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OUT OF MEMORY: WE NEED YOUR HELP!

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OUT OF MEMORY: WE NEED YOUR HELP!

from Elemental Forums

There is a nasty memory leak that we're having a heck of a time tracking down.

It doesn't happen consistently and in fact, it doesn't happen to us at all.

Here is what we need:

1. If have experienced out of memory problems,  low the game resolution and run the game in a window so that you can bring up that task manager (Ctrl-Shift-Esc). 

2. On the Processes list, you should see Elemental. Its memory should start at around 600MB and, over the course of a game, creep up to around 1.2GB. This is normal. 

3. The memory, once you get going in the game, should NEVER go up by more than 5MB in a given turn.  If it does, then whatever is triggering the memory explosion has started.

4. We are looking for saved games, theories, debug.err files, anything that can help us reproduce it. If we can reproduce it, we can eliminate it in hours. But it's the reproducing that's giving us fits.

Thanks!

277,950 views 150 replies
Reply #76 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 56



Quoting Publius of NV,
reply 53
Going through the getting married window increased memory usage by 4M.


I'm not going to comment on this.

:rofl:  

Reply #77 from Elemental Forums Top

Memory Error on 32bit Vista after a few hundred turns, o a side note i can finally load some (small and very early) saved ames inside a loaded game.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9640553/EMOW/

Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #78 from Elemental Forums Top

I have been able to get a GENUINE OOM on winxp x86 zip file created

system specs amd athlon x2 6000+ 4gb ddr2 800mhz RAM nvidia geforce 8800gt vga

dmp & err +dxdiag zip

dmp, saves,map, err & dxdiag zip

time to get oom four + hours play continoius, and the turns are getting slower the further into the game

harpo

Reply #79 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 55
I think you're touching on something there Jag.  It's almost as if the garbage collector simply doesn't work on some systems. On our setups, it goes up 3MB and then goes away after a few seconds.

This happened on my game as well.  Vista X64 4G ram.  I can repeat it every time with this save game.

SaveGame

Prefs.ini

It crashed after I exited the game also. 

debug.err

Reply #80 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting harpo99999, reply 78
I have been able to get a GENUINE OOM on winxp x86 zip file created

system specs amd athlon x2 6000+ 4gb ddr2 800mhz RAM nvidia geforce 8800gt vga

dmp & err +dxdiag zip

dmp, saves,map, err & dxdiag zip

time to get oom four + hours play continoius, and the turns are getting slower the further into the game

harpo


Iv experienced the same Slowness in the game but this time it just crashed, instead of an oom, the oom occurred previously, are you autosaving every turn?

Actually im curious, cold this (maybe its 2 different leaks?) have anything to do with the  lthe monster s not being cleared everytime they are defeated and maybe an issue with the graphics card?

Reply #81 from Elemental Forums Top

out of memory

dxdiag http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=SLM2WdVv

dump: http://thedyinggrounds.com/Elemental/Elemental0_98-2010-08-01T15-46-44-598.dmp

debug: http://thedyinggrounds.com/Elemental/debug.err

autosave: http://thedyinggrounds.com/Elemental/AutoSave.EleSav

Was autosaving every 5 rounds. Crashed after 86 turns. Sound was on. Did one tactical battle only.

 

 

Reply #83 from Elemental Forums Top

If Stardock can't reproduce it in-house...

1:  Do any of their test machines get the game the way we do ?   Thru Impulse?     (I know they have/need another way to test internally, but this issue smells like a result of the install process more than a result of hardware/drivers/Windows-version, etc)

2:  If they do have machines the get the game from Impulse, do they wipe the game completely between updates, or just take the lazy way and install the update on top of the prior version, like I'm sure most of us do ?     (But I suspect the devs might be purist enough to take the extra time to do it "right")

If the answer to either of the above is "no", can they install an OLD version via Impulse, then do a few updates to get to .98   ?????

Reply #84 from Elemental Forums Top

Also, how many of dev's machines have the game installed to non-default locations?

I always keep games in a \games folder to keep them separate from non-game program files.

I moved "my documents" out from under "documents & settings" to keep the important stuff separate & easier to back up from all the sludge Micro$oft keeps under documents & settings.

