Memory Allocation Failures

I thought I would keep a running track of my MAFs if there is no objection.
Hoping maybe one of the more talented modders out there, can come up with a fix.
I have created the boot file and it definately helped. I also doubled my memory available to be used as well. My graphic settings are on medium in game.
I am aware that the Huge Map is a part of the problem, but the crashes occur at smaller file sizes then I have played before with the Mods such as "FFH2" and "The Ancient Mediterranean. These game saves would max out around 1600k or so.
I will record the first five crashes, and then move on to another test before recording again.


First Report 03/28/10
Wild Mana v 7.53 as the Ljosalfar
Map is Huge Erubus Continent, All X & Y with 12 players.

1st Crash = Turn 362, 861K
2nd Crash = Turn 370, 885k
3rd Crash = Turn 373, 891k
4th Crash = Turn 381, 926k
5th Crash = Turn 382, 926k This crash was so severe, it totally corrupted v 7.53 to where I could not even get to the start menu to load or start a new game.

do you still have the savegame from turn 362? That would be great for testing. In that case remove Wildmana720.fpk from the Assets folder and see if you get less MAFs.

Sephi said:

... In that case remove Wildmana720.fpk from the Assets folder and see if you get less MAFs.

Click to expand...

Hi Sephi!

I was quite surprised by reading that. Is gameplay able to do without it?
Regarding my savegame under 7.53 I could'nt even load it when the 720.fpk isn't available.
Generally spoken - is there a different handling concerning MAFs and CTDs issues? As I had mentionned under "Bugs" and my experiencing with CTDs in late games in relation with the advisor screens, I'm wondering whether there is perhaps a progessing conflict with the BUG implementation. But CTDs occure also now during the ai turn anyway (currently beyond turn 500, epic)

It's necessary for gameplay. But to reduce the MAFs we first need to understand what is causing them and all we can do is some try and error.

Most CTDs in Civ4 Mods are caused by Null pointer exceptions. C++ is quite errorprone for that. basically you want to access something that does not exist. These are easy to deal with as long as they can be reproduced with a savegame (like load save, end turn, crash)
I think MAFs unlike the Null pointer exceptions give you an error message "not enough memory" or whatever, never had a MAF so don't know for sure. They are much harder to deal with since they are caused in a part of the programm that cannot be modified.

If the game crashes when you open an adivisor it is definetly a MAF. In that case please try to remove the Wildmana720.fpk and see if it gets better.

thanks for replying so swiftly, Sephi

You never had a single MAF yet? And, besides, MAFs are supposed to be regular on civ mods? On what a machine are you playing/working/trying...??
Because, as far as I am concerned, I'm still wondering whether it's my very machine which is the source of trouble.
Following the advice of Vehem upon the boot.ini customization I felt a little uncomfortable, to say the least, right from the start because even if my system beholds 3 GB RAM indeed, WinXP itself is only able to initialize 2,75 of them (250 MB seem to be lost do not ask where). So I rechecked the ini with 2048 MB (instead of Vehem's 3072), which might be just enough for this game and that amount of memory should be reliably there, enough for civ if requested for any allocation.

As for the MAF formula itself, goddamm, what does it say? Something about "bad allocation" on module alpha or omega. Anything in that direction I'll precisely write it down the next time.

Do you mean removing the .fkp file in a running game? Surely not. For I can't load a save with the file removed ante start of wildmana. I cannot try and error right now because I've just made a clean install of 7.20 + 7.54 and on for a new game on erebuscontinents, small this time, with just four opponents, to calm things done a little bit I hope in the later game era.

Greetings

Sephi said:

do you still have the savegame from turn 362? That would be great for testing. In that case remove Wildmana720.fpk from the Assets folder and see if you get less MAFs.

Click to expand...

Sephi,

I doubt if turn 362 is still there, I did not think to save each crash individually. I just reloaded and played until the next crash.

