GameData Mod cleanup

[Erpman]

I enjoy mods.... lots of them....

Which leads me to the obvious issue w/ ram usage and game crashes.

Typically, I strip mods down to only the parts I intend to use from the mod, and can generally keep my game running fine. However, I am curious of a couple things.

#1 Do the parts contained in a mod download "HAVE" to remain in that mod "folder" within gamedata? Or can the parts folders themselves be simply drug into the gamedata folder on their own and still load?

#2 Is there a simple way to "order" the parts? Meaning, is there something I can do (even if I must do it 1 part at a time) to make the parts show up in a specific order within the game? It can be frusterating looking for a specific fuel tank, or engine, with how un-organized the parts screens get once you add a bunch of mods.

Thanks for any input, and sorry if this has been answered before.

-Erp

[Keome]

1) You can move mods into their own folder. It will not hurt anything as long as the files are in the right folders (Plugins, Spaces, Sounds). I do this to keep the parts mods contained in one folder (NovaPunch, B9) and addons without parts are in their own folder (Kerbal Alarm Clock, Protracter, etc.) ... it makes things a little neater.

2) Parts are loaded by folders alphabetically. Stuff in a folder named A will load before Folder B, and so forth. You can observe this happening by watching the debug window as it loads.

[Majiir]

I strongly advise against moving mods out of the folder they were meant to be placed in. Some mods tolerate relocation, but many don't, especially those taking advantage of newer features of the KSP API.

[Greys]

Any mod that takes advantage of asset synonymy via MODEL{} has to reference the location of those assets relative to /KSP/GameData/, that goes a lot like this

MODEL{
model = ThisFolder/ThatFolder/AnotherFolder/ModelFile
texture = OriginalTexture001, AnotherFolder/YetAFifthFolder/NotTheSameTexture
}

resolving to /KSP/GameData/ThisFolder/ThatFolder/AnotherFolder/File

and /KSP/GameData/AnotherFolder/YetAFifthFolder/NotTheSameFile

If the assets are not where the config assumes them to be, things won't work and you'd have to edit them by hand to correct that, and you'll have to correct it for every part, 2N*x times, every time you update the mod

[Erpman]

Thanks for the replies.

So a followup with the load order.

Would I, in theory (assuming the mods do not break due to what Majiir said) be able to manipulate the visual order of the parts in-game, by putting the parts in a specific order by using folders simply alphabetized with the parts in the order I want?

So I could put my 1.25m fuel tanks in folder "A" followed by 1.25m engines in folder "B", then 2.5m fuel tanks in "C" and 2.5m engines in "D" and so on, to manipulate the visual order of them in game?

**EDIT** Just saw Greys post.

Do you think I would be safe to only do this for "parts" addons? and not actual "mods" themselves?

The clutter of all the parts being in horrible order, all over the place, makes my OCD want to shoot myself.... lol.

Edited September 4, 2013 by Erpman

[Zeblote]

There's a plugin for that, it lets you reorder the parts in the editor list

[Tiberion]

Sorry to say that part load order does not affect appearance order in the parts list, that is sorted by part name alphabetically. The part name is the name = whatever line near the top of a part.cfg file.

You CAN reorder parts in this way, but keep in mind saved craft and persistence files refer to parts on active ships by this name, so renaming them breaks those files, so its not really something a user should do. Mod authors, especially those releasing packs with more than a handful of parts in them, should be using a unique prefix in order to make sure their own parts are sorted together. For instance all of my NovaPunch parts are named NP_something and thus all appear together in each category. The folders are also named in this way in order to sort them when browsing your folder, but thats mostly a hold-over from the days when everything went in one big Parts folder.

For re-ordering parts you'd probably want to use the mod rather than doing it manually.

[YX33A]

What is the rough "Safe" game data folder size these days? I know .21 made it less then the 4gigs it was at before.

I'm crashing a lot so I'm trying to cut out just enough mods that I'm fine. Ideally not ones I really like or use a lot, but small, useless bits like more farings and whatnot.

[HeadHunter67]

From my own experience, any more than 1.4-1.5GB in the GameData folder is entering crash territory. Remember that a 32-bit application can only utilize a little less than 4GB, and there's more to KSP than just the GameData folder. Also, about half of that 1.5GB is going to be taken up by the Squad subfolder, unless you are comfortable deleting stock parts or the IVAs (which take up a lot of space)

[YX33A]

I'm not too keen on deleting stock bits, even IVAs. Thankfully I have cut it down to roughly 1.8 gigs. I do still have to add like, what, a extra 500 mB for one craft, but I know I can make it all work... Even if that means removing IVAs for a bit.

...Now to choke through 99 mBs at 85 kB/s for half of the issue and hope it doesn't crash again. Man the Internet here sucks.

[Greys]

It's kinda hard to put a finger on how big /GameData/ can be because KSP converts some things into bigger things when it loads them. Mods that use .png files are a lot smaller on disk than they will be in ram

Tiberion, that's just entirely false, parts appear in the list in the order that they are loaded and they are loaded in alphabetic depth-first order. If you don't believe me go ahead and try it, take an instance with a lot of mods and rename /GameData/Squad/ to /GameData/aSquad/ or zSquad and see that the squad parts move.

YX33A, /GameData/Squad represents approximately 700MB, though the exact value seems to fluctuate between people somehow.

Approximately 300MB of that is IVAs, most of which are entirely un-useful because of how they limit the player's view. Within the stock IVAs the Small Lander Can and Cupola together represent about 86MB. All of the stock engines together are about 64MB, and some of them are absurdly textured. I don't use a ton of mods at the moment, (actually I haven't played in a couple weeks, life), but I do have a few, and in my selection Squad is Seven Times Larger than the next largest mod; which somehow is Kethane.... wut.... It's about 10 times larger than B9, on disk, but even with B9 using PNG which will be decompressed in memory into who knows how big, B9 is one of the better examples of asset synonymy that you can find.

If you're really that against removing stock parts I suggest you look up a super useful tool, WinDirStat, it does this (click for bigger)

Every colored rectangle represents a single file, the white box represents the boxes which compose the selected entry in the top-left list

The visual representation is real nice because you can look at it and say "This file looks excessive, do I need whatever it's part of?"

And if you look, just to the right of the middle, at the top, there are four blue squarishs that are a lot bigger than the rest, those are the Cupola and Small Lander Can IVA textures, there are actually four texture files each.

If you do get rid of the IVA, make sure you edit the configs, if a command module wants to have a given IVA and that IVA doesn't exist, KSP flips it's ****

Edited September 4, 2013 by Greys

[HeadHunter67]

If you do get rid of the IVA, make sure you edit the configs, if a command module wants to have a given IVA and that IVA doesn't exist, KSP flips it's ****

I take it all that's required is to remove the lines for "INTERNAL"?

The only reason I'm reluctant to do this is because I enjoy watching their little faces during a mission, even if I never go IVA. I expect that removing the internals means their faces won't be shown on the screen, either.

[Greys]

Yep, if you want to keep the cameras you should be redirect the config at a different, simpler IVA with the correct number of seats; and it should be easy to make a replacement "Box with X seats and cameras in it" if you want to make it even cheaper, but that'd only be a savings if you replaced even more IVA