Okay, I am done.

[CaptainGeoluread]

Well, deep breath. Let's see what you can help me with.

Let's start the beginning. I'm using a Samsung 7 Series Gamer. Sure, it's at the end of its life and flagged for replacement, but I'd like to think

A 2.4GHz i7

32GB of RAM

A 675M GT

are still sufficient to play games in an engine that I can use to play games through my web browser.

But oh, you try getting KSP to do anything beyond rolling over and getting out of bed once you mod it. And why shouldn't you mod it? It's begging to be modded. But install more than a few and it has the stability of a lit fart. EVen when it does play, I get such hilarious bugs as my ships suddenly becoming singularities and imploding. If anyone, incidentally, can tell me what the hell Module.WaterSlider is and how I remove it from my game I'd be grateful as it seems to be making my ships spontaneously combust whenever I try to decouple or detach stuff.

I've tried literally everything I can think of, but let's run it down:

- DDS4KSP and DDS loader, which make the game look like a dog's dinner;

- ATM - which doesn't appear to do anything;

- Turning down the graphics (see comment about DDS4KSP and DDS loader);

- LoadOnDemand (which doesn't seem to work even when I force DX9);

- Forcing DX9, which crashes the game more often than not;

- Forcing OpenGL, which makes it run like a wounded rhino in treacle before it crashes;

- Removing all parts-based mods - which does nothing;

- Removing all but a few mods, which makes beggar all difference.

And yes, I'm aware of how an x86 program works, I know what the 3.5-4GB RAM limit is. But I'm also aware you can heavily mod even the most lazily coded x86 program and not have it crash because someone made the sensible decision not to have the game load everything including the kitchen sink from the word go. If you could just stop KSP doing that and have it load what it needs when it needs it and routinely purge the RAM for stuff not used in a while we'd be onto something. However I cut it, though, KSP x86 wants 3.5GB of RAM to get out of bed and another 200MB just to load a save, giving me about 200-400MB of playing room. No prizes for guessing how fast the game infuriatingly declares 'Oops!' before booting me back to desktop. Even without nary a mod installed it's asking for the best part of 2GB to load a spaceport that looks like a child drew it.

Oops indeed, I feel like I just wasted £30.

Still, determined to polish the turd, I gave x64 a go. The joys! It loads! Sure, it wants 9 freaking gig of RAM to do it, but I've got 16 so hey-ho. The fun begins when you try to actually launch anything, at which point Kerbin gains the same density as a burp and your rocket/plane and the entire bloody universe fall into the NaN void, never to be seen again.

Seriously, I can see how good a game there is lurking under the surface here. I want to love it. Heck, I do on an abusive level since I've sunk hundreds of hours into it. But I'm imagining what those hundreds of hours could have produced if the thing had actually worked. I look on YouTube at people's space stations and think 'no way. The game would have crashed before even 10% of that was built. What witchcraft are you using?' Instead, hundreds of hours later, all I have to show for it is a little Flea booster with a command pod atop it sat on the launch pad. Awkward.

If I've missed something glaringly obvious or anyone has any tips as to what to do next I'd be mighty grateful, otherwise this thing's going in the Recycle Bin so I can start giving time to games that actually work... thanks very much in advance.

(/rant)

[sjwt]

Well, deep breath. Let's see what you can help me with.

Let's start the beginning. I'm using a Samsung 7 Series Gamer. Sure, it's at the end of its life and flagged for replacement, but I'd like to think

I'll happily take that piece of junk off your hands for the postage cost.

are still sufficient to play games in an engine that I can use to play games through my web browser.

Web broswer games shouldn't take any heft at all, not sure what your saying here?

But oh, you try getting KSP to do anything beyond rolling over and getting out of bed once you mod it. And why shouldn't you mod it? It's begging to be modded. But install more than a few and it has the stability of a lit fart. EVen when it does play, I get such hilarious bugs as my ships suddenly becoming singularities and imploding. If anyone, incidentally, can tell me what the hell Module.WaterSlider is and how I remove it from my game I'd be grateful as it seems to be making my ships spontaneously combust whenever I try to decouple or detach stuff.

