Persistent, periodic game halt

[Kebral]

Hi Everyone,

my system specs are: Intel Core i7-3930K @ 3.2GHz, 16GB RAM, running Windows 7x64, with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card.

I finally took a stopwatch and can tell for sure that I get a 1 second game halt every 8 seconds, no matter what I'm doing or in what location of the game I'm at, as soon as I start the game and until I quit it. I can't tell since when it's been here. I installed Alarm Clock way way back, and more recently Kerbal Engineer, but I can't tell for sure whether it started after that.

I've been coping with this for a good while now, but as missions get trickier, taking me further away from Kerbin, it stopped simply irking me and has begun to make me almost rage-quit a few times (competely messing up with a few crucial burns by happening at the exact wrong second...).

Does anybody know where this comes from? Has anybody else seen a similar behavior?

Thanks

[JoE Smash]

It's called garbage collection....

Try the Memgraph mod to pad the collection and make the buffer between collections bigger if you have the spare RAM available....

Sometimes turning Animation FX off in graphics settings can help too....

[Kebral]

Thanks JoE Smash. Apparently the big issue of KSP as a piece of software. Haven't been aware of it — guess I'm must have been lucky all the way up to here. To think I'm going to have to tinker with *.cfg files really bores me in advance... oh well, what can you do? Stop playing KSP is out of the question!

EDIT: as a follow up question: Alarm Clock is simply vital to my save game, but can I uninstall Kerbal Engineer without crashing everything (and see if the GC problem improves)? I ask because I have no real experience in modding.

Edited August 26, 2018 by Kebral
Additional question

[JoE Smash]

You shouldn't have to tinker with things if you don't want....

You mean for Memgraph?

You don't HAVE to open any files....you can if you want.

You can just hit alt-end every so often with it running to space the collections out more...

You don't have to uninstall any mods if you don't want to...

How much RAM do you have total?

After you load the game alt-tab to your desktop and then ctrl+alt+delete and open task manager to get a "rough" idea of how much RAM you have free with the game going....

You can remove pretty much any mod you want....the big ones with lots of parts or texture packs that improve the graphics and add clouds, and the planet packs that add planets use the most RAM up....

I wouldn't remove any planet packs....that could mess up a save game....all your satelites and bases would probably get wrecked....or disappear....

If you remove part packs with parts that you used on ships or satelites already in space, those may disappear....

Edited August 26, 2018 by JoE Smash

[JoE Smash]

Intrinsically though, the main issue is the developers used a free open source game engine to run a game that if you are good at it, your save game just gets too big and you have too many assets in space and the engine simply can't handle it to be honest...

The longer your save goes on, and the more bases you build on other planets and the more stations orbiting planets the worse things get....

It's a limitation of the engine vs the strength of your gaming rig....

At some point you have to start over....unless they make a KSP 2.0 with a more capable engine....or you drop some coin on a super computer that can make up for Unity sucking...

[Kebral]

Thanks JoE Smash. I'll try that out.

Yes, I'm beginning to realize all this. Because I'm beginning to have a few assets here and there in the Kerbol System... mind you, not much compared to a lot of dedicated players out here, but enough that I feel the toll (i.e. garbage collection stutter) on my rig — which, honestly, is decent, and I know how to maintain a clean Windows install.

It's great that Unity was here to allow such a wonderful thing as KSP to exist. It's somehow unfortunate that it was so successful when you know the weakness of the base it was built on!

I'd like to see the specs of the computer that would completely make up for these problems... I think I'd rather wait for KSP 2.0! Which is bound to exist some time in the future. Right? Right? 

[Dafni]

43 minutes ago, Kebral said:

I'd like to see the specs of the computer that would completely make up for these problems...

Me too. Does such a thing even exist?

 

[Kebral]

MemGraph did help with spacing out garbage collection (I know it's kind of stale information at this point, but I confirm it works).