[1.3.x] SETI, Unmanned before Manned [Patreon]

[Yemo]

Hello again Yemo. I recently ran into a seriously strange problem and I don't know if anyone else has already brought it up.

We all know that Unity's Garbage Collector is, itself, garbage. It's usually just a minor annoyance but I narrowed it down to the main culprit that is causing my frames to rapidly dip up and down from 60 to as low as 12. For some reason accepting the contracts provided by your SETIcontracts overhaul causes the GC to absolutely lose its mind. I did a lot of troubleshooting to be sure of the cause; removing all mods, slowly re-adding mods, monitoring memory GPU and CPU usage, using the same control for my test, and I have no idea why but certain contracts are definitely the cause. If I use the debugger menu and manually complete the contract in question, my FPS immediately jumps back up to a steady 60 again.

I really don't want to uninstall that part of your mod because it really helps with immersion and driving the game with a logical progression of goals. Is there any way to fix this? And if there's anyway that I can help, please let me know. I can provide you with a zip of my game data folder, save file, and explanation on how to recreate the problem if it helps at all. Thanks for your great work!

Hm, that is indeed strange.

The contracts only use very standard parameters from ContractConfigurator and did so for months.

I m a little bit lost here, since I have little understanding of the detailed inner workings of KSP/contracts. I hope nightingale from contract configurator can help out.

For finding the cause I would start with a screenshot of the GameData folder as well as the ContractPacks folder and a description how to reproduce it/which contracts are affected.

So if I can not reproduce it myself with a core mod setup, it could indicate a problem with other installed mods and we can narrow it down.

[kerbsy]

Hm, that is indeed strange.

The contracts only use very standard parameters from ContractConfigurator and did so for months.

I m a little bit lost here, since I have little understanding of the detailed inner workings of KSP/contracts. I hope nightingale from contract configurator can help out.

For finding the cause I would start with a screenshot of the GameData folder as well as the ContractPacks folder and a description how to reproduce it/which contracts are affected.

So if I can not reproduce it myself with a core mod setup, it could indicate a problem with other installed mods and we can narrow it down.

Seems to be the same problem I posted a few pages back. Issue for me was with the Duna/Ike Flyby contract. I haven't come across any others yet, but I'll post here if another causes an issue.

[nightingale]

Hello again Yemo. I recently ran into a seriously strange problem and I don't know if anyone else has already brought it up.

We all know that Unity's Garbage Collector is, itself, garbage. It's usually just a minor annoyance but I narrowed it down to the main culprit that is causing my frames to rapidly dip up and down from 60 to as low as 12. For some reason accepting the contracts provided by your SETIcontracts overhaul causes the GC to absolutely lose its mind. I did a lot of troubleshooting to be sure of the cause; removing all mods, slowly re-adding mods, monitoring memory GPU and CPU usage, using the same control for my test, and I have no idea why but certain contracts are definitely the cause. If I use the debugger menu and manually complete the contract in question, my FPS immediately jumps back up to a steady 60 again.

I really don't want to uninstall that part of your mod because it really helps with immersion and driving the game with a logical progression of goals. Is there any way to fix this? And if there's anyway that I can help, please let me know. I can provide you with a zip of my game data folder, save file, and explanation on how to recreate the problem if it helps at all. Thanks for your great work!

Do you have the Field Research Contract Pack? If so there's a known performance problem with it. I have a pre-release fix out - do you mind giving it a try and letting me know if that resolves your issues?

[_Zee]

Thanks for the replies Yemo and Nightingale.

To Yemo, you'll find my GameData and ContractPacks image below. The problem was occuring on and off (presumably because contracts that were causing the problem would eventually be completed) for a while without my knowing the cause until just recently. The 3 contracts that I know for sure were causing it were the Duna/Ike flyby contract, Eve flyby contract, and Duna Landing contract. In the interim I've just been accepting the contracts, completing them immediately after accepting via alt+f12 if I notice a frame drop, and then making sure I do what the contract asked of me. So far it has only been SETI contracts causing the issue.

To Nightingale, I do not have the Field Research Contract Pack installed. Should I still try your patch to see if it helps the SETI contracts?