Ill refer to this point later on.

- DDS4KSP and DDS loader, which make the game look like a dog's dinner;

- ATM - which doesn't appear to do anything;

- LoadOnDemand (which doesn't seem to work even when I force DX9);

Never used these, but you should consider posting for help in there specific threads to see if you have missed something or there's an incompatibility.

- Turning down the graphics (see comment about DDS4KSP and DDS loader);

If turning down the graphics on the system makes no difference it's a sign something is extremely overloaded, my KSP runs fine on a 2.8Gig AMD 1055T with a Nvidia GTX460 and 8GB ram.

- Forcing DX9, which crashes the game more often than not;

KSP is DX by default, not sure why you would need to force it?

- Forcing OpenGL, which makes it run like a wounded rhino in treacle before it crashes;

When was the last time you updated all your drivers? try something like http://www.iobit.com/en/driver-booster.php

- Removing all parts-based mods - which does nothing;

- Removing all but a few mods, which makes beggar all difference.

Signs of a deep issue here, have you tried a full clean installation?

And yes, I'm aware of how an x86 program works, I know what the 3.5-4GB RAM limit is. But I'm also aware you can heavily mod even the most lazily coded x86 program and not have it crash because someone made the sensible decision not to have the game load everything including the kitchen sink from the word go. If you could just stop KSP doing that and have it load what it needs when it needs it and routinely purge the RAM for stuff not used in a while we'd be onto something. However I cut it, though, KSP x86 wants 3.5GB of RAM to get out of bed and another 200MB just to load a save, giving me about 200-400MB of playing room. No prizes for guessing how fast the game infuriatingly declares 'Oops!' before booting me back to desktop. Even without nary a mod installed it's asking for the best part of 2GB to load a spaceport that looks like a child drew it.

being rude and snarky isn't going to help or encourage anyone who appreciates the hard work that goes into a game helping you, you're always free to code your own game.

Oops indeed, I feel like I just wasted £30.

With the number of mods you are running, I doubt you are some new player, so I think you have already seen a good return for your money, but if you aren't new, you should know using 9GB on 64x is a bad sign.

Still, determined to polish the turd, I gave x64 a go. The joys! It loads! Sure, it wants 9 freaking gig of RAM to do it, but I've got 16 so hey-ho. The fun begins when you try to actually launch anything, at which point Kerbin gains the same density as a burp and your rocket/plane and the entire bloody universe fall into the NaN void, never to be seen again.

hence why 64x support was dropped until unity fixes its engine.

Seriously, I can see how good a game there is lurking under the surface here. I want to love it. Heck, I do on an abusive level since I've sunk hundreds of hours into it. But I'm imagining what those hundreds of hours could have produced if the thing had actually worked. I look on YouTube at people's space stations and think 'no way. The game would have crashed before even 10% of that was built. What witchcraft are you using?' Instead, hundreds of hours later, all I have to show for it is a little Flea booster with a command pod atop it sat on the launch pad. Awkward.

As above, hundreds of hours for such a small outlay.. Triple A games these days come out with ratings of 9-20 hours game play.

If I've missed something glaringly obvious or anyone has any tips as to what to do next I'd be mighty grateful, otherwise this thing's going in the Recycle Bin so I can start giving time to games that actually work... thanks very much in advance.

You seemed to have missed most of the thread for getting help on a modded installation, the guidelines for requesting support on unmodded (you should consider a clean install it sounds like a system issue or major mod conflict), you may want to start there, along with the good conduct guide and might as well also consider reading the forum rules.

I hope someone can help you with your issue, but you need to work with us.

Regards

sjwt

[CaptainGeoluread]

Thanks for getting back to me - sorry, but it is just making me see red and clearly that's come through in the above.

What did you need to know first?

