[1.0][Release-5-0][April 28, 2015] Active Texture Management - Save RAM!

[Drew Kerman]

Hint: I've never used the Aggressive version. If the Basic version doesn't smoosh your icons, it's because of some combination of the KSP "Texture Quality" setting (which does affect the behaviour) and configuration files in ATM written for you (by people like me).

As I said, I haven't touched the config files so it must be the fact that I have texture quality as high as possible. That certainly makes sense. Anyways I'm not trying to get into an argument but make sure more information is revealed about the handling of icons than your initial statement which makes one think they always end up being squashed by ATM

[AlphaAsh]

Submit pull requests to github to fix the mods you use? I did when I used ATM. (PS, rbray, I've got an open one for Connected Living Space).

My mods don't need fixing. ATM does.

[adsii1970]

The 'fix' he referenced included a config to make ATM ignore IR but that doesn't actually seem to work, I don't have the link handy but it was a recent discussion on the IR thread

Works just fine, cept for the IR issue noted above

I, too, have this problem and ATM also seems to ignore the FLAGS folder restrictions. Which means all the flags look like a tie-dye nightmare... Any suggestions for a fix?

[damerell]

As I said, I haven't touched the config files so it must be the fact that I have texture quality as high as possible.

A combination of that and configuration files in ATM written for you by people like me who actually know what they're talking about, to make my point absolutely clear. Some icons are affected at high texture quality. You happen to use mods where that has been fixed.

Anyways I'm not trying to get into an argument but make sure more information is revealed about the handling of icons than your initial statement which makes one think they always end up being squashed by ATM

However, bluntly, you labour under the disadvantage that you don't know what you're talking about. That is why you say "The Basic version by default (which are the configs I use) will not compress things enough to notice any change to your icons", which is flat-out wrong. It _will_ in many cases unless ATM includes mod-specific configs to address that. It is also why you posted a link to a "fix" for IR that could not possibly have worked.

My mods don't need fixing. ATM does.

Indeed. That is why I am trying to alert the ATM developer to a pull request for ATM.

Edited September 30, 2015 by damerell

[mghslowell]

I have KSP 1.04 of course and downloaded the Community ISS and the soviet pack upto date, Built my ISS and all set, LAGS like crazy with all the different parts together. so I installed this ATM and now It wont load my saved game because of the " missing POISK " module that i put on the Zenith side of the ISS. the PIRS module works and loads fine, the POISK wont show in my parts picker and wont load my station because of the missing part,

I did go into the CFG and added the normal state to add //Poisk and model designation but no matter what Always cant load the POISK module.

anything I can do?

[damerell]

I don't believe ATM can remove a part, but you could try removing ATM.

[SmarterThanMe]

So... IR. The solution is that ATM isn't necessary any more?

[astroknott58]

Tried this and everything else I can find. Nothing seems to work. The game is becoming unplayable. I have a bad to the bone Alienware laptop, 16 gigs ram, 3d card.....the works. Game still constantly crashing to desktop. Love the game but I am getting frustrated. They need to fix this.

[BudgetHedgehog]

Tried this and everything else I can find. Nothing seems to work. The game is becoming unplayable. I have a bad to the bone Alienware laptop, 16 gigs ram, 3d card.....the works. Game still constantly crashing to desktop. Love the game but I am getting frustrated. They need to fix this.

I'm guessing you're running the 32bit Windows version, yes? Because that can still only access about 3.2GB of RAM, regardless of how much you have. Also, most mods and stock textures have been updated to be .dds textures which your GPU can directly use and that the game now loads as standard and which, unfortunately, ATM doesn't even touch. So unless most of your currently installed mods use outdated jpgs, pngs or mbms etc, there's not a lot ATM can do to help (not even the Aggressive version). TBH, ATM isn't really needed any more, because of the aforementioned reasons - 99% of mods (and 100% of stock) now use dds textures which stock KSP can load fine, but ATM doesn't compress those at all (yet).