Edit: Almost forgot to mention this important bit, the frame rate drops aren't noticable until you load a ship in. Frames remain solid during the KSC overview, or when inside the Tracking Station. A simple 50 part ship in LKO with nothing else in the scene will demonstrate low frames when there is no other reason for jittery/low frames besides the GC not playing well with the contracts.

Edited June 11, 2015 by _Zee

[nobodyhasthis]

First let me say that I only ever play on a SETI / CTT Tech tree. It is a brilliant progression path. Totally fantastic! For a long time I have been using KAX aircraft expansion and have never used the LFI Basic Jet Engine. My space program started with propellers. However in a recently brand new installation of the game I did not add in KAX. So now I am trying to use the LFI Basic Jet Engine.

For some bizarre the LFI Basic Jet Engine in the SPH is displaying a huge amount of wing lift. Is the normal behavior?

It seems to provide more lift that the wings! Is this a bug caused by using FAR which already gives lift to everything. Remembering that in FAR aerodynamics a house brick generate lift if thrown hard enough?

I think this either a graphics glitch that shows the wrong lift or an incompatibility between FAR and SETI. It makes the LFI Basic Jet Engine totally useless. Is there anything else that can cause this bug with the part?

[kcs123]

First let me say that I only ever play on a SETI / CTT Tech tree. It is a brilliant progression path. Totally fantastic! For a long time I have been using KAX aircraft expansion and have never used the LFI Basic Jet Engine. My space program started with propellers. However in a recently brand new installation of the game I did not add in KAX. So now I am trying to use the LFI Basic Jet Engine.

For some bizarre the LFI Basic Jet Engine in the SPH is displaying a huge amount of wing lift. Is the normal behavior?

It seems to provide more lift that the wings! Is this a bug caused by using FAR which already gives lift to everything. Remembering that in FAR aerodynamics a house brick generate lift if thrown hard enough?

I think this either a graphics glitch that shows the wrong lift or an incompatibility between FAR and SETI. It makes the LFI Basic Jet Engine totally useless. Is there anything else that can cause this bug with the part?

If you are based your conclusion how CoL ball was shifted then you are terribly wrong. It is known that CoL indicator can't be used to determine how much some part add to the lift or not.

nuFAR works compleatly different than you have used to behave in previous FAR releases and certainly it is much different than stock aero.

Try new dev build of FAR, in latest relese there is new blu line that represents changes of pressure along trough whole length of your plane. You will have need some time to fully figure out blue line readings.

But in conclusion, there is no bug with jet engine or FAR at all. Last time I was checking that engine it have proper voxalization, I doubt that something is changed in that area.

[nobodyhasthis]

If you are based your conclusion how CoL ball was shifted then you are terribly wrong. It is known that CoL indicator can't be used to determine how much some part add to the lift or not.

nuFAR works compleatly different than you have used to behave in previous FAR releases and certainly it is much different than stock aero.

Try new dev build of FAR, in latest relese there is new blu line that represents changes of pressure along trough whole length of your plane. You will have need some time to fully figure out blue line readings.

But in conclusion, there is no bug with jet engine or FAR at all. Last time I was checking that engine it have proper voxalization, I doubt that something is changed in that area.

Agree fully. It makes no sense at all that that the CoL ball was shifted. However it is my game. After further testing this is appears to be a graphics glitch in the SPH. Outside of there it has no effect. It means I will have to test planes using the graphics of the VAB instead. I don't think this now SETI or FAR related. It is bug from some place else.

Ironically it explains why I enjoyed so much success with KAX. Early aircraft where VAB designed helicopters!

Edited June 11, 2015 by nobodyhasthis

[Svm420]

Agree fully. It makes no sense at all that that the CoL ball was shifted. However it is my game. After further testing this is appears to be a graphics glitch in the SPH. Outside of there it has no effect. It means I will have to test planes using the graphics of the VAB instead. I don't think this now SETI or FAR related. It is bug from some place else.