As a result, bits & pieces of the game & its data are in 3 separate places on my machine (that I know of).  I wonder if some hardwired paths might be part of the reason why I have so many issues, and why my debug.err always has zillions of lines saying that it can't find things.

The pieces are in...

C:\Games\Stardock\Elemental

D:\My Documents\My Games\Elemental

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Stardock\Elemental - War of Magic

Reply #85 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 15
Is anyone who is running out of memory NOT running 64-bit Windows?

 

I am running good old XP Home on a dusty thing.. 

i am still trying to figure how to link to dropbox files..

Todays two crashes. Don't mind the timestamp, im in sweden =)

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9648369/Elemental0_98-2010-08-01T19-51-58-46.zip

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9648369/Elemental0_98-2010-08-01T22-52-03-359.zip

 

 

But i just now had another out of memory crash, approx 2.30 hours in from loaded game, approx 100 turns.. total turns was about 500...

Noted levels of memory usage:

Main menu: Around 160mb

Loading game: steadily rising to about 650Mb

From there steadily rising.. crash occurred when i attempted to save game at about 1500mb

Did not notice any particular great jumps, when doing things, since i was focusing on doing things :p

 

I noted that when i clicked at a stationed hero, selecting him, and then clicked again to deselect, memory usage was about 1-2 mb per click, and i wasn't clicking as fast as possible, but some seconds apart. the memory did not go down, as you might expect it to when doing such random clicking.

Also got quite high increase in usage when scrolling in and out of map, to and from cloth map, although the first took most, the other times (at different locations on map) was generally faster/not eating memory.

 

Also noted several graphical things about fullscreen when i ran in window mode, since most menu text shines through other menu's, i.e loading/saving, no progress bars for research, no image on the right hand page of spellbook at research/casting.. when in fullscreen mode.

Reply #86 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting AlphaSite, reply 80

Quoting harpo99999, reply 78I have been able to get a GENUINE OOM on winxp x86 zip file created

system specs amd athlon x2 6000+ 4gb ddr2 800mhz RAM nvidia geforce 8800gt vga

dmp & err +dxdiag zip

dmp, saves,map, err & dxdiag zip

time to get oom four + hours play continoius, and the turns are getting slower the further into the game

harpo

Iv experienced the same Slowness in the game but this time it just crashed, instead of an oom, the oom occurred previously, are you autosaving every turn?

Actually im curious, cold this (maybe its 2 different leaks?) have anything to do with the  lthe monster s not being cleared everytime they are defeated and maybe an issue with the graphics card?

I am using the default save intervals of five turns display res on the computer is 1280 * 1024 on a 17 inch lcd at fullscreen

this computer was built for a specific task of disc creation at computer fairs to burn my defence cd/dvd's for sale at demand, and added the geforce vga as it was not in use at the time.

harpo

 

Reply #87 from Elemental Forums Top

Sorry, played this game before reading here. But it was a out of memory error that made it crash. System is Vista 32bit.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5049198/Elemental0_98-2010-07-31T20-04-27-859.zip

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5049198/AutoSave.EleSav

 

Hope it can be of help.

Ill try to follow your Recepie on next game Frogboy.

Reply #88 from Elemental Forums Top

If Stardock can't reproduce it in-house...

1: Do any of their test machines get the game the way we do ? Thru Impulse? (I know they have/need another way to test internally, but this issue smells like a result of the install process more than a result of hardware/drivers/Windows-version, etc)

2: If they do have machines the get the game from Impulse, do they wipe the game completely between updates, or just take the lazy way and install the update on top of the prior version, like I'm sure most of us do ? (But I suspect the devs might be purist enough to take the extra time to do it "right")

If the answer to either of the above is "no", can they install an OLD version via Impulse, then do a few updates to get to .98 ?????

I'm not Stardock, but I wipe the game completely between installs and I'm still seeing the problem.  Also, it's installed to the default location.