I'll happily take that piece of junk off your hands for the postage cost.

Web broswer games shouldn't take any heft at all, not sure what your saying here?

Ill refer to this point later on.

Never used these, but you should consider posting for help in there specific threads to see if you have missed something or there's an incompatibility.

If turning down the graphics on the system makes no difference it's a sign something is extremely overloaded, my KSP runs fine on a 2.8Gig AMD 1055T with a Nvidia GTX460 and 8GB ram.

KSP is DX by default, not sure why you would need to force it?

When was the last time you updated all your drivers? try something like http://www.iobit.com/en/driver-booster.php

Signs of a deep issue here, have you tried a full clean installation?

being rude and snarky isn't going to help or encourage anyone who appreciates the hard work that goes into a game helping you, you're always free to code your own game.

With the number of mods you are running, I doubt you are some new player, so I think you have already seen a good return for your money, but if you aren't new, you should know using 9GB on 64x is a bad sign.

hence why 64x support was dropped until unity fixes its engine.

As above, hundreds of hours for such a small outlay.. Triple A games these days come out with ratings of 9-20 hours game play.

You seemed to have missed most of the thread for getting help on a modded installation, the guidelines for requesting support on unmodded (you should consider a clean install it sounds like a system issue or major mod conflict), you may want to start there, along with the good conduct guide and might as well also consider reading the forum rules.

I hope someone can help you with your issue, but you need to work with us.

Regards

sjwt

[sjwt]

Thanks for getting back to me - sorry, but it is just making me see red and clearly that's come through in the above.

What did you need to know first?

I would start with running the driver program I linked, checking you have fully updated windows and then follow with a clean download and installation o KSP no mods, if that's still an issue we know its your system somehow, check the link for requesting support on unmodded I posted, If unmodded it runs fine, you need to look at listing your mods and checking they are all upto date for the version you are running, and that none have known conflicts, if thats fine then add them one at a time until you run into issue, then try and conflict match from their, see also the link to Modded installation support.

[CaptainGeoluread]

I would start with running the driver program I linked, checking you have fully updated windows and then follow with a clean download and installation o KSP no mods, if that's still an issue we know its your system somehow, check the link for requesting support on unmodded I posted, If unmodded it runs fine, you need to look at listing your mods and checking they are all upto date for the version you are running, and that none have known conflicts, if thats fine then add them one at a time until you run into issue, then try and conflict match from their, see also the link to Modded installation support.

Sound advice. I'll get on it. Thanks again.

- - - Updated - - -

Okay, progress!

A clean install clocks in at about 1.5GB usage. I don't know if that's still high or to be expected. I've then reloaded the CKAN list of mods I wanted to run and had another nose through DDS and had a play around with its settings. Short of some blurry toolbar buttons, it seems to have done the trick and taken the mod footprint of 3.9GB down to 2.4GB. I haven't tried OpenGL mode again but every little helps, could be that whatever I've done with DDS is now doing the trick.

I'd like to apologise for my earlier post, made early morning and in frustration - not an excuse, but I'm afraid I'm simply a bit like that when I'm excited about something and it hits a snag. I do genuinely enjoy the game and, though I've only just joined, have been enjoying the community for the last couple of weeks just skimming in and out of the various websites.

Sorry if I've offended or upset anybody, not my intent at all. I just have a... unique way of expressing my passion for things shall we say (and leave it at that) .

[Ald]

Perhaps I could throw in my two cents into the discussion.

Samsung 7 Series Gamer

A 2.4GHz i7

32GB of RAM

A 675M GT

KSP and Unity basically is CPU heavy. While having a much worse CPU here (Phenom II x4) I'm able to run about 80-100 mods without much problems in a sensible framerate. GPU influence is negligible (well... maybe not in the AMD-Linux-opengl case).

