1.1 Memory/Performance/Save Game Problems - look here

Check here for unofficial test exes

from GalCiv2 Forums

A lot of people seem to be having problems with memory with 1.1, so here are a few tips until we can get another build up:

1) If you haven't done it already, increase the amount of virtual memory available to Windows.

To increase the amount of Virtual Memory available to Windows:
 
1) Right click on the My Computer icon and chose properties
2) Click on the advanced tab
3) Under performance, click on the Settings button.
4) Click on the advanced tab
5) Click on the change button
6) Change the initial size to the recommended size and then increase the maximum size.
 
As a note, you should make sure that you have enough hard drive space left for the maximum virtual memory size or you'll start having problems whenever Windows has to allocate more virtual memory. You can get the size of the virtual memory in gigs by dividing the number by 1024.

2) If you still get the problems, play on Medium or smaller galaxies.  Setting planets and stars to Rare will also help, although you will probably want to set the Habitable Planets to Abundant to make sure that you do have enough good planets.  You could also try making a bee-line for larger hull sizes so you won't need as many ships.

3) Defragging your hard drive may also help if you haven't done it in awhile. 

I'm sorry that we didn't catch this earlier, but the developers and artists all have 2 GB of RAM (or more) so none of us have had this problem.   Fixing the memory issues is our top priority at the moment.

If you have Windows 2000 or XP you can try this UNOFFICIAL test exe. I will be updating this link periodically until we get the official update out.  I'm using an newer version of the DirectX SDK on my computer than the one that Brad uses to create the offical builds, and the version I'm using is not supported on Win 98/ME.

Before extracting the contents of the zip file to your GalCiv2 install folder, backup your GalCiv2.exe and Lib3D.dll and your save games, just in case. 

http://sd.stardock.com/carielf/gc2/GalCiv2MemTestWinXP6.zip

This test file is meant to

1) fix crash when loading save games

2) reduce save/load times (may only be slight difference)

3) make it less likely to crash while saving.

update:

4) This version attempts to abort saving rather than just crashing when it runs out of memory while saving.  However, it is still possible to max out your memory so badly that the game will crash even if you're not saving.

I am going to try to make it abort saving gracefully rather than crashing when it runs out of memory, because on a gigantic galaxy with everything set to abundant, you are going to max out your memory if you only have 256 MB of RAM.  This will give you the chance to try adjusting your page file in the hopes that you will be able to save again.

I am also going to try to reduce the memory usage.

Update 5/5/06: I am un-stickying this thread and making a new one to try and get more people using the test exe.

--Cari


 

50,419 views 55 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Question though. At home (since i am at school and haven't tried the thing with the VM) I have 2 Gigs of the PC4200 ram and am getting this problem. I had crashes but it didn't really bother me because it only happened once in a blue moon. Even when playing on the Gigantic Galaxies. I guess its more of comment rather then a quesiton. I just find it wired that wtih my Ram that I have that I am getting this problem. But ohh well....as long as I am happy....right ?
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
So there is a leak. I have had to increase the virtual memory even with a good video card (Radeon 9800 Pro).
This game does hit the hard drive hard at large maps. When I exit my computer is always saying Virtual memory is low.

Looking forward to the fix. Thanks.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Fixing the memory issues is our top priority at the moment.

that's good to hear. I feared (hearing frogboy) that you were still focused on adding new features & not solving some problems here and there
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Even Frogboy has said this is the first priority for 1.2.

3 years ago a dual 3g processor with 1 g ram and a Radeon 9800 pro 128 was a good system. After having to upgrade a computer every year I guess I should be happy that this one has lasted 3 years...and will probably last 4 before any real upgrading needs done.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Does this mean that the memory problems have gotten worse since 1.0?

I've been unable to play for a while because of the slow increases to memory over time. I didn't mention it before since my computer has no functioning page file (i.e. the above fix won't work) and I figured I was pretty far outside of the norm.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Even Frogboy has said this is the first priority for 1.2.

I missed where he said that then

sidenote : this thread is not displayed in bug reports

Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Try setting the background star density down to a lower value. I saw a poster mention his was set down, and mine is down at 512. I do not have this memory problem.

But I am really curious if any of you can circumvent the problem with such a simple step.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
60 Gig harddrives should have virtual memory set to. 2095-4095 <-Good setting for Oblivion too.

Or if your like me have 3 harddrives.
C: -2095-4095
D: -2042-4095
E: -2050-4095

=6187 Virtual memory. (Now I know thats excessive but you will never see a memory leak in a game again.)
Also recomend .NET Framework 2.0 for windows.

