KSP Store or Steam?

[Gordon Fecyk]

After watching all of Scott Manley's and Danny2462's KSP videos I'm getting KSP. I also joined this forum with my real name to show sincerity and keep any anger I might have in check. I have a bit of history ragging on developers for what I consider unsafe design on Windows.

Consider that I run 64-bit Windows 10 Pro and I have both User Account Control and Software Restriction Policies enabled. Should I purchase the KSP Store edition or the Steam edition of KSP?

I already run Steam games without much hassle, including Portal and Portal 2, Duke Nukem Forever and The Stanley Parable, but I'm not sure if the Steam edition would have problems with mods and game updates. My PC is surely capable of running Unity-based games, with a Core i7-4771 processor, 32 GB RAM and discrete graphics. I've read through the KSP Wiki already and know that 64-bit KSP for Windows is coming. I couldn't find any caveats related to UAC either here or on the Wiki, though, and usually there's some page or post describing problems with non-admin accounts, UAC, copy protection failing with SRP enabled, that sort of thing.

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[technicalfool]

The Steam version of the game doesn't ship with Steamworks DRM, so you can rip the files out of the Steamapps directory and keep copies for modding. Squad generally don't care so long as it's for your use and you're not giving copies to other people. This is also useful for keeping old versions, as Steam is prone to auto-break update stuff quite often, whether you want it to or not.

I bought the Store version because I wouldn't touch Steam (or uplay, origin, etc, etc) with a 10 foot barge pole. Both Store and Steam seem to have the latest updates available at the same time, with GOG and Amazon following shortly afterwards. So really it doesn't matter much which shop you buy from, you're going to get the same game, with the same silly amount of mods available.

[sal_vager]

KSP from either source should be fine, there's no problems installing addons in the Steam version and updates are handled by Steam, you also get the Steam controller support.

Actually it can be more of an issue preventing Steam from updating games.

With the store version there are caveats, you can't install the zip version to Program Files for example, it has to be unzipped to a non-Windows folder such as C:\Games\ to be sure to avoid issues with data execution prevention.

But there is also an installer version on the Squad store which installs to C:\Kerbal Space Program by default.

KSP is also available from Good Old Games, and installs to Program Files\GOG\Kerbal Space Program.

With the Store and GoG versions though, there's no discreet patches, so updating requires a full redownload at this time.

 

There are some issues with Windows 10 I am aware of, the main one being Windows 10's tendency to roll back your graphics drivers, or to completely remove them, when you update.

This results in KSP not being able to start, but a reinstall of the driver fixes that.

 

There's no copy protection with KSP, not even with the Steam version, so need to worry about that, there's no server authentication to play and you only need a connection to update KSP.

 

Hope this helps

[Gordon Fecyk]

 

3 hours ago, technicalfool said:

The Steam version of the game doesn't ship with Steamworks DRM, so you can rip the files out of the Steamapps directory and keep copies for modding. Squad generally don't care so long as it's for your use and you're not giving copies to other people.

So I could make modded installations, multiple installations with different mods, and so on as long as I don't violate the EULA really. Also, agreement on Origin especially; if I really want to play an EA game I use a virtual machine. Steam DRM seems to play nicely with my PC though, locked-down as it is.

[Update three hours later] The Steam installation was flawless, even with UAC, non-admin, SRP, and so on. After reading that mods are fine and I can make instances of KSP to try out things, I figured it was fine to purchase the Steam edition and go with that. My previous experience was that Valve deals with file system permission changes needed in their packages, and that was the case here. For non-tech folks, that seems to work best.

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Edited January 17, 2016 by Gordon Fecyk
Feedback after successful install

[Gordon Fecyk]

10 minutes ago, sal_vager said:

With the store version there are caveats, you can't install the zip version to Program Files for example, it has to be unzipped to a non-Windows folder such as C:\Games\ to be sure to avoid issues with data execution prevention.

That sounds like it'd be more of a problem with Software Restriction Policies or User Account Control than DEP. But OK, I can see what would go wrong here.

I've experienced Win10 rolling back graphics drivers only once: When updating to the 1511 build where it put the stock GTX 760 driver back because, well, it was an in-place upgrade just like my original upgrade from 8.1 to 10 was and it put all stock drivers in. Windows Update put newer drivers back, and later GeForce Experience brought the GTX 760 up to date.

I'll have further questions about those sorts of things later, but that can wait until after I've crashed my first few rockets. Thanks both of you. Good to know it doesn't really matter which edition I pick.

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[sal_vager]

Something stops the zip version of KSP from writing files when it's in Program Files, no ones reported that it was UAC though.

And yeah have as many copies installed on your PC's as you like, it's fine, just don't share it

And I mean it when there's no copy protection, not even Steams, so you can copy the Steam version to other folders and have different mod loadouts.

Have fun playing, if you need any help just ask

[steve_v]

43 minutes ago, sal_vager said:

With the store version there are caveats, you can't install the zip version to Program Files for example, it has to be unzipped to a non-Windows folder such as C:\Games\ to be sure to avoid issues with data execution prevention.

It's got nothing to do with DEP , it's simply permissions in Program Files (AKA UAC). This hits quite a few applications that don't use an installer.

You could change said folder permissions, but it's easier to simply move KSP somewhere else.

[sal_vager]

I used to assume that as well, but UAC wasn't asking players affected by this if they wanted to run KSP, and the errors they showed me said that data execution prevention had prevented an action, there was no  mention of UAC.

It happened in Windows XP and up as well.

This occurs because the zip, unlike the installers, cannot add the entries to the Windows registry telling Windows that KSP is allowed to write files in Program Files.

[Gordon Fecyk]

On ‎1‎/‎17‎/‎2016 at 7:05 AM, sal_vager said:

I used to assume that (UAC) as well, but UAC wasn't asking players affected by this if they wanted to run KSP, and the errors they showed me said that data execution prevention had prevented an action, there was no  mention of UAC.

It happened in Windows XP and up as well.

I've had good luck so far, in fact I've had fewer problems launching ksp.exe outside of Steam than I had within Steam's launcher. It behaves even with hardware DEP turned on (on top of non-admin, UAC and SRP), and I just noticed a moment ago it was turned off. Must've been turned off when I installed Win 10 build 1511. Things may change as I add mods and find said mods try to execute code within data memory spaces.

What you and Steve are describing is a file system permissions problem (not a Registry thing) that is made worse by the permissions put on the Program Files folders especially. KSP writes things to the installation folder, and Win2K and later don't like that when that folder is in Program Files and you're a non-admin (or UAC) user.

Steam's workaround of granting the BUILTIN\Users local group Modify access to folders in its care works around most of these problems, but I would have preferred that the game not do this, instead writing such things in the user's profile or maybe %allusersprofile% if it's machine-specific. There is a logic behind that, but that would be my sysadmin day job persona speaking, suited for some other forum.

In any case it's all good here. If someone were to ask me the same question, I'd say get the Steam edition and let the Steam client handle the permissions problems.

[r4pt0r]

On 1/17/2016 at 6:20 PM, sal_vager said:

you also get the Steam controller support.

Shut the front door, you serious? Does KSP recognize it properly(preset controls and such) or will it require a boatload of tweaking and work on the users part?

Because that would be awesome. I've been holding off getting one.

Edited January 19, 2016 by r4pt0r