Needs more than 512.

[RAKKIR]

Does anybody else have any insight into WHERE they think this memory leak might be?

Obviously we cannot know with 100% certainty but I am a curious enough cat that I am interested in any educated guesses.

Someone above mentioned they thought it might be in the audio as well.

Anybody care to offer up their educated guesses and experiences?

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by RAKKIR
Does anybody else have any insight into WHERE they think this memory leak might be?

Obviously we cannot know with 100% certainty but I am a curious enough cat that I am interested in any educated guesses.

Someone above mentioned they thought it might be in the audio as well.

Anybody care to offer up their educated guesses and experiences?

I don't think there is a memory leak. (Admittedly, however, I do have my audio disabled while I work on other game issues). The slowdowns I encounter (I have a thread in this section on this) occur at very odd times and don't correspond to increase memory usage. Rather the game seems to suddenly require all the CPU power it can get (compared to its normal usage of 5-40% on my Athlon 2000+ XP). This can happen when the game moves from one location to another, but it happens *after* it has loaded all the graphics for the new location in many cases.

In a few hours (after class) I am going to see what part of the Civ process is eating up so much CPU power. My initial inclination is that it is python. At least I hope it is python, since then it is likely poorly optimized code and is fixable without a patch. If it is the main game EXE itself then there's not much to be done.

I am not sure how related this is to my CTD issue (it's possible it is all the same thing, possible they are different things). In any case the memory usage on my machine goes up and down fairly regularly, so it doesn't seem like a leak. However, I think the game is horrible at handling its pagefiles, as I have a performance increase when I turn off all pagefiling (in the ini) and unpack all the art files so it can access them directly. That is certainly part of the slow-down.

Hopefully I'll make some progress today.

-Drachasor

[Drachasor]

I'd also say I am not entirely sure how much ram is directly tied to crashes. There is certainly a correlation between relatively low RAM and crashing on larger maps...that's not necessarily causation though. Afterall, people with a lot of RAM *tend* to have higher performance machines. The existence of a few outliers (people with relatively low ram and no problems) might indicate support for this interpretation.

That said, RAM...perhaps general memory usage...seems to be related to some of the problems (at least with slowdowns and the like). Low RAM might be an "enabler" that causes the machine to deal more with the part of the code that is crash-prone (then wether it crashes depends on other specs).

-Drachasor

[Unimatrix11]

I am running it on a 2Ghz Pentium4 with 512 megs of ram and an ATI All in Wonder Radeon 7500. So this is basically the total minimum requirements.

I just completed a huge game map without any crash. Of course the game was sluggish at the end (i expected that). The only thing i would complain about is the loading time of saved games which took upto 10 minutes on the late game. Also game performance was quite different from time to time. So i tend to restart my system before i start playing and also turn off all virus/spyware-guards (but that wouldnt be an option really on MP i guess) then it seems to run a bit faster.

Just a word about people complaining that the game was released too soon: do these people remember when civ3 came out ? the whole air-units didnt work if i remember it right... First i was mad too when i tried to start civ4 for the first time and got that well known ati-bug, but then again: they fixed it quite fast and so i am full of hope for further patches. And i think nowadays with everyone having internet, patches are legitimate, since thousands of early customers can test the game better than a couple of expensive employees - all under the premise that the support for the game is really good.

[Guy Saults]

Is anyone who has a peripheral (PCI) sound card in their machine experiencing CTD- or BSOD-type crashes with CIV IV?

My systems have sound chips attached to the south bridge.

[Chernobyl2]

I did... I have a SB Live! Gamer PCI card. 3 BSOD's in a row, and then I was forced to repair/reinstall Windows XP. I'm putting tha game down until the next patch. I've gone back to an old reliable, Railroad Tycoon 3.

Chern

[Drachasor]

I think I have gotten rid of my CTDs, though it will require further testing to be sure (I played over 10 turns without a crash, which has never happened before).

Here is a link the thread post where I discuss what I have done

-Drachasor

PS. Read both posts

[RAKKIR]

Let's just all HOPE there is a memory leak. I say that because if the game truly DOES use this much memory then I think it speaks VOLUMES about the design decisions that went into it. If this is how things are SUPPOSED to be (memory usage wise) then I think that a LARGE mistake was made.

