatureGaugeKiller mod that ensures it's turned off unless it's activated manually. I recently installed 5 or so mods that all claimed to be 1.0.2 compatible and I'm now getting crashes and freezes ad nauseam. When I just had KER, MJ and TemperatureGaugeKiller it was mostly fine. I should also mention I play on a Mac. I'd expect most of these issues to be fixed in just a matter of weeks tho.

[SpacedInvader]

Hmm, sounds promising, but not quite there yet. If past experience is any indicator, I doubt I'll be on 1.0+ before July.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

The temperature gauge monitor is a real problem... I wonder why there wasn't an hotfix for that

[softweir]

The steps in eliminating a bug:

1. Realise there is a bug.
   
2. Programmer scratches head wondering which of 10,000 lines of code is bugged.
   
3. Start collecting test data. This may take weeks.
   
4. The test data suggests it is a particular module in the code.
   
5. Programmer inserts debug code into the suspect module to help track down the bug.
   1. 
      
   2. Nada. It wasn't this module. Go back to step 2.
      Until:
      
   3. Got it!
      
   4. Programmer scratches head wondering how the heck to fix bug without breaking 10,000 lines of code.
      
      That's why there hasn't been a hotfix for the temp gauges bug.
      OK, it isn't always like that, but all too often it can be, and the longer it takes a team to fix a bug, the more iterations of steps 2 to 5 they have gone through.

[ModZero]

OK, it isn't always like that, but all too often it can be, and the longer it takes a team to fix a bug, the more iterations of steps 2 to 5 they have gone through.

Technically I suppose it's because they had all this "vacation" and "party" stuff n'all. The monsters.

[SnakyLeVrai]

geez 2.4Gb? I often start at 2.9Gb, and when I load a previous Science Career saved game, I start at 3.00Gb >__> I started exploring the various stuff I had on the ground or in orbit and it CTD'd after 5 minutes only.

Also, I've lost most of all the subassemblies I had in the VAB (also the stock ones, I think, like the launchers which were all stock), and if I click on a vessel in the tracking station, then I can't click on any other one anymore. I have to get out the tracking station, and get back so I could click on another vessel... I'd better head to the support section and see if someone experienced that already.

[Linear]

geez 2.4Gb? I often start at 2.9Gb, and when I load a previous Science Career saved game, I start at 3.00Gb >__> I started exploring the various stuff I had on the ground or in orbit and it CTD'd after 5 minutes only.

Also, I've lost most of all the subassemblies I had in the VAB (also the stock ones, I think, like the launchers which were all stock), and if I click on a vessel in the tracking station, then I can't click on any other one anymore. I have to get out the tracking station, and get back so I could click on another vessel... I'd better head to the support section and see if someone experienced that already.

Are you on Windows? Even with my more modded install it doesn't go much over 3gb.

E: Here's a pic, KSP opened ~10 mins.

Edited May 17, 2015 by Linear

[SpacedInvader]

How many mods do you have installed to load at 2.4GB-2.9GB??

On my 0.90 install I'm running with 126 mod folders in my gamedata and I load in at 2.5GB, though, to be fair, I'm running OpenGL and have converted many of my textures to DDS.

[Linear]

How many mods do you have installed to load at 2.4GB-2.9GB??

On my 0.90 install I'm running with 126 mod folders in my gamedata and I load in at 2.5GB, though, to be fair, I'm running OpenGL and have converted many of my textures to DDS.

Like five on that install, but we were not discussing heavily modded games. My modded install hovers around 2.8-3.0GB (No OGL, DDS where possible) :-)

[SpacedInvader]

Like five on that install, but we were not discussing heavily modded games. My modded install hovers around 2.8-3.0GB (No OGL, DDS where possible) :-)

You see my point though? A virtually unmodded install should load in way lower than 2.4GB...

[Linear]

You see my point though? A virtually unmodded install should load in way lower than 2.4GB...

Indeed, why I posted my screenshot of it running with around 2GB with a handful of mods. 2.4GB seems pretty high for near stock.

[SnakyLeVrai]

Impressive. Yeah I'm on windows...

I've got those mods (active textures management is there even if not listed):

KSP: 1.0.2 (Win32) - Unity: 4.6.4f1 - OS: Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (6.1.7601) 64bit

USI Tools - 0.4.1

Community Resource Pack - 0.4.2

Firespitter - 7.1

Kerbal Engineer Redux - 1.0.16.6

HyperEdit - 1.4.1

KSP-AVC Plugin - 1.1.5

Infernal Robots - 0.21.2

PlanetShine - 0.2.3.1

RCS Build Aid - 0.7

SCANsat - 1.1.2

Trajectories - 1.2

Kerbal Alarm Clock - 3.3.1.1

Transfer Window Planner - 1.3.0.1

TweakScale - 2.1

Karbonite - 0.6.2

MKS - 0.30.1

Note I am NOT running OGL. I should probably look into that.