Reply #89 from Elemental Forums Top

At this point I've gotten several OOM errors. I've stopped posting them because it seems you were getting a good flow of them. It seems a few others may have stopped posting, just thinking we're getting more of the same

My question is what is most helpful to your development teams right now? For those who have already posted, is every save and debug.err file helpful to you and should we keep posting them? Is there anything you would like us to test specifically right now (sound off, etc?). If you can't reproduce it on your end, is there any debugging software we could run in tandem with the software to give you additional memory information? What can we do to help you track this down?

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Reply #90 from Elemental Forums Top

How do I go about running E:WoM in a window(windowed mode?) using windows 7?

Reply #91 from Elemental Forums Top

I was screwing around with the map editor, and it seems the more mountains I placed the worst the lag got. OOM... I think there might be something there, it was only the mountain that would lag it I tried everything else.

 

My next test is to make a map with no mountains at all and see the result, I will keep you informed

Reply #92 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting TheBirthdayParty, reply 90
How do I go about running E:WoM in a window(windowed mode?) using windows 7?

I don't have Win 7, but it should be the same regardless. You can change it from with the video options inside the game. From the main screen click on Options. Go to the Video tab. There should be a button that says Use Fullscreen. Uncheck that. Also, set the resolution to a lower setting so it doesn't take up the whole screen. Go back to the Main Menu and close and reopen Elemental so the changes can take affect.

Reply #93 from Elemental Forums Top

Any word from Stardock???

I can't play the game like this, at all.

Reply #94 from Elemental Forums Top

and another OOM winxp 32bit crash still on fairburn

ram use started from ~600mb on load of autosave and built up to 1,513,935mb

dmp,err,saves pref.ini & dxdiag

and re-starting elemental after the OOM caused a re-boot of the system.

noted that thee play time between ooms is approx 2 hours, and a reboot of computer.

harpo

 

Reply #95 from Elemental Forums Top

My question is what is most helpful to your development teams right now? For those who have already posted, is every save and debug.err file helpful to you and should we keep posting them? Is there anything you would like us to test specifically right now (sound off, etc?). If you can't reproduce it on your end, is there any debugging software we could run in tandem with the software to give you additional memory information? What can we do to help you track this down?

Excellent questions.  I, for one, have stopped posting dumps, but will start again if the developers think it would help.  I have been playing with sound off and am still getting the problem, so if there's anything else we can try I'd appreciate hearing about it.

Reply #96 from Elemental Forums Top

Ok well, I tried running a custom map with no mountains, and well, no that still OOM, however I think I might have found something, I researched only civilization this time for a long time since I put no monsters on the map at all assuming I would not have millions of barbarian hordes attacking my mines and crap like heroes of might and magic, alas I was wrong, so getting to the point I began to research the war tree, and the second I selected the basic equipment my game began to lag between turns really bad, and continued untill OOM which was much further down the road, however before I researched this turn's were progressing rapidly, the only reason I noticed this time was because I had not researched it for quite a while.

Whatever, anyone else notice this?

Reply #97 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting sabin126, reply 92



Quoting TheBirthdayParty,
reply 90
How do I go about running E:WoM in a window(windowed mode?) using windows 7?


I don't have Win 7, but it should be the same regardless. You can change it from with the video options inside the game. From the main screen click on Options. Go to the Video tab. There should be a button that says Use Fullscreen. Uncheck that. Also, set the resolution to a lower setting so it doesn't take up the whole screen. Go back to the Main Menu and close and reopen Elemental so the changes can take affect.

Thanks. Annoyingly the game runs bugging windowed.

Reply #99 from Elemental Forums Top

I have a dual monitor setup so I can watch the changes in game as they happen on task manager, the most significant things that happen is, the first time you open the research panel, it goes up from 460 to 580k memory usage, but I don't think thats it, whatever is happening I can determine happens early in the game, the only thing that significantly slowed down the game for me so far is researching basic equipment, it snail paced turns, and from that point the game became extremely slow, so what I'm going to do is attempt to go through all the research without the war tree, and see if that helps, I will custom a map with just me and a bunch of resources around me so I can do this. 

Reply #100 from Elemental Forums Top

I just had two "out of memory" error windows popup.  Not sure if that was just a weird error, or if it means something more.

The goodies - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3083208/elemental_82.zip