1) First of all - you need to answer a question: 32 or 64bit? Second question would be: Windows or Linux? Possible scenarios:

- Windows 32bit - basically you play till you hit the 32bit RAM limit. You can delay it by not using RAM hungry mods, or by cutting out parts you know you won't be using (example? I reduce my part list on loading by removing most fuel tanks and fuel adapters in favor of Procedural Parts).

- Windows 64bit - You can try stuff mentioned in Windows 64 bit community workaround. It is considered a hack, so no warranty it will work properly (but you can always check it out). Keep in mind, that you better not make any bug reports while using this method, as generally win64 unity player executable is considered unstable and therefore mod authors are not supporting it and/or disabling it in their mods. I do understand the motives behind it, as for getting a spam of support requests can be frustrating (as it is not the fault of the mod that something crashes, but the broken win64 unity player exe). You'll also need [WIN][1.0.X] KSP x64 Total Unfixer for mods that disable themselves when detecting that KSP runs in 64bit. Assuming you're using them. Also (again) I would like to point that important thing about not bugging mod developers while using this method. It is a crash-sandbox for you only. If it is too buggy for you - choose other option.

- Linux 32bit - I don't see the point of using this combination, so i'll skip it (similar to win32bit option).

- Linux 64bit - This is the place, where fun starts. 64bit linux build of KSP is rock solid (my main career is hosted on this option). It can take tons and tons of mods and still run quite fine. Only downside of massive modding would be initial load time and loading times in scene switching. Everything except that is golden. Well... maybe the borkyness of using AMD drivers under linux (my case), but it is manageable. <- BEST OPTION if you can spare few gigs on making a dual-boot on your laptop. And it ain't that hard (trust me).

2) clean KSP installation. Your base (if you don't want to download it all the time). Keep one vanilla copy. Then make an actual gaming copy (it is nice to also make a testing copy for... testing purposes).

3) If you're going with the Windows variant - try "-force-d3d11" option to save some ram. Or the opengl variant "-force-opengl" ("-popupwindow" for those alt-tab problems).

4) If you're going with the Linux variant -

 
[B]LD_PRELOAD="libpthread.so.0 libGL.so.1" __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 LC_ALL=C ./KSP.x86_64
[/B]

or

#!/bin/sh
export LC_ALL=C 
export LD_PRELOAD="libpthread.so.0 libGL.so.1"
export __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1

I'm never sure which one is better. Both work though.

5) Go fiddle with the ingame config.

Experiment with the ammount of physics done in a timeframe.

Experiment with renderer.

Experiment with the texture quality.

Experiment with shadows and lights.

Try different options. Go crazy.

Hope this may help you.

If in doubt - test it

Stuff I mentioned above is basically bits and pieces I managed to gather from various topics. I'd like to thank creators of those topics and their participants for all the tech observations and fixes mentioned there. All rep towards them.

Edited August 10, 2015 by Ald
fixes in my messy formatting

[CaptainGeoluread]

Well, what a day!

Even with the improvements I managed to squeeze out of the Windows variant I figured "what the heck?" and am now writing to you from Ubuntu.

Next step: install KSP and see what happens!

Thanks again everybody.

[CaptainGeoluread]

I'm not going to lie: Linux is generally confusing the hell out of me. I originally had Steam and KSP working and now I don't. I've tried reading the stuff on this forum again and again and anything else online but it's either a) gibberish and/or out of date.

At the moment Steam won't load on account of "No matching fbConfigs or visuals found" and also "failed to load driver: swrast", while KSP x86_64 itself just crashes instantly with no error. I can run the game via CKAN but the framerate is worse than in Windows if I do.

EDIT: Scratch that: I can't run it on CKAN either.

Edited August 11, 2015 by CorporalRutland
Update

[Ald]

Framerate is somewhat lower than on Windows DirectX option. But stability should be rock solid. Just remember to get official nvidia drivers for your card.

Maybe you need this?

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/24529-The-Linux-compatibility-thread!

If you are using a 64bit distro you may need the 32bit libraries, you can install them on a Debian based distro using ":i386" after the package name.