Solved a few problems though. The missing subassemblies in the VAB were because of the new techtree, the new nodes were - of course - not researched. Lucky I was to have 5400+ science in spare... That solved it.

And the bug clicking in the tracking station was because of missing mods, alt-F12 rulz (full story here).

- - - Updated - - -

Jesus Christ on EVA!

the "-force-opengl" dropped it to 1.89 Gb!!!!

*smooches to whoever found that*

[Linear]

Jesus Christ on EVA!

the "-force-opengl" dropped it to 1.89 Gb!!!!

*smooches to whoever found that*

OGL is used by many, however on certain systems it can cause graphical issues so it's not 'officially' supported. Glad it could help you and kudos to who remembered it above.

[pincushionman]

Hotfix 1.0.3 hasn't come yet because of their vacation, but the temp gauge memory fix will likely be nothing more than "turn gauges off by default." That doesn't fix the problem, it just hides it. However, the next big effort will be the Unity 5 switch, which may make some of the current bugs go away by default (because they're Unity bugs, not KSP bugs) or because they need to re-write their custom code to be compatible with the new system.

They also said they're re-writing some of their UI stuff specifically because it's admittedly poor quality.

[SelectHalfling0]

Active Texture Management has alleviated all my problems (the game runs smoothly for me, which is better than .90)

[SpacedInvader]

Active Texture Management has alleviated all my problems (the game runs smoothly for me, which is better than .90)

When I make the move, I'll start out with ATM, though up until now, it just hasn't been enough on it's own to support the level of mods I like to run. Back in 0.23.5 I was an avid user / supporter of Load on Demand because it did a lot to fix the main issue of KSP / Unity loading everything on startup and then crashing. Sadly it was broken by 0.25 and never fixed as the developer had moved on to other things. Personally I'd love to run an x64 version of the game, I'm just not willing to set up a dual boot of Linux and deal with all of the potential issues / headaches there just for KSP...

EDIT: The persistent problem with KSP seems to be memory management. Things that aren't needed are loaded, and then things that aren't in current use are never unloaded, and then on top of everything else, there is no provision within the code for running out of memory gracefully.

Edited May 17, 2015 by SpacedInvader

[uglyduckling81]

My stock game with aggressive active texture manager only uses about 1.5Gb of Memory.

Add about 50 mods excluding any that enhance the visuals and it bumps to 2.2-2.4Gb.

Add clouds adds about 1Gb.

I have fairly regular CTD unmodded or modded. I find it interesting how different everyone's experiences are with this game.

[helaeon]

You're using Texture Replacer you should look at updating it.

ATM may or may not have issues. It seems that if you're trying to mess with textures outside of what KSP is doing on its own you might be setting yourself up for problems.

I'm not using ATM myself (and didn't in .90 either), upon updating Texture Replacer last night where it no longer tries to do texture compression and such, my memory use went down 500 MB. Yeah, went from barely able to run (yeah after 30 min to 1 hour, I was at 3.4 GB), now I hover around 2.6 GB for hours. My install is reasonably heavily modded.

The stable version of EVE is from .25. I know I'm getting quite a few nullrefs from it and the overhaul isn't quite ready yet, so, that could be an issue as well.

[boxman]

So I'm still on KSP 0.90 waiting for all of my favorite mods to get updated to the new version, but in the meantime, I've begun wondering if the new version has alleviated any of the memory issues from the previous versions? Being the type to run a heavily modded game, I'm still looking forward to the day that I don't have to babysit the memory monitor to play a couple of hours at a time. I've read through the changelogs for the new versions (1.0-1.02), but the only reference I've seen towards memory is a leak associated with terrain scatters.

Everything I have heard suggests that it has only gotten worse. The memory leaks so fast that even with a stock game it will crash after a few hours of play.

[Linear]

Everything I have heard suggests that it has only gotten worse. The memory leaks so fast that even with a stock game it will crash after a few hours of play.

Not for all it doesn't. Don't speak for all of us, thank you.

[eddiew]

Everything I have heard suggests that it has only gotten worse. The memory leaks so fast that even with a stock game it will crash after a few hours of play.

A few hours? That's more than some of us get at a session

Just occasionally alt-tab and check the memory use, thus heading off any impending crashes with a planned restart