Question about inter-mod compatibility

[CD82]

Hello,

to make the end-game more interesting I added more and more mods to my KSP installation. The list includes (but is not limited to)

- KWRocketry

- MechJeb (obviously)

- Alarmclock

- KAS

- TAC

- all 'Near Future' packages

- all 'Umbra Space Industries' packages

and for optical reasons I also use EVE/Astronomer's Visual Pack.

KSP is Steam Version 0.25 (using 32 bit), as are all mods (except Astronomer's, but more on that later)

While I love the different mechanics and ressources the Near Future and Umbra Space Industries packages introduce, the game becomes inherently unstable. If I use a couple of mods on their own - especially the smaller ones - everything is fine. But KWRocketry, Near Future and Umbra don't seem to mix very well (which is a shame, since I really like to build self-sustaining ships, stations and bases). Usually with all these mods installed the game loads, I can build and launch rockets, but returning to the Space Center usually crashes the game back to desktop and the corresponding logfile shows "out of memory" error messages (which I guess concerns the 32 bit address space, since I got 8 GB of physical memory and KSP is using around 3 GB of that).

On a similar note, if I install EVE/Astronomer's Visual Pack together with all the mods mentioned above, the game will either crash back to desktop directly after the loading screen is finished, or the game will stop on the loading screen (it won't crash though, it just stops loading the remaining mods/files). I know that EVE is not yet (?) available for KSP 0.25, but if I use EVE without any of the other mods, the game loads and runs fine.

To try and fix this, I deleted all local game content in Steam, deleted the KSP folder in 'common games' manually, redownloaded KSP, redownloaded every mod, reinstalled every mod one by one and checked if they all worked (they did). But putting them all together makes the game crash constantly. Am I missing something? Or is this just the way it is and some Mods don't mix?

Basically I've got more than 400 hours of playtime in KSP and I'm looking to make the end-game more difficult and more interesting by adding the need for life support (oxygen, food & water consumption, CO2 recycling and so on), therefore making the construction of (self sustaining) space stations and colonies somewhat more challenging. Also the addition of near future (theoretical) propulsions allows the construction of some interesting space craft. Anyway, while I found lots of mods that do parts of what I want there doesn't seem to be a single mod that offers the kind of mix I'm looking for (except for Kerbal Interstellar maybe, but the last time I tested that it was unstable all on its own without any additional mods). And when I'm putting all the mods together the game becomes highly unstable. I know there is probably nobody to blame for this, but it's somewhat frustrating.

[nlight]

This sounds like an issue with your install. I run all the mods you listed and 30+ more without issues.

[Alshain]

Crashes during or seemingly right after the loading screen indicate a lack of memory. It's trying to load all the textures and runs out of room. How much RAM do you have on your system? The 32-bit KSP can only use 4GB at a time even if you have more and all Umbra and NF packages are huge when added together. If you must have all of them, use Active Texture Management. It will actively reduce the textures, at the cost of visuals. While loading it will pause for a bit and look frozen, don't worry that is normal.

[CD82]

Thanks for your replies - I have 8 GB DDR3, which is used to around 75 % at the moment of the crashes (according to KSP). Apart from that I'm running an overclocked i7 (prime & IBT stable, OC'ed for over two years without issues) and two overclocked GTX 780 together with three screens, giving a total resolution of 6048x1200. Everything is watercooled and "battle tested" with lots of applications and games. Bottom line: my system runs fine everywhere else, it's been ages since I've seen my last Win7 bluescreen or error message, the system is even buffered with an external UPS and I've installed as little software as possible (meaning my windows installation is basically 'naked', there are no 'optimization tools' or whatever, it more or less comes down to: Windows + latest patches + latest drivers (no betas, always stable versions) + Steam + Games).

Regarding any issues with my installation of KSP: I redownloaded the game after deleting all local files in steam & manually removing the folder from steam common apps, and then I redownloaded each mod. But again while each mod individually works fine the game starts to misbehave when I want to for instance load 'Interstellar' and 'Astronomers Visual Pack' (crash right after game finishes loading all parts-files). I think Active Texture Management comes with one of the mods anyway (Interstellar, I think), but I will give it a go and install that mod manually. I should also mention that in Astronomers Visual Pack I only use 'reasonable' texture resolutions (512x512), nothing extreme.

One more thing, when running KSP 32 bit the game is limited to 30 fps no matter which value I set the ingame framelimiter to). When running the 64 bit version it runs at 60 fps. Is this intentional or is this 30 fps limit already a sympton?

[Bishop149]

Ok the benefit of my limited experience.

The 32-bit version is capped at 4Gb RAM usage but realistically will probably top out and crash somewhere between 3.2 and 3.6, having lots of mods can push you over the limit and some are more resource hungry than others, KAS and Interstellar are both quite hungry but none of the others you've listed are especially at least of the ones I've tried . . . however ALL the USI ones might be a bit of a drain, I only use Karbonite myself. Those that add a whole heap of new parts tend to be the most memory draining in my experience, as I've found Interstellar to be particularly heavy might I recommend Interstellar Lite by wavefunction as it has most of interstellar functionality and a substantially reduced memory footprint. Also currently neither Interstellar or its Lite version work properly on 0.25 due to their dependence on an updated 3rd party mod (Treeloader).

In my experience however as KSP tends to load up ALL its assets as the game loads so a "too many mods" problem usually results in a crash before you even get to the title screen, which is kind what you describe. Memory usage does not increase dramatically during play so if you get crashes after you start playing for this reason you must be running it pretty close to the 4Gb wire.

However I run with quite a lot of mods (probably more than you list, although many of mine are pretty light!) on 32-bit with no issues, memory usage pretty stable around 3.2Gb

I haven't personally tried it but the 64-bit version is notoriously unstable and you'll probably be getting crashes here that aren't anything to do with mods.

Edited October 16, 2014 by Bishop149

[diomedea]

8GB RAM, used around 75% when crashing...

Sorry but the above may mean nothing, or all. You should tell how much memory KSP is using, not the whole memory used system-wide. If you are using KSP 32bit, you can't go beyond 4GB virtual addressable memory (more or less, 3.4 GB physical RAM assigned to the KSP process). If you are instead using the Win x64 version, you may use all memory the system allows (that means, much more than the physical RAM you have, 8GB). But, KSP 0.25 x64 is extremely unstable, and many add-ons have not been designed to be run for that version. There is almost no possibility to provide help with add-ons not meant to work for that version.

[Alshain]

32 bit runs at 60fps for me. The architecture has nothing to do with FPS or frame limiting.

It doesn't matter that you have 8GB of ram. KSP can only use 4. You could have 800GB of ram and KSP would still only use 4. Most mod devs have given up trying to support x64 version, so if your using that there is no telling what's wrong. Truth is the x64 version often won't load beyond 4GB of ram either. Your system stability isn't in question here. It's a symptom of the way textures are handled in the game and the limits of RAM of a 32bit application. Try starting the game and watch the task manager processes, you will see you approach 4GB right before crashing (actually closer to 3.5GB).

Make sure you are running ATM, I don't know of any mods that come with it though many say it is required. I can say if your running all you listed above, it is required, even without AVP, so the texture level you chose there won't matter much.

[CD82]

Thanks for the suggestions and sorry for the imprecise description of memory load (KSP gives the percentage load instead of actual load in its debug file though). After installing Active Texture Management KSP with all the mods I mentioned above runs with around 2 GB memory usage and also rock stable! Big thanks for this hint! So far I've put resizing at 1 (so no resizing, just compression, preservs texture quality quite nicely) and had no more crashes during the last six hours.