The ball will shift when engines are attached that is not a bug it affects the entire vessel's aerodynamics. Also it is not a CoL with FAR is the aerodynamic center which includes forces besides just lift. Use the graphs with FAR and build by eye. Learn from trying and observing evaluate undesired performance and fix what didn't work. It's pretty easy to tell if you look at CoM if you have a ton of wing surface ahead of it or not and graphs tell you if it has to much lift with a positive slope yellow line because you may have that stupid little blue ball behind the CoM but if you have too much wing/lift you won't even be able to tell with the balls, but the graphs will tell you every time with one click.

Edited June 11, 2015 by Svm420

[nobodyhasthis]

The ball will shift when engines are attached that is not a bug it affects the entire vessel's aerodynamics. Also it is not a CoL with FAR is the aerodynamic center which includes forces besides just lift. Use the graphs with FAR and build by eye. Learn from trying and observing evaluate undesired performance and fix what didn't work. It's pretty easy to tell if you look at CoM if you have a ton of wing surface ahead of it or not and graphs tell you if it has to much lift with a positive slope yellow line because you may have that stupid little blue ball behind the CoM but if you have too much wing/lift you won't even be able to tell with the balls, but the graphs will tell you every time with one click.

Yes. You have convinced me there is something wrong here. Agree with your statements. Except of course the result should not change by location. So it is a bug. FAR doesn't help because it is no longer installed. Still have a bug! So is not showing CoL or aerodynamic center. The solution here is a rather draconian rebuild of Kerbal gamedata folder. A hour later and bingo! No bug in FAR and SETI. The moral of the story is I must not build new KSP install when half asleep.

All good in the end. Now back to that long painful climb up a realistic and dynamic tech tree.

[kcs123]

There is saying: The joy is not at the base of mountain. Or at it's top. Most of joy you will expirience while climbing up.

Pretty much true. I know I got some realy good time with SETI so far. Yes, there is some obstacles, like bugs encontered, mods conflicting each other, etc.

But all went up good in the end.

Btw. if you have trouble with using FAR graphs, feel free to check links in my signature, it might help you even if you are expirienced FAR craft builder.

[Magaman]

Thanks for the replies Yemo and Nightingale.

To Yemo, you'll find my GameData and ContractPacks image below. The problem was occuring on and off (presumably because contracts that were causing the problem would eventually be completed) for a while without my knowing the cause until just recently. The 3 contracts that I know for sure were causing it were the Duna/Ike flyby contract, Eve flyby contract, and Duna Landing contract. In the interim I've just been accepting the contracts, completing them immediately after accepting via alt+f12 if I notice a frame drop, and then making sure I do what the contract asked of me. So far it has only been SETI contracts causing the issue.

To Nightingale, I do not have the Field Research Contract Pack installed. Should I still try your patch to see if it helps the SETI contracts?

Edit: Almost forgot to mention this important bit, the frame rate drops aren't noticable until you load a ship in. Frames remain solid during the KSC overview, or when inside the Tracking Station. A simple 50 part ship in LKO with nothing else in the scene will demonstrate low frames when there is no other reason for jittery/low frames besides the GC not playing well with the contracts.

Remove MechJeb, I was having horrid frame issues, removed Mechjeb and now it's back to running smooth. I haven't had a lot of time to really troubleshoot, when I get a chance I'm gonna do a clean install and start with Mechjeb then keep adding mods to see if it's Mechjeb alone or Mechjeb with other mods casuing the issue.

[_Zee]

Remove MechJeb, I was having horrid frame issues, removed Mechjeb and now it's back to running smooth. I haven't had a lot of time to really troubleshoot, when I get a chance I'm gonna do a clean install and start with Mechjeb then keep adding mods to see if it's Mechjeb alone or Mechjeb with other mods casuing the issue.

Thanks for the recommendation but I've already gone over how I narrowed down the problem to SETIcontracts. In my case, Mechjeb is not the problem.

[kcs123]

JaredTheDragon provided some usefull tips how to improve RAM usage, so you can have more mods installed to play with this kind of tech tree trough career.

Full info is in this post.

It worked quite well on my machine, I just wanted to inform people who watch this thread about it. You might find it usefull.