Here's an example for the Mesa driver "sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-glx:i386"

I don't remember the need of doing so on my Linux Mint though.

Edited August 11, 2015 by Ald

[sal_vager]

Hmmm, well, it should work if it's a standard Ubuntu install (or one of the Ubuntu variants) and the graphics driver from the repository, Steam is in the repo as well.

Ckan can cause issues with KSP if ckan isn't in the KSP folder, as it doesn't set the path to the binary file, so KSP ends up looking for cfg's on the desktop or wherever.

If you have not yet installed the gfx driver and you're using Ubuntu 15.04 64bit, try these in the terminal.

For Nvidia:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-346

For AMD:

sudo apt-get install fglrx

Reboot so the gfx driver starts up (it's easiest this way)

Then:

sudo apt-get install steam-launcher

Then start the KSP.x86_64 directly.

[CaptainGeoluread]

Took me 10' to reinstall Ubuntu so I just did that.

The mistake I was making was getting drivers via the console - didn't realise Ubuntu had a built in util to swap between (more stable than I was downloading) drivers.

I've already got the x64 fix down pat, but have one question: people keep making references to certain scripts and advising you execute them first. Any ideas what/why?

Would I also be better ditching CKAN and just downloading the mods manually? I know what to do there as that's how I was doing it before on Windows.

UPDATE: Followed this: http://linuxgaming64.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/how-to-play-64-bit-kerbal-space-program.html to the letter and now it won't run. Steam runs fine, this doesn't even attempt to launch.

UPDATE 2: And what I did there was invoke Sod's Law as it's now running after a cache reverify. I'm using the little applet that gives you the RAM and FPS usage and even after the first gig it turns red - I'm assuming that's because it's freaking out about the custom app, Linux, x64 and so on and so on? KSP just broke the binary 4GB mark (i.e. 4096) and seems perfectly happy to keep loading at... speed! I'll configure the applet if I can to flag up at a higher figure.

I'd still find having CKAN about to keep track of my mods useful - can anyone provide any advice on what to do next without breaking what I've managed to get working? All my mods are copied over from the Windows partition's GameData folder so weren't loaded in with CKAN.

Edited August 11, 2015 by CorporalRutland
Lots happening all at once!

[Ald]

You can try this tool for mod management: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/26031-AnyOS-KSP-Mod-Admin-v2-Mod-install-with-a-few-clicks. Check it out on a copy of your working ksp environment. Or stick with manual updating via KSP-AVC messages.

[CaptainGeoluread]

You can try this tool for mod management: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/26031-AnyOS-KSP-Mod-Admin-v2-Mod-install-with-a-few-clicks. Check it out on a copy of your working ksp environment. Or stick with manual updating via KSP-AVC messages.

Thanks! I totally forgot KSP-AVC will at least tell me when to update and I also completely forgot ModMan (shame on me).

It's weird - CKAN works fine for a while and then the mouse controls get really unresponsive unless you double click. Then it gums up so if you're lucky you get to install your list so far, only the list finishes but never actually allows you back to the main page, so you have to log out of Ubuntu and back in again...

However, let's focus on the good - flies along like butter even with a whole gamut of mods and parts installed and looks great too. I'm still finding Ubuntu very tricky to get to grips with but some of the terminology is beginning to actually mean something now and I can actually see its merits as a separate OS for gaming.

There's a chap doing an x64 shell for The Sims 3 (another game that encourages mod-happiness but can't cope with it, although it does at least have a crude load-on-demand system) that I hope I'll be able to make talk to Ubuntu.

Thanks again to everyone for the help, pointers and, above all else, patience. Much appreciated.

Edited August 11, 2015 by CorporalRutland

[CaptainGeoluread]

sudo apt-get install preload

Move CKAN.exe to the KSP directory

chmod 7 ckan.exe

Partial result. Makes CKAN a touch faster but I'm still getting the issue where it finishes installs but then can't return to the main mod list without a logout.

Edited August 12, 2015 by CorporalRutland