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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 #101 from Elemental Forums Top

There are a few posts about OoM errors in 32 bit versions of windows, but the majority of them seem to be from 64 bit windows (like my Windows 7 64 bit).  I recently managed to resurrect my old Vista 32 laptop, installed Elemental, and played it for a while.  The memory grew to be about 800M, then I turned to do something else for a half an hour or so, and when I went back to the game task manager showed that the memory had dropped to about 300M.  I've done the same thing on my Win7 64 system in the last few days, and have never seen the memory usage drop like that.

So Frogboy's guess posted above that the garbage collector might not be working on 64 bit systems might be a good lead to follow.

Reply #102 from Elemental Forums Top

Frog,

I see one thing in this thread you keep asking for , but alas I think that is the problem. I run 32 bit proffesion xp at home with this game and I crash everytime I play. The problem is, no matter which way I configuer the game (no sounds, windows mode or not etc etc) anytime I have these crashes it hard crashes the computer. As some put it , I found to make the game playable to a point, if I save manually (auto save off) and then end the game and restart it, I can continue to play, However the memory never dumps out. Funny thing is  , you can look at your memory usage and it shows all free (other then the basic os stuff running ) after shutting the game down, yet if you restart the game without a reboot the game loads instantly with barly any hard drive access and it still shows the basic usuage of memory as it did if you shut it down.

1. turning off auto allowed me to actually play a longer game ,with it on it crashes sooner but in anycase I can never finish a game.

2. the game freaks out allot... one of the biggest issues I have seen sense last patch and never seen till now is the quest items after going level 2 and above in questing work or don't . I qualify for these and two might be right next to each other , one can be done the other doesn't rejister. Even thou it "shows" it with a graphic and a mouse over pop up, you walk on it and no message even thou I qualify. This is ALLOT now.

3. The dissapearing units- all these errors happen after about turn 50 and more.. it is definitly a memory leak and funny thing is as you hare having a hard time figuring it out, I am having hard time as the user figuring out where the issues start. 

 Looking back at what I wrote and think more on it seems questing is the issue here as I am a huge quest person when I don't quest I can play the game longer.

 

-Chaintm

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #103 from Elemental Forums Top

This game is 10x more stable on my notebook (which uses a Intel Dual Core, Win 7 x64, 4 GB RAM, Radeon HD Mobile 3400) compared to my desktop (AMD 965 Phenom X4, Win 7 x64, 8 GB RAM, 2x Radeon HD 5850 in Crossfire)

Using the exact same settings (I auto-save every turn) and sovereign builds. It could be an issue with the AMD processors?

Reply #104 from Elemental Forums Top

Nah, I've got an intel and I still get them. Could be quad core though, I wonder if adjusting the affinity might help.

Reply #105 from Elemental Forums Top

wondering where they are with this.  Many posts about moving forward, etc.but this is a deal breaker for me...simply not playable.

Reply #106 from Elemental Forums Top

How is the hunt going for the cause of the memory leaks, Frogboy?  Do you think you will be able to fix it in time for the big final version/release?  It is a game-breaking bug (and would probably seriously affect reviews) but I am 100% sure you already know that. 

Best regards,
Steven.

Reply #107 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm sure someones on it, their probably just busy with G4.

Reply #108 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah they're probably busy, but an update on this would be cool if there's anything else we could be doing for them on this issue.

Reply #109 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah I am sure they are busy but an update would be nice.  At the moment we are looking at a huge bug for the people that have it.  Unfortunately it seems to be working properly for the majority of users.  Based on that, I am not getting any real warm and fuzzies but then again I have yet to be able to run the game from the very beginning so I may just be bitter. :annoyed:

Reply #110 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting GCFL, reply 109
Yeah I am sure they are busy but an update would be nice.  At the moment we are looking at a huge bug for the people that have it.  Unfortunately it seems to be working properly for the majority of users.  Based on that, I am not getting any real warm and fuzzies but then again I have yet to be able to run the game from the very beginning so I may just be bitter.

 

I'm wondering if it exists for a lot of people, but is just not the same speed. For example some people here are able to crash after 10-20 turns. I don't get the OOM thing until I play for about 200 turns straight. The game also gets noticeably slower around ~150 turns. I didn't even think it was affecting me until the game started slowing down, then before I knew it I got an OOM error.

Reply #111 from Elemental Forums Top

Come to think of it, yea - the game loads a LOT faster when i restart it, than when I run it for the first time after a reboot of the PC. I don't think that always happens, but I noticed a few times where the game was loaded long before I expected it.

Reply #112 from Elemental Forums Top

I have noticed that sometimes elemental will not disappear from the taskmanager after closing, and that counts crash or regular exit.

It is also very hard or possibly very memory consuming to quit an ongoing game to main menu, and trying to start a new game without exiting to desktop/clearing taskmanager in between.

Reply #113 from Elemental Forums Top

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8942084/Elemental0_98-2010-08-03T19-59-28-611.zip

My first actual OOM crash, I've had many more 'normal' ones.

Had been playing mostly on the cloth map for quite a while.  Seemed more stable then I expected.  Got a few more tech's researched so I had been in and out of the store re-equipping champions and Sovereign, then had the OOM crash.

 

Reply #116 from Elemental Forums Top

decided to play a game in my i7 win7 64bit box with dual screens & taskmanager on the second screen

loaded a save, when finished loading & displaying game ram was approx 680mb used but as there was 3 shrines in view and the ram was continuesly increasing without doing ANYTHING no end turn, nothing the RAM useage was increasing rapidly ie within 2 minutes it had passed 850mb used, I then stared to zoom out to clothmap slowly, it was NOT until I got to clothmap that the ram increase stopped. all of this in the ONE turn.

the above suggests to me that the ram leak MIGHT be related to the sparkly effects and fountain effects.

harpo

 

Reply #117 from Elemental Forums Top

Maybe the error depends on the dot net framework version?

Reply #120 from Elemental Forums Top

Sounds like they fixed it, according to the latest journal by Frogboy:

"And of course bug fixes galore, especially on memory (this got fixed in beta 5, I was quite concerned on this one, but thanks to users helping us, we were able to track this down to our effects system not deallocating properly and on certain newer ATI cards on 64-bit windows it could lose 100 megabytes per turn)."

So hopefully that marks the end of that nasty bug.

Reply #121 from Elemental Forums Top

We should make sure ... of course that would mean having to test Beta 5 :|

Reply #122 from Elemental Forums Top

not really since my system runs neither.  man, this is frustrating.  We shall see.

Reply #123 from Elemental Forums Top

Just experienced it,

dxdiag: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8399358/DxDiag.txt

Debug: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8399358/debug%20NEW%205.err 

Zip File: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8399358/Elemental0_98-2010-08-07T15-04-45-571.zip

Saved Game - Crashed at 3:04 saved at 3:00: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8399358/AutoSave.EleSav

 

Short summary of dxdiag: Windows 7 64bit, Nvidia Geforce Gtx 260, Intel Quad cpu

 

 

Reply #124 from Elemental Forums Top

I have a save game on my i7 win7 64bit ati5850 system that I load the game from the autosave,

scroll out to see the island,

then go into the shop from janusk in my capital,

buy the best armour and weapon for him,

it out of memory errors out of the shop ON THE FIRST TURN AFTER LOADING with the game set to cloth map mode, and it does not create the zip, BUT does create the dmp which I then rared,

added the debug.err, save game, map, unit folders and the dxdiags.

also have tried turning off the music in the audio settings and have had a significant decrease in the ram increase, so there might be  memory leak in the music code

if there is any further info/files needed let me know

harpo