Civilization4 memory usage fix

[Urban Ranger]

The patch seems to help me alleviate my problem even though my box still freezes solid now and then. It used to freeze every couple of turns after I loaded a saved games.

Thanks Harkonnen

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by tiny toad
Would this patch fix my issue which is either my monitor going on standby ( and i have to manually reboot) or my system just re-boots all by itself !!!

I think it would be better if you start a new thread with more detailed information. Otherwise it's impossible to tell what's wrong with your particular case.

[Enigma_Nova]

Originally posted by Harkonnen604
Enigma_Nova
I'm on free religion, so I benefit from whatever you follow...

(update is almost ready)

If you had switched to Organised Religion, you'd produce those updates 25% faster!
You need to organise your Fixarism.

[Nikolai]

After trying the patch a bit, I've found out that the fix seems to make the few short time freezes disappear, but I see no improvement in the speed of loading the game or anything of that sort. I can start games on standard map size if I'm lucky it seems, earlier I couldn't, but it takes ages to load and I risk crashing my system. I can no longer see whether or not I'll win fights with enemy units, as all the battle animations is off it seems, together with movement animations. I'd want to try to have those on again, but what option(s) do I have to check for that to happen?

[Harkonnen604]

Nikolai
Just turn animations on in game options menu. It is not essential to turn them off with my patch.

[Nikolai]

Okay, will do. It's a really good job you're doing here Harkonnen, very impressive with all the work and such good support!

[Urban Ranger]

Since the game wasn't working properly for me still, this evening I tried setting the video memory to 256, just for a lark.

Lo, not only the game didn't crash loading, but I could actually play for a few hours.

Fantastic

[Mergle]

Harkonnen,

Thank you for your hard work on this. I am amazed at what a difference it makes. I didn't have stability problems before, but don't play above standard maps (no time!). Trying your mega-save crashed my computer before your patch - and now it works fine. Everything's been speeded and now I can run at "medium" graphics where I was on "low" before.

One question: I have an XP2600+, GeForce FX5500 128Mb, 1GB RAM, WinXPHome. I checked my BIOS and found "Graphic win size" to be 128MB - I take it this is the AGP Aperture?
Anyway, for you VidMemUsage settings following the formula you give, this gives 128+128-120=134, but you also suggest for a 128MB TnL card using 64. Which should I use? And should I increase Graphic win size to 256 and go to 264 for the VidMemSize?

Incidentally, no probs. running insanemode=1 on my nVidea. Only issue I've got is that some later wonder movies stutter (pre-your patch, all wonder movies stuttered, so its an improvement), and the culture victory video didn't play last night (I've seen it previously pre-your patch). That may have been because I had accidentally left another user logged in tho'.

[Harkonnen604]

Mergle
The formula is wrong, but I found that only later thanks for users feedback. The actual formula is "vid_mem_size - 60...80". 60..80 depends on textures settings (60-low, 70-med, 80-high). Still AGP must be as high as possible. So set it to 256Mb if it allows to.

The fix is on its way (subscribe CFC thread to get news). Today I will put some intermediate release to see if leader heads and slower globe view problems are solved with it. This also might solve movies problem, but I am going to adderss this in yet another update.

[Mergle]

Thanks Harkonnen. I hope Firaxis recognise all the hard work you've put in to improve their game.

[Enigma_Nova]

Firaxis devs lurk these boards, so they probably have.

[Zen]

Harkonnen,

A couple of things have popped up recently.

I've been using your patch, and the final map at the end... that traces civ growth/development. It's all black now. It turns colors as the civs expand, but no terrain is shown. I think... there was terrain shown before, but this could be a misremembering on my part.

also, the global "black" map problem I mentioned before when the Y-axis is really long seems to have partially returned about 1/3 of the map has terrain, the other 2/3 is black again. This could be do to me changing the settings though.

I was wondering, what happens if you set video memory usage over the amount of RAM you have? Before I had it set higher and nothing bad "seemed" to happen. Now I have it lower, and nothing bad is happening, but it does seem a bit slower.

thanks,
-Zen Blade

[[to_xp]Gekko]

P4 1.5
384 ram
ati radeon 9600 xt

before your fix: time needed to start a game on huge maps with 10 civs was 14 minutes.
after your fix: something like 2 minutes.

you are THE man

[Harkonnen604]

Zen
It looks like you need to set 'insane_mode = 0'. Not sure, but sympoms are very like what 'insane_mode' is bad with.

'vid_mem_usage' is bound by your video memory (+ AGP perture). Setting it higher than video_memory will cause slow-downs (it will be slower than it was swapping). Seting it higher han video_memory + AGP_aperture will either bring in visual bugs (no leaders, no terrain) or crash the game.

Just civ4 as I observe sometimes crashes when it can't allocate anything, but sometimes it silently "eats" this problem. For example, when it can't allocate leaders render target, it silently "eats" this problem, so the worst thing happening is gray box instead of a leader.

When it can't allocate something with the interface, it just exists.

[Abefar]

Hi

I dont know if htis is the right place to ask or perhaps not very related to this topic, but im gonna ask anyway

I was thinking of buying this game but my specs are only:

1.2 Ghz
512mb ram
Geforce 4 ti4200

Would i at all be able to play this game? and only small maps? perhaps with this patch?

Hope someone can answer this