Game crashing when loading mods and other issues with Steam?

[Fishslap]

I`m not sure if this is the correct place for this thread but here goes. I haven`t tried any mods yet because I wanted to get a feeling for what I wanted first, rather than flood myself with mods I hadn`t developed a need for yet. But now I tried some mods and to my disappointment I can`t even load up the game if I have any mods in the Game Data folder. If I remove them the game starts up fine again. Have I put them in the wrong place or is there something else I need to do first?

Secondly I am having greater and greater trouble with random crashes and excessive loading times. I was wondering if that is a Steam issue or something with the latest patch. As it is the game is pretty much unplayable, at least on the difficulty I prefer. On my last mission the game crashed during reentry and I had to relaunch it, which took about five minutes. I then had to get back to the flight using the tracking station. When I did my parachute had already exploded because of heat and I crashed to the ground, losing two contracts I was doing as well as Jebediah because I was unable to revert mission. I prefer to play without saving to make it more exciting so I couldn`t reload. So that was that game basically, which I had spent many hours on, and I now feel as if I have to restart the career. But why bother when it`s just gonna crash and kill me again right?

Right now I am feeling slightly ripped off by KSP, simply because I can`t play it when I really wish I could.

PS: Edit: I was actually just now able to run the game with some mods installed. I just had to remove a few of them. Maybe that`s just a version issue then.

Edited May 17, 2015 by Fishslap

[Harry Rhodan]

I was wondering if that is a Steam issue or something with the latest patch.

On my last mission the game crashed during reentry

You can always launch the game without steam by using the executable from the installation folder.

That sounds more like a driver issue and probably belongs in one of the support forums.

[Fishslap]

I tried that too and it didn`t help. Also I haven`t had any problems before. Anyway, you`re probably right. Just a bit frustrated.

[UnanimousCoward]

What you're describing sounds a lot like memory-related crashes to me.

The more mods you use, the more memory KSP uses and the longer it takes to load. I guess you're playing the 32-bit version in Windows - it has a hard memory limit of 3.5 Gb. As soon as memory usage rises above that level, the game crashes. It doesn't matter how much RAM your computer has available, KSP can only use 3.5 Gb. The more textures and parts the game has to load, the more memory it uses.

You can confirm it by looking in the log file after a crash (it's Kerbal Space Program\KSP_Data\output_log.txt). It's a huge file, but skip to the end and you'll probably see something like "System out of memory!" or similar.

There are some ways to help limit the RAM usage, for example Active Texture Management can be very helpful. Many people run the game under OpenGL rather than DirectX, as it seems to use a lot less memory that way. You can convert your mods textures to DDS format to save memory and speed up loading time as well.

However, as Windows only officially has a 32-bit version of the game, there's always going to be a limit to how many mods you can run. On Linux, there's a proper, stable 64-bit version of KSP, so you can run pretty much as many mods as you like.

Edit--

One last tip - if you're using the Steam version and you want to play with loads of mods, it's probably a good idea to make a copy of the entire Kerbal Space Program folder somewhere else on your computer and play it from there. It prevents any possible Steam-related problems (e.g. updates that break mods).

Edited May 17, 2015 by UnanimousCoward

[Fishslap]

Thanks. I`ll try this.

So it`s basically switch to Linux or live in squalor then? No plan for a 64 bit Windows version of KSP?

[Harry Rhodan]

No plan for a 64 bit Windows version of KSP?

Not in the near future. There's a community workaround in the Tutorials forum but a few mods like FAR aren't going to work with it.

[UnanimousCoward]

Not in the near future. There's a community workaround in the Tutorials forum but a few mods like FAR aren't going to work with it.

If it's still even half as buggy as the 0.90 64-bit one, then I wouldn't go anywhere near it. People do seem to be saying it's better, though. OTOH, you're not likely to get much in the way of support from many mod authors if you run Windows 64-bit.

[hbkmog]

Yeah the lack of 64bit support of the game is a huge bummer. Even without mods, the game can crash after prolonged session due to memory leaks and whatnot. As for now, I don't even hope for content update. I just want 64bit support and more stable game.

[Fishslap]

I just wanted to mention that I updated my Nvidia drivers and remembered the feature GeForce has for optimizing games. When I activated KSP optimization there it really helped me with performance. I haven`t crashed since I did that and the loading times are much more manageable.