Civilization4 memory usage fix

[koax]

thanx, Harkonnen

Thanks a lot for your patch. I applied it and it worked like a dream for the first 60-70 turns or so, but more on that later.

When I first tried the game, I was crashing to desktop left, right and centre, and I couldn't even do the tutorial. Needless to say I was playing the huge map, since I refuse to even touch any other kind of map. My system is relatively new, and has been able to cope with everything I have thrown at it pre Civ IV. After reading about othere peoples' experiences in the forums, I soon figured out it was not just me, but everybody who had the temerity to try the bigger maps.

I really liked the game though, and tried persevering. Still, I was desperate to try anything, since I was getting horrendous freezes, although I was not crashing to desktop after downloading all the newer drivers and massaging some of the game options a bit.

I have to say here that I do not have a degree in computer science, unlike most people that populate this board. So, I spent quite a bit of time until I figured what exactly I had to do with your patch, and where I should put it. Finally, I found the answer somewhere in the forum.

As I said, it worked like a dream in the beginning, but after 60-70 turns the main screen started going black, and I couldn't see any tiles. Every time that happened, I rebooted the computer, and started again from the previous turn (I save every single turn). The game also started freezing in a funny way, similar to the way it had been freezing previously to application of your patch. What would happen is that the screen would change of its own accord to a sort of map which shows the original terrain and nothing else; this lasted for about 3-10 minutes before I applied your patch, while now it lasts for about 1-2 minutes.

As I said, I am not particularly computer literate, so I get quite confused wiht some of the advice you have given here and on the other forum about what to do when various things happen. For the time being, I think I will ignore it, unless someone is kind enough to explain things to me in words of one syllable.

That having been said, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this great game a lot more playable than it was before.

[Harkonnen604]

Try double-clicking 'Harkonnen.ini' and set 'vid_mem_usage' to 60. If it does not help, try additionally setting 'insane_mode = 0'. This should be very stable if you have at least 128Mb of video memory.

[koax]

thanks again

I will try it with the new settings later, and report how I speed.

Thanks a lot again, and thanks for taking the trouble to reply to everything.

[Zoid]

I´m always amazed at the resourcefulness of Civ fans. If there´s any justice in the world Firaxis´ll hire Harkonnen604 ASAP. Keep up the good work, H!

[Harkonnen604]

All
I have created a side-thread where I will place info about new releases. Primary thread at CFC receives a lot of messages per hour, so a lot of people might unsubscribe it... Just subscribe this thread if you want to get email notification about new releases only. Thank you.

All
A poll has been created about effects of the memory-fix.

All
With the help of filterban (CFC) I have spotted that xFire causes crash with my patch during initial startup of civ4. As for now, just quit xFire. I will fix that in coming release.

[Enigma_Nova]

This deserves a bump.

[PGM]

Re: Civilization4 memory usage fix

Originally posted by Harkonnen604
I have just finished writing my own memory-fix which I started a month ago at another civ4 forum. It appears to solve a lot of CTD/swapping/slowness issues.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3420615

Could this fix the BLACK TERRAIN problem?
I'm running a P4 2.5, 512 RAM, SIS 650 64Mb, and can't see normal terrain.
It's probably not a memory problem, but a video card thing, right?

[Marid Audran]

Harkonnen has perhaps made the best custom patch for months to come, because, as many others have reported, applying his .dlls and .ini settings have really made the gameplay smoother. Load times are lessoned as well. At first it seemed like the game locked up when I traded world maps with someone and I gritted my teeth, but it "unstuck" after a minute, perhaps because 70% of the world map during the Industrial era opened up. Wonder movies now don't play at all, though they were uniformly bland and forgettable anyway, so I don't care. Kudos Harkonnen for your independant work!

[jackal@ns]

Followed the suggestions listed in the read me file. Can now play maps larger than standard size without the gpu locking up. The game loading times are about 1/3 of what they used to be.

«« My Puter Stats »» OS~[Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 2 (5.1 - 2600)]~ Up Time~[3hrs 23mins 39secs]~ CPU~[1-AMD , 1834MHz, 512KB (0% Load)]~ Memory~[Usage: 266/512MB (51.95%)]~ Video Card~[ATI 9600 SE 128 MB]~ Resolution~[1024 x 768]~ Total Space Free~[29.92Gb out of 421.35Gb]~ « Ë×Çü®§îöñ »

[Harkonnen604]

PGM
Yes, some people had this problem solved with my fix, though I didn't address this issue directly within my fix, only memory consumption.

Marid Audran
Well, I didn't have problems with movies after the fix... Try reducing 'vid_mem_usage' by 10-20 or 30.

[Zoid]

Apropos the black terrain problem. I only get the black terrain when I play on the highlands map. I´ve tried most of the other maps and they work fine. Could this be due to the memory leak or is it something else like a borked map file?

[Enigma_Nova]

Turning off wonder movies is a great idea.

[Harkonnen604]

Dr Zoidberg
If that happens after alt-tabbing, set 'insane_mode=0'. If happens on itself later in the game, reduce 'vid_mem_usage by 10-20.

[Enigma_Nova]

Highlands probably takes more memory due to pathing, and Mountains having a relatively high polycount.
But in theory that should also happen with a spamload of towns ...
... So I have no clue what I'm on about. +1 and thanks for the attention

[Finsch]

Thank you for the great fix!

I have a nvidia 6800 gt with 256 megs, AGP size set to 256 mb, and 1 gig of ram.

I have the detail settings on high, but no AA-multisampling used. If i run windowed mode in 1024*786 i have no problems with insane mode and 200 mb vid_mem_usage.

But if i switch back to fullscreen and 1280*1024, your savegame will crash the game when it is loaded completely (graphics look strange, textures are missing, transparent town-improvements, game freezes, hardware reset necessary.)
I decreased vid_mem_usage down to 180, 160, 140, 120, 100, 80 when it began to work again.

Game is still A LOT faster than it used to be. When i run the game with low-res textures, it works with 180 vid_mem_usage in fullscreen, but the graphics look a bit blurry.

Thank you very much!