[_Zee]

JaredTheDragon provided some usefull tips how to improve RAM usage, so you can have more mods installed to play with this kind of tech tree trough career.

Full info is in this post.

It worked quite well on my machine, I just wanted to inform people who watch this thread about it. You might find it usefull.

I'll definitely try the force dx11 option if I start running into RAM usage problems in the future. Thanks for sharing that! But to reiterate, I have narrowed the problem down to Unity's Garbage Collector, and only when accepting specific contracts from SETIcontracts. You'll notice in the image of my gamedata folder that most of my mods are actually plugin's with a relatively low number of RAM-eating parts. My RAM usage has yet to exceed 1.5g. If it were a RAM overage, CPU, or GPU issue, then using alt-f12 to complete the contracts in question would not cause my FPS to immediately jump back up to 60 when experiencing the problem with only a 50 part ship loaded in the scene.

Yemo if you're still around, have you had a chance to look over my game data picture yet? Any ideas on causes or fixes?

[Yemo]

I'll definitely try the force dx11 option if I start running into RAM usage problems in the future. Thanks for sharing that! But to reiterate, I have narrowed the problem down to Unity's Garbage Collector, and only when accepting specific contracts from SETIcontracts. You'll notice in the image of my gamedata folder that most of my mods are actually plugin's with a relatively low number of RAM-eating parts. My RAM usage has yet to exceed 1.5g. If it were a RAM overage, CPU, or GPU issue, then using alt-f12 to complete the contracts in question would not cause my FPS to immediately jump back up to 60 when experiencing the problem with only a 50 part ship loaded in the scene.

Yemo if you're still around, have you had a chance to look over my game data picture yet? Any ideas on causes or fixes?

I just could not reproduce this problem.

I ve gone through the contracts, but did not find anything they did differently than the other contracts before them.

There was a new version of ContractConfigurator released today. Maybe it fixed the problem for you?

If the problem persists, could you please check whether it also occurs for the MinmusSunFlyby contract (title "Minmus & Kerbol!")?

That would be an indication that something could be wrong with one of those parameters:

        PARAMETER
        {
            name = CollectScience
            type = CollectScience

            targetBody = Minmus
            rewardScience = 1
            rewardReputation = 2.0
            rewardFunds = 10000.0
            situation = InSpaceLow
            recoveryMethod = RecoverOrTransmit
        }

[_Zee]

I downloaded and installed the newest ContractConfigurator yesterday with the same hope that it might resolve the issue, but to no avail.

As I said before I could put my GameData folder and my Save folder into a zip if you'd like to test it that way. If an exact mirror like that doesn't reproduce the problem for you then that would suggest there's a problem with my install or maybe even my hardware, although I can't imagine that's the case. But then again I'm no expert.

I tested the problem with the specific "Minmus & Kerbol" contract like you asked and the problem is there just like all the other "Flyby/Landing/etc" contracts.

[Yemo]

I downloaded and installed the newest ContractConfigurator yesterday with the same hope that it might resolve the issue, but to no avail.

As I said before I could put my GameData folder and my Save folder into a zip if you'd like to test it that way. If an exact mirror like that doesn't reproduce the problem for you then that would suggest there's a problem with my install or maybe even my hardware, although I can't imagine that's the case. But then again I'm no expert.

I tested the problem with the specific "Minmus & Kerbol" contract like you asked and the problem is there just like all the other "Flyby/Landing/etc" contracts.

Hm, then it might be the situation parameter.

Ok, if you upload your gamedata I will test with a mirrored install.

Thank you very much for your effort!

[_Zee]

Here you go! Everything you need should be in there.

http://www./download/7rjrgakoc5bz8vn/_Zee_Mirrored_Install.zip

[KOCMOKOT]

Dont have a contracts after install this

[ANWRocketMan]

Dont have a contracts after install this

Do you have Contract Configurator?

I also had no contracts but later realised that I accidentally converted an Agency image in 000_USI_Tools to .dds textures. That folder comes with USI Kolonization. If you converted gamedata textures to .dds; agencies should not have .dds images, it causes the contracts to bug out completely.

