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Dark Avatar 1.7 Beta 4 Change log

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Dark Avatar 1.7 Beta 4 Change log

from JoeUser Forums
Our primary concern with this update was stability and the out of memory issue. If you're hitting the 2 GB mark with your games, I highly recommend turning down the Planet Surface variety option to zero (this will help most if you have the heightmaps module installed). At this point, BoundsChecker is only reporting about 35 K of leaks, and I suspect that most of those are actually false positives because I've stepped through that code and it appears to be actually deallocating the memory. Most of the remaining problems are caused by graphics being kept in memory longer than they should, and that's not something that I can fix in a week. However, if you save your game, exit, and then reload, you'll notice a significant drop in memory usage because those unused graphics are not being loaded back in with the save game. This has been true for awhile, and it's not a solution, but at least it's a workaround.

+ FIX: Changed the way that save games are saved so that you won't lose your previous auto save if you fail to save (due to out of memory, etc).

+ FIX: Whenever a planet changes ownership, any trade routes involving the planet are cancelled

+ FIX: There was a bug where mining base lines would not disappear if the base was destroyed because planet was traded or conquered.

+ FIX: Added code to flush planet textures and thumbnails between games, which should help prevent leaks due to CTRL+N

+ FIX: Added code to cancel auto attack if UPIssue is preventing ship from attacking because of non-aggression issue

+ FIX: Added check in code to distribute bonuses for if it runs out of planets to prevent a possible endless loop

+ FIX: There bug in the AI ship design code that was causing multiple ship designs to be created with the same exact name, which could cause memory leaks and graphical glitches

+ FIX: Removed code that could cause AI ships to be created with the wrong ship class

+ FIX: Re-wrote the sorting code in the governor's screen so that Nothing is always at the top.

+ FIX: Changed it so that all textures not generated by the game (like thumbnails) and not in dxpacks should be loaded (and flushed) by the resouce manager, which should help keep memory usage down

+ FIX: Changed the code that cleans up the obsolete AI designs because it was letting the designs hang around in memory even after no ships were using it

+ FIX: Eliminated crash in ship components when removing old ship designs

+ FIX: The code that cleans up old ship designs makes sure that no planets are building ship designs before deleting it

+ FIX: Added code to make sure that the AI doesn't leave its survey ships and miners in the standby state.

+ FIX Capped the number of possible stars in a randomly generated galaxy (ie not a custom map) to be 300, which should help with the memory problems.

+ TWEAK: Thumbnails are now 64 x 64 instead of 128 x 128, to reduce memory usage
62,560 views 36 replies
Reply #26 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

The issue isn't performance. It's the out of memory problem.

Believe it or not, we are actually running up agaisnt the 2 gigabyte limit. And when that happens, teh game crashes.

We have to find ways to reduce memory usage.  So we're trying everything we can.

LIke I mentioned elsewhere, those thumbnails use about 200 megs of RAM all by themselves. It's amazing how quickly you can use up RAM.

But we'll probably go back to 128x128 for the final release and bump up the max # of planets.

Reply #27 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You might want to check this out.

In my first game of beta 4, I won an influence victory. The thing I found odd is, I wasn't informed that I was going to win in 10 turns once I got over 75% influence.

I'll check up on this once I get some more time.
ObjectDock - Access shortcuts and frequently used applications from an animated dock.
Reply #28 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
"I just closed the window and went to Start | Stardock | Stardock Central and ran the program again.

BTW: what's with the weird stuff this site adds when Quoting in a reply? Usually I just get the quote and /quote stuff but with a boat load of spaces added before and after the quoted text. Lately, I've been seeing some kind of div codes and paragraph marks."

I tried that several times all ready. I was hoping you were refering to something else.
Reply #29 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Back to 128 would be godd. Cheers

Are we to wait for Friday or are you looking to release the final before then?
Reply #30 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Just finished a new game under this beta with no problems (large, tough, everything abundant, four other races, Vista Ultimate x86, NVIDIA card). The only issues were the minor ones already noted in this thread.
Reply #31 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
only issue ive ran into is probably of my own making..

have a ship style that uses both mining module and survey module, if one auto is activated and then the other is activated (any order) you sometimes get a grey'd out turn button.. until you stop the ship from one of its auto's -

also saw in a custom scenerio with dreadlords enabled a dreadlord mega-event, the "primary" dread lords planet doubled in quality, had two starports/capitols.. and once you caputured that planet, saved and exited, you couldnt reload that game.
Reply #32 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I tried that several times all ready. I was hoping you were refering to something else.


When SD Central is open: go to Tools -> Settings -> Internet -> Refresh XML Data

That usually fixes any weird issues with updates and such.
Reply #33 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
A lot of other games are getting passt the memory issue by using their own memory manigement program and totaly bypassing microsoft's inbuilt one.

It would be a lot of extra work for you guys though, and I'm guessing you'll be working on the next engine after the release of the expansion after this one. Just a though anyway.
Reply #34 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Here is a a thread at CFC to show how you can increase the 2GB limit which it a lot easier to do with 64bit OS since you can increase it to 4Gb as noted in this post:


... Civ4 is hardcoded to use 32-bit pointers, so the most it can access is 4 GB, regardless of what OS it is using. Still 4 GB is better than 2/3 GB when using 32-bit windows.

The reason 32-bit Windows only allows up to 2 GB (or 3 GB with the switch) is not because ram is used by the video card, etc, but because the Kernel reserves the upper 2 GB for itself (this 2 GB is shared across all processes). The /3GB switch means the Kernel only reserves 1 GB. So in fact the difference between Win32 with /3GB and Win64 is not that much (although lesser fragmentation in the latter might significantly improve things when large chunks need to be allocated).

Brad would this work for GalCiv 2 as well?
Reply #35 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I tried that several times all ready. I was hoping you were refering to something else.


When SD Central is open: go to Tools -> Settings -> Internet -> Refresh XML Data

That usually fixes any weird issues with updates and such.


It did not work for me, I'm afraid. The old update still shows up. I may need to reinstall stardock central.
Reply #36 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I haven't tried to increase this 2gb limit myself since I don't have a 64Bit OS. (increasing with 32bit sounds risky) It's my understanding that Civ4 BTS does increase this limit to 4GB if it's run on a 64bit OS. If this is correct you may want to added this 4GB flag on "TOFA" for those who running on Vista 64bit.