As to Drachasor....
Even if it is the .exe itself it can be patched.
If you find anything else as far as the expirements you mentioned let us know.

[RAKKIR]

I just hope the whole python decision isin't going to come back to haunt us.

As I said before, I don't code Python, but I didn't think it was THAT slow. It is an interpreted language right?

I wonder how many wrapper layers that had to use to get Python to integrate with everything else.

[camsmith]

Definately does not need more than 512mb.. Got it running now superbly.. Great game too..

Biggest fix for me was Cleaning out the PC!!

Get rid of dust and check your CPU is running nice and cool.. (mine went from running at 80 odd celsius to a nice 52c..)

Posted exact list of what I did here http://apolyton.net/forums//showthre...hreadid=144750 ..

Gotta conclude there is no memory leak and a lot of PC's are basically in dire need of a clean out, backup, reformat/defrag..

BTW.. in case anyone wants to know.. spec is :

Athlon Xp2000+ (1.67MHz)
512mb RAM
Sapphire ATI Radeon 9200 256mb

So hardly top notch system.. and it runs great..

[RAKKIR]

Hello,

In regards to Camsmith's post. I still think there is a memory leak. My system doesn't have a lot of old cruft in it. Nor a lot of startup items. Nor anything running in the background to slow it down. Also, defraging a drive is important, yes, but isin't anywhere near as effective on an NTFS drive as it used to be on a FAT drive in increasing speed. But, always a good idea.

Anyways, I've still seen the game go through SEVERAL gigs of RAM, plus the entire pagefile. You're pushing 4 GIGS of RAM at this point. And the game still ran like a dog.

I am HOPEFULL this is a memory leak. Otherwise what does that say about the game? If it's not a memory leak then WHAT were the designers possibly thinking?

Seriously, the "target" for most game developers is that the game will run DECENTLY on hardware that is two years old at the time of the release. OBVIOUSLY, bleeding edge games such as FEAR might press this a little, but even they SHOULD (and many do) "degrade nicely" to work on a machine of that age. And those are the hard-core FPS games. Civ IV was always a series designed to a broad-range of people. And by requiring the system to have in excess of one Gig of RAM to run is a very good way to cause problems for the MAJORITY of your user base. Most PCs don't have that.

Furthermore, I do understand that games usually DO run poorly at the minimum listed specs. But to perform so poorly on a system that is well in excess of the "recomended" is not a good sign.

It's good you got your system working, BUT....I do -hope- you are wrong and that there is a memory leak or a lot of optimization that can be done! Otherwise that means there may be fundamental problems with the game design that can't be resolved. I hope not.

What I try to keep in mind is that most people on this forum are hard-core Civ fans. A lot of them are willing to let things "slide" because they like the game so much. Or, they feel a criticism of the game is in some way a criticism of them because they like the game. Neither is the case. To be frank, those people who play Civ and have a bad impression of a "bad game" will not excuse it. they are not the hard-core fans who are willing to wait N months for a second and third round of patches to come out. They will just be MAD they payed $40-$50 for a game that "sucks and doesn't work." And that is the impression they will have of the Civ series of games. Which is dissapointing to me because I think it is one of the better series of games so it is a shame people will come away from the experience with the whole "Ohh, you play the -Civ- series of games? Yeah...I tried that, but the game sucked..."

I truly think Firaxis released a game that was in Beta stage...as many publishers do now. Release the game now, in a half-baked state, and just deal with the problems as they come out. I'm sure you're all very familiar with seeing a lot of software like that now, and would probably say it's a growing trend. But, however large this trend may be it's still not the right thing to do to users.

But, let's be honest. Firaxis isin't about "making a good game that people will love." Firaxis is about MAKING MONEY. If the best way to make money for them is to release a good game people love then cool. However if they best way to make money is to release a half-baked game that is "good enough for now" then they will do that.

It's just a darn shame. As I said before, I hope the game gets fixed...because as of now it's becoming unplayable for me.