TL;DR - you have too many and/or old mods.

Also, you paid way too much for your computer.

[Drew Kerman]

ATM's main use these days is for beautification mods. Only proot has released some DDS textures. Some. Everything else still uses mostly PNG. Even loading a select number of planetary & cloud textures will gobble up your RAM otherwise

[damerell]

You'll probably find it easier to attack those last holdouts with http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/98672-WIN-KSP-to-DDS-texture-converter - I used this on Kerbal Foundries. The advantage is that you leave mods alone by default rather than process them by default; the disadvantage is that if a mod has frequent updates, you'll be running it frequently.

[Jwmflying14]

Guys, this might be mentioned previously. I am a veteran player, and am extremely skilled with the gaming aspect, but I am extremely limited on my computer knowledge/skill. So please be nice, and walk me through, as in I need my hand held.

I know infernal robotics rework is known to not work nicely with ATM. I have read there is a way to tell ATM to ignore certain parts, so that you can have the two coincide peacefully. Can someone walk me through how to do this?

I am on KSP 1.04 with I believe the most recent ATM? (downloaded on 2015/06/20).

Thanks in advance everyone!

Edit: I guess my question is, everyone references using config files to get ATM to completely ignore IR. My point is, I have no idea what they are referring to, or the process that needs to be accomplished to do so.

Edited October 16, 2015 by Jwmflying14

[klesh]

Hey folks. Is there a way to exclude certain textures from being compressed? I use the aggressive one, and it makes some parts look quite poor, but that is fine because I'm usually far away. What I would not like to compress is the Skybox texture, as the compressed stars just look blurry.

Is there a way to get select files from undergoing the compression?

[damerell]

Please explain first why you are still using ATM rather than taking the advice above.

[klesh]

What "advice above"? Your last post about using some other mod to attack the last holdouts that aren't being compressed? Because it seemed to have nothing to do with me trying to avoid compression on certain files or folders.

I found in the ATM configuration file some parts about exceptions, and I attempted to get it to work by adding my own lines targeting the directory in question, but I must've not done it right because my skybox is still blurry.

[BlackHat]

While not 100% positive, since I have not used ATM since .90, I believe you want something like this:

ACTIVE_TEXTURE_MANAGER_CONFIG

{

folder = TextureReplacer

enabled = true

OVERRIDES

{

TextureReplacer/Plugins/.*

{

compress = false

mipmaps = false

scale = 1

max_size = 0

make_not_readable = false

}

TextureReplacer/EnvMap/.*

{

compress = false

mipmaps = false

scale = 1

max_size = 0

make_not_readable = false

}

}

}

Your adding the folder "TextureReplacer/EnvMap/" to the excludes as I believe thats where the skybox is located.

(Its been a long time since I messed with Texturereplacer)

[klesh]

Oooh, I think I see some things I was going stupidly wrong! I really am not savvy in this department, but I have a brain.

Off to test, thanks a lot BlackHat!

[damerell]

What "advice above"? Your last post about using some other mod to attack the last holdouts that aren't being compressed? Because it seemed to have nothing to do with me trying to avoid compression on certain files or folders.

These days it may be easier to avoid it by not using ATM and only compressing specific mods with non-DDS textures. I'm not saying you and Jwmflying14 have to take the advice, but it might be worth considering.

[klesh]

Thanks BlackHat, with a slight adjustment (the skybox is in the TR/Default directory) that seems to work just right! Its amazing how much better the sky looks.

Damerell, you presume I know what a non-DDS texture is, or a DDS texture for that matter. I looked into the mods you linked and they explicitly say "you better know what you're doing", which I don't. ATM seems to work okay for me, without needing a crash course in computer graphics imaging technology. Works for me!

[BudgetHedgehog]

Damerell, you presume I know what a non-DDS texture is, or a DDS texture for that matter.