Memory Leaks



A Memory Leak in a computer program is a situation where the program will not release memory when it is not needed, thus eventually using up all the available memory allocation and causing slowdowns (due to excessive pagefile swapping for example), and crashes. In my experience of playing Oblivion while writing this guide, I haven't yet seen any significant memory leak, however at the same time I have purposely not progressed far into the game, nor have I played it for more than an hour at a time without quitting and reloading. While a memory leak can only be fixed by the game's developers, some people have suggested that installing the .NET Framework 2.0 can resolve this issue. I'm fairly skeptical about this supposed fix, as I can see no signs of Oblivion using any .NET-related functionality. However it can't hurt to attempt it, as long as you keep in mind that the only benefit may be for ATI users who have the Catalyst Control Center installed (which does use .NET), and even then if you follow my ATI Catalyst Tweak Guide, you will see how to remove the background resource usage of .NET from the ATI CCC which may be causing this issue in the first place. Otherwise for all intents and purposes if there is a memory leak, we need to wait for a patch to fix it. In the meanwhile, save often and quit and restart Oblivion every 1 - 2 hours of play to prevent any problems.




Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I am using a Dell D600 Latop with 1G of ram and the on-board video card. I am using third party drivers to tweak the card for most games I play since the on-board card is slow. The drivers I use allow me to display the available memory, and I have noticed as I play that it drops until the game becomes almost unplayable. All I do is save the game, which takes longer then normal but still saves, and then retart the game. This frees my memory up. I only have to do this every hour or so. It has never realy bothered me. I am a developer and I know what a pain memory leaks can be so good luck Stardock. Also as a side note I am using the .net 2.0 framework and it does not solve the leak problem.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Even Frogboy has said this is the first priority for 1.2.
***************
I missed where he said that then



#11 by Frogboy [Stardock]
Wednesday, April 26, 2006 10:08 AM

BTW, this is our highest priority issue right now.

Another thing you can do to help is run the game in a window. Then hit Ctrl-Shift-Esc. This will bring up task manager. Then, in task manager go to th eprocesses tab. Then go to select columns and add "virtual memory".

Keep an eye on the GalCiv II process. It should never go above say 700MB in virtual memory (and even that's a lot but those ship hulls are very expensive).


Link

Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm curious then... why list 512 MB RAM as recomended?

Is the game going to be eventually runnable at 512 MB RAM with all bells and whistles?


To anyone wondering, this isn't a flame...
I want this game to work and look forward to the problem being resolved, fixed, helped, etc.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Never had a problem with memory.

1GB RAM, 4096~4096MB virtual (fixed size to prevent swap file fragmentation).

However, my computer spends a lot of time "recovering" when I quit GC2, evidence that a huge portion of the swap file was in use.

P.S.: S1Genocide, you are wasting disk space, Windows XP will not use more than a total of 4GB swap file space, regardless of anything you do.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't know how much memory this game will take as we keep adding better and more complex mods and ships to it, but it might be nice if you could include some x64 support for larger memory sizes. I believe the IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE flag enables wow64 processes to use the full 4GB of address space, though I am not an expert on wow64 interactions.

Obviously once the leak is fixed, it will not need as much memory. I am thinking we may need more a few years from now when we've got 1GB running on the video cards and we have 20000 poly ships flying around.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Don't know how close you guys are at tracking down the source of the leak, so maybe this will help, and maybe not. I have been playing windowed mode on a duel screen system. This allows me to watch the task manager read outs as I play so that I can save and drop out before the crash. The game seems to leak only when the AI is taking it's turn (of course), but I did notice something. I recieved notice of my espionage level increasing for each civ since they all had the same spending level. So, for 9 civs the message comes up. Each time I click ok and the computer goes back to thinking, the memory jumps quite a bit.

Perhaps this is just due to all the new information I can now see, but it seems rather unlikely. Perhaps the problem is in the code run in that time space?
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hosting your pagefile on a different physical drive helps a lot with speed. A pagefile on C: just results in the game data beign copied from one section of the drive to another, but a pagefile on a different drive lets your machine read from one drive and write to the other, keeping them both active and increasing throughput to your VM. Search MS tech support forum, their page for VM configuration walked me throuhg how to do this nicely.
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Playing this game on laptop with just 512 Mb RAM I've had the problem even on Medium galaxies with lots of specials. Crashes are common as well. Last night my game crashed on Large within initial colony rush. Reading Frogboy's comparition of Gal Civ 1 and 2 I thought second would be smoother. It would be pity if recommended configuration would work only under Medium size or smaller galaxy settings. BTW, never could finish a game in GalCiv 1 on Huge due to again 'huge' slowdown on recommended hardware. Such things as Overlords and Dreadnoughts just read about.
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi everyone

Once I installed the game correctly a few months ago I've had about 2 crashes. Unfortunatly this number has more than doubled and that in a very short time period. I have read all the recommendations and will follow them, but I feel kinda cheated since I did not have any of these problems with the previous versions (up to beta 4).
The music studders and the game comes up with the "out off memory message" every second turn. Additionally, loading times have, if anything, increased.

