Installing mods on my Mac causes problems with parts in the VAB

[beelzerob]

Going on a little vacation, and so I've got to slum around with my Macbook instead of my regular PC. KSP appears to run just fine, and I only have 1 mod I must have, which is Kerbal Engineer Redux. However, I have discovered that when I have it installed (copied into GameData), when i start the game and go into the VAB, several things are weird. The KER icon is a blank square of white. All of the parts are shown on the left without being in any particular order (instead of the default of being grouped by function). And if I select a starting part, it puts it at the very bottom of the VAB, not in mid-air as normal. All other parts after that also go in the bottom of the VAB. So I can't build anything.

If I load an already built craft, I cannot select and move any parts, whether new or existing on the craft itself. The part highlights when I move the mouse over it, but clicking on it does nothing. I tried removing the "Parts" part of the mod since they're optional, but that had no effect.

I've tried also MechJeb and it has the same effect.

If I remove the mod and restart KSP, it all works fine and great. But I need my deltaV readouts!

Google can't find anyone else saying they have this problem.

[selfish_meme]

Going on a little vacation, and so I've got to slum around with my Macbook instead of my regular PC. KSP appears to run just fine, and I only have 1 mod I must have, which is Kerbal Engineer Redux. However, I have discovered that when I have it installed (copied into GameData), when i start the game and go into the VAB, several things are weird. The KER icon is a blank square of white. All of the parts are shown on the left without being in any particular order (instead of the default of being grouped by function). And if I select a starting part, it puts it at the very bottom of the VAB, not in mid-air as normal. All other parts after that also go in the bottom of the VAB. So I can't build anything.

If I load an already built craft, I cannot select and move any parts, whether new or existing on the craft itself. The part highlights when I move the mouse over it, but clicking on it does nothing. I tried removing the "Parts" part of the mod since they're optional, but that had no effect.

I've tried also MechJeb and it has the same effect.

If I remove the mod and restart KSP, it all works fine and great. But I need my deltaV readouts!

Google can't find anyone else saying they have this problem.

Nope, does not happen on my macbook, are you using latest versions?

[Vanamonde]

Moved to the modded support subforum.

[beelzerob]

Thanks for the move.

Yes, everything is new, as I just got the idea of trying it on the Mac book last night. Mods are current also.

I used the verify game cache integrity check from steam and it said it corrected 2 files, but that didn't fix it.

[Diazo]

The KER icon is a blank square of white.

This is almost always an indication that the mod is incorrectly installed or in the wrong place. Can you double-check that you installed the mod to the correct file location and that all files from the .zip file got extracted correctly?

D.

[beelzerob]

I'll check and try again. I know I didn't copy over the readme, copyright, etc files. But I'll try and copy everything there is into its own directory under GameData. I won't be able to try this until later today, or possibly tomorrow.

[beelzerob]

Ok, so I've tried 3 different mods now (StageRecovery, MechJeb and KER) downloaded from two different sites...and they all seem to cause the problem. Here is a screenshot of the problem. You can see how the parts are not sorted by function like normal, and how adding a part puts it in the middle of the floor of the VAB. Along with that, you simply can't pick and move parts at all.

[beelzerob]

Ok...I reinstalled KSP and started the game. Works fine. I then exited and installed KER and started a default game. It works! I then copied over my save game and loaded it. It works! I then exited KSP and started it again....fail. It's broken again. So it seems almost like it is something in KSP that changes after I play and then exit. Highly annoying, and essentially not playable with mods.

I don't know hardly anything about MacBooks, so I don't even know where to begin to troubleshoot this.

[Master Tao]

That sounds like something went wrong after you copied over your save folder. When I've seen that before, it was a result of system files that were copied along with the save. The only file you absolutely need from your save is the persistence.sfs. Start by creating a new save on your Mac, then replace the persistence.sfs. As needed, you can copy over .craft files from the [your save]/Ships/VAB and [your save]/Ships/SPH folders.

[beelzerob]

Thanks for the help!

I reinstalled KSP, started a new career game, and with the KER mod, verified it worked. I exited KSP, came back in...still works. I then took the persistence file from my own career save and copied it over the existing one and loaded the game. It works. I then exited KSP and came back in...broken. So, with just the persistence file and the KER mod, it broke.

I removed the mod and started up KSP again, but it's still broke. So I used Steam to verify the game cache, and it said it replaced 1 file. I started KSP again, and it's fine....so Steam fixes something broken.

[Aaronfinch123]

Have you tried completely removing and then reinstalling the game?

[beelzerob]

I reinstalled a couple times. I then found a youtube video of someone else with the problem, so mine was neither Mac nor mod related, it seems. Some kind of persistence file corruption.

Following the video, the quick fix involved starting a new career game, exiting that, and then loading my broken game. It worked.

[tandpastatester]

I had the exact same issue on my Mac, Beelzerob. In the VAB, all equipment was sitting unorganised in the left panel, I couldn't filter/browse through it, clicking an item would spawn it on the ground and I was unable to move it.

Like you, I started playing KSP on desktop and wanted to continue on Macbook by copying mods and saves over from my desktop. For me, that was the cause of the issue. Instead of redownloading the mods I copied them from my desktop, assuming that they'd be the same files.

I fixed the issue uninstalling all the mods, and redownloading them all for a clean install. The next time I booted KSP it was actually 'installing' the mods and this time they worked. I assume the mods config files change after installing in a way that you can't just copy them from another installation.

[sal_vager]

Please upload the persistent.sfs beelzerob, you can put it on dropbox.