.dds is a filetype, like .png or .jpg but it's one that is used directly by your graphics card. PNGs or JPEGs need to be converted, by your graphics card, into .dds so it can read and use them. This increases time and RAM usage as it's loading the PNG etc and the actual .dds used. If the textures are already in .dds format, no conversion needs to happen, which means good news for everyone.

(please, someone correct me if I'm wrong, this is just my basic understand of it, from knowing what ATM and DDSLoader used to do).

[Bomber355]

Is it possible if you could whip up a config for Ven's Stock Part Revamp?

[CrashTestDanny]

hope this isn't too noob a question... if I have no RAM issues (32G ram, never seen it filled) will this mod do anything good for me?

Thanks,

Danny

[Stone Blue]

Is it possible if you could whip up a config for Ven's Stock Part Revamp?

Why would you need this?...The current release of Ven's is already in .dds...???

[Galenmacil]

hope this isn't too noob a question... if I have no RAM issues (32G ram, never seen it filled) will this mod do anything good for me?

Thanks,

Danny

Hello Danny,

No question is too "noob" to be unworthy of asking. We all start somewhere and there is always a vast ocean of knowledge left to explore compared to the puddle of each individual savoir...

Now, on to the actual answering: On a modern computer, to make things simple, there a usually two types of memory. Main system memory (RAM) and video memory (VRAM). You have 32 GB of main memory. Which is more than enough for any modern desktop machine...

Let's talk a little bit about how Kerbal Space Program is affected by RAM/VRAM. Currently, and I could add sadly, KSP is a 32 bit application which mean that, even on a 64 bit operating system, it is limited to roughly 3.5~4 GB of usable RAM. This has something to do with the fact that in binary, using 32 bit, you get an integer number between 0 and 4294967295. That is roughly 4 billion which in turn translate to 4 GB. As an example, imagine you have a counter, in decimal, made up of 3 digit. 3 digit in decimal is any integer number between 0 and 999. If you add one when you are at 999, the counter "flip back" to zero. So, in a computer, if you have 32 "binary digit" counter, it will "flip back" to zero at the "4 GB boundary".

So, to make a long story short, KSP cannot address or allocate more than 4GB of RAM. That seems like a high enough number but things can get out of hand pretty quickly if you start piling MODs and new parts into the "Gamedata" directory! There is also a fundamental "bug" within KSP (probably within the engine used for KSP, namely Unity 4.x) that causes RAM usage to increase ever so slightly the longer you play the game until it gets completely allocated and the computer says "Whoa, store closed! I sold all my memory...". In KSP this happens roughly around 3.5 GB of allocated memory.

Now that we know that the game, given enough time, will crash no matter what. What can we do about it? Well, it turns out that, aside from using no mods (which is out of question!), textures for the in-game 3D graphics is an area where things can be improved dramatically. Squad, with the release of recent update, made their part by converting most texture to highly compressed DDS format but not all mods use DDS as texture. Luckily for us, there is a guy named rbray89 that created this awesome mod called Active Texture Management. It not only convert any texture to DDS but can also rescale them to reduce texture memory footprint even more. It does a few other tricks too that help when you are using lots of mods simultaneously.

SHORT ANSWER: If you use a lot of mods, in particular parts mod, using Active Texture Management will allow you to play longer before you encounter the "oh! so annoying, memory leak crash". It can even allow the game to actually start correctly while, without it, you can't even reach the menu before it exhaust the 4 GB allocation restriction! It can also help if you have an "old" (in computer terms, old means more than 2 years... I know...) graphics subsystem.

Another thing that you could do if you encounter the aforementioned issue and are on Windows, is to force the game to run using the OpenGL render path instead of the default DirectX path. More on this can be found on this forum.

Edited November 1, 2015 by Galenmacil

[CrashTestDanny]

wow - what an excellent answer! Thanks and have some rep.

I already knew some of this, being a programmer, but as my experience is limited to mainframe and midrange systems and unix/linux where 64 bits is normal anything less is ...??!?, I as not fully aware of all of it. SO I guess I'm gonna go uninstall some part mods and get this mod!

Thanks!

Danny!