I hope ou fix this problem fast because most the saves I have made er basically unplayable with version 1.1.

Is there any way to go back to beta 4? (other than uninstalling the game)
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
SuperGeek > A few years from now?

You can get a rig from Alienware with 2GB of total video memory (4x512MB nVidia 7900 GPU) and 4GB of system RAM.

Even a standard dual SLI rig can have 1GB of video RAM.
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You should design the game to work properly with the most common low end computers that your customers have. Such as computers that have 256 mb ram for example. (like mine) It might surprise you, but most people do not have the hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars that it costs to upgrade their computers to be "top of the line" every couple of months.
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I am having the problem so bad I can barely play the game more then 5-8 turns without a crash…… however, its only crashing during the saves. The screen freezes up and I have to control-alt-delete to get out. Once At the desktop it says “out of memory, galciv2 may crash”…… At this moment the swap file is at about 1.7gig usage…. Seems most of the time that’s about where the swap files is at. Once I close the error the swap drops way down.

My PC setup – Keep in mind, this is a PURE gaming PC and it’s a clean windows install with nothing running… its only used for games and no virus protection, or any apps run in the background. Even most services in windows that are not needed for basic running of windows and games are turned off.

P4 3.06ht
1 gig ram
4gig static swap file on a 15k scsi drive….. I have 3scsi drives… one for game installs, one for the OS and another as the boot drive, “my docs” locations and the swap file itself.


If any more PC specs are needed please ask and I will provide……

Bottom line I have not played without saving my games more then 5 turns and I do not know how many turns I can go if I do not save at all. It will fail during an auto save or a manual save.

I am playing a gigantic map and deep enough in that I do not want to start over. So basically I cant even play the game until there is a fix. I been playing the beta on smaller maps with no issues and waited for the final release before playing this large map.

By the way… what ever save file it was attempting to write during the crash is no good and the file will not even show up in the load list… even the auto save file.
Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Mine is the same way. I can play for any number of hours as long as there is no autosave and I don't try to save. If I do try to save it is about a 50% chance of "out of memory" crash to desktop. What is worse the crash takes the save game spot with it. So if I save on an old save spot then that spot is gone also....

Reply #22 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Wow. This all explains why this game has been crashing on me more often than any other game I've played on a laptop. Have been running the original, out of the box version on both my toshiba laptops, and the M300 Portege doesn't show trade routes or starbase ranges properly, but the game seems to work every time without any problems besides this. On my other, new 17 inch toshiba laptop, it crashes whenever I:

try to move a colony ship on autopilot (sometimes)
try to move a colony ship onto an unoccupied planet on autopilot
try to move a freighter onto a planet for a new trade route on autopilot
can also crash on any ship on autopilot on large map (still finishing off the campaign at the mo - that's why I haven't installed anything extra yet!)

I found that moving the autosave to every 4 turns helped, and I never use autopilot anymore, moving the ships manually so that the game never crashes. I set the swap file to up to 2000 mb, and that has helped a lot too. I usually quicksave every 4 turns in between the autosave, and I often just hit the turn button after loading a save game and closing out of the tech and planet production screens, as often I would spend 15 minutes on that turn only to loose it, hitting turn seems to let me have a good long look at all my planets on the next turn.

So if you are having memory problems with later versions of the game, try some of these methods and see if they work for you.
Reply #23 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
SuperGeek > A few years from now

You can get a rig from Alienware with 2GB of total video memory (4x512MB nVidia 7900 GPU) and 4GB of system RAM
Even a standard dual SLI rig can have 1GB of video RAM.


I build systems that match or exceed these specs for customers. I was thinking more of when the 'standard' computer reached closer to these specs. I cannot expect game manafacturers to add support for every 'latest and graeatest' option, even if extedend RAM support seems intregal to a game of this size. They can, however, be expected to support 'mainstream' options that the average computer on the market would most likely have access to.
Reply #24 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm curious then... why list 512 MB RAM as recomended?

Is the game going to be eventually runnable at 512 MB RAM with all bells and whistles?


I believe this is a memory leak issue. That means that the game is not releasing some memory when it is done with it. This causes the game to use more and more memory as long as it is running. This is not a desinged behavior, and so would not match the specs recommended. Once it is fixed, you should be able to do most things with 512MB of RAM so long as it is reasonably fast memory and you swap file is set to an appropriate size.
Reply #25 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I mentioned something like this back when we were in beta 2 but I guess frogboy didnt take it to heart