[Yemo]

Here you go! Everything you need should be in there.

http://www./download/7rjrgakoc5bz8vn/_Zee_Mirrored_Install.zip

Ok, I was able to recreate the problem following your instructions.

I still have no idea what the problem is, but I will try to find out.

@nightingale: Any ideas from your side? I thought I followed the wiki instructions.

So far I tried using VesselParameter and differentiated parameter names.

@_Zee: While the problem occurs without MagicSmokeIndustries and NearFuturePropulsion, I noticed a warning considering the KSPAPIextension.dll being out of date. You might want to consider updating the dll at those 2 locations. Also consider using the Infernal Robotics Plugin and Model Rework.

And I also noticed KSP-AVC is not installed?

Dont have a contracts after install this

Will need a screenshot of your GameData folder for support.

[_Zee]

Ok, I was able to recreate the problem following your instructions.

I still have no idea what the problem is, but I will try to find out.

@nightingale: Any ideas from your side? I thought I followed the wiki instructions.

So far I tried using VesselParameter and differentiated parameter names.

@_Zee: While the problem occurs without MagicSmokeIndustries and NearFuturePropulsion, I noticed a warning considering the KSPAPIextension.dll being out of date. You might want to consider updating the dll at those 2 locations. Also consider using the Infernal Robotics Plugin and Model Rework.

And I also noticed KSP-AVC is not installed?

Yes I get the same KSPAPIextension.dll warning as well, and its from MSI. I was under the impression that, that .dll wasn't something that could just be copy/pasted to update. I thought that users have to use the .dll that comes with whatever mod is redistributing it as the mod that is using it as a dependency had required info baked into it. Did I just misunderstand the OP in the KSPAPIextensions thread?

And I am using the Infernal Robotics Model Rework & Expansion already. The one in this thread, correct?

And correct, KSP-AVC is not installed. I don't need it, do I?

[KOCMOKOT]

coz that - - Start with non-recoverable probes and SRBs, continue with airplanes, LFOs and chutes, manned spaceflight comes only after that - i dont have contracts

- - - Updated - - -

- - - Updated - - -

- - - Updated - - -

or not ? i need this SETI pack coz cant play with all my mods - just no balance help plz

[Yemo]

Yes I get the same KSPAPIextension.dll warning as well, and its from MSI. I was under the impression that, that .dll wasn't something that could just be copy/pasted to update. I thought that users have to use the .dll that comes with whatever mod is redistributing it as the mod that is using it as a dependency had required info baked into it. Did I just misunderstand the OP in the KSPAPIextensions thread?

And I am using the Infernal Robotics Model Rework & Expansion already. The one in this thread, correct?

And correct, KSP-AVC is not installed. I don't need it, do I?

I m not at the pc containing the ksp install at the moment.

As far as I remember, the model rework requires the latest infernal robotics plugin version, this one: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/116064

Not sure about KSPAPIextensions, since I have not used mods with it for quite some time.

KSP-AVC is not required, but helps a lot for keeping track of updates.

Will continue with the bug search tomorrow.

As this seems to be above my level of understanding (I just used the contract configurator wiki to build the contracts), I recommend moving the issue over to the ContractConfigurator thread, where all the CC bugs are bundled and nightingale can take a look.

He asked for the logs of the problem, since I m not at the gaming pc at the moment, I plan to upload them tomorrow to the CC thread.

http://i.imgur.com/UwiyYFB.pngcoz that - - Start with non-recoverable probes and SRBs, continue with airplanes, LFOs and chutes, manned spaceflight comes only after that - i dont have contracts

http://i.imgur.com/7wMFxkG.png

or not ? i need this SETI pack coz cant play with all my mods - just no balance help plz

I did not see a single SETI folder in your GameData folder screenshots?

With all SETI mods for 1.0.2 installed, they should be between ScienceAlert and SmokeScreen in your GameData:

ScienceAlert

SETIcontracts

SETIctt

SETIgreenhouse

SmokeScreen

[KOCMOKOT]

iam delete Seti after contrac problems but no balance now unplayable