Once it hard crashed, i then uploaded it here. Then started a new test as the Khazad.

I will save the next "First Crash" and upload when it occurs on my current test.

At my day job at the moment, will check in later this evening.

MAFs are a known problem in big Civ4 Mods like FFH (atleast in the past), Fall Further, Rise of Mankind and lately also Wildmana. I suspect that the main culprit are not optimized art files. For example if you open an advisor screen in Wildmana a lot of Art is loaded. Art files are also loaded in the RAM and they can take quite a lot of RAM.

I have only 2GB of RAM on Vista 64 but I can play huge Erebuscontinents maps with close to 3000units without any crash.

two things you can try:
1 Remove the fkp file before starting Wildmana. See if it gets better
2. Not remove the file but enter BUG menu, choose "Disable the Flavor Background" in Cityscreen and see if Advisor screen is better now.

Avitavas,

It is definately NOT your machine. Their are too many MAFs occuring from too many sources for it to be a hardware issue. As I noted in my original post, i have file saves twice as large from other CIV Mods with no MAF crashes. It is definately something that is a part of Wild Mana that is causing these to occur.

Sephi is correct we just need to narrow down what part is the culprit and work on it from there.

Sephi do you have an FTP type account that we could use? We have one at TAM where I could upload full game files to our Development Server using an FTP client program (I have a full version of Smart FTP).

Hi graywarden,

yep, MAF's are indeed too redundant among the players and diverse hard configurations. I just thought for my part to "narrow down" and properly to tune my own configuration with real RAM capacities for civ to work with.

Sephi: I must shamely admit that I use already to disable the flavor back, not in terms of unawarely avoiding issues as a side effect, but because especially the research screen looks a bit less confusing with the classic background... The civ backs are nevertheless great of course 'though.
By the way, with this option checked, I noticed that sometimes it is the city screen which is disabled while the research screen stay flavoured, and vice versa.
But, alas, this option has not disabled any source of MAF/CTD for me anyway 'till now I'm afraid

avitas said:

Sephi: I must shamely admit that I use already to disable the flavor back, not in terms of unawarely avoiding issues as a side effect, but because especially the research screen looks a bit less confusing with the classic background... The civ backs are nevertheless great of course 'though.
By the way, with this option checked, I noticed that sometimes it is the city screen which is disabled while the research screen stay flavoured, and vice versa.
But, alas, this option has not disabled any source of MAF/CTD for me anyway 'till now I'm afraid

Click to expand...

so the flavor screens are likely not the problem then. Did you try to remove the fpk file?

Sephi said:

Did you try to remove the fpk file?

Click to expand...

Yes, I removed the 720.fpk from the assets, like I once did before and No, I cannot test this way under decent play conditions - at least from an esthetic point of view - for a lots of icons and models are then missed and I could only attempt a fully new civ, the red Blobbars, or something (ok, not a really new or good joke): missing art and red blobs all around

Hello,
I'm getting MAF's everytime I load game, except it's loading after running the game. If I try to reload or start another game without restarting the whole game I get MAF during Graphics Initializing.
I presume that save game would be for no good cause it doesn't matter which save it is.

avitas said:

Yes, I removed the 720.fpk from the assets, like I once did before and No, I cannot test this way under decent play conditions - at least from an esthetic point of view - for a lots of icons and models are then missed and I could only attempt a fully new civ, the red Blobbars, or something (ok, not a really new or good joke): missing art and red blobs all around

Click to expand...

you don't have to play the whole game without the fpk, just when you get to a point with lots of MAFs.

Vitek said:

Hello,
I'm getting MAF's everytime I load game, except it's loading after running the game. If I try to reload or start another game without restarting the whole game I get MAF during Graphics Initializing.
I presume that save game would be for no good cause it doesn't matter which save it is.

Click to expand...

if you have a save where loading and then loading again in game produces a MAF, can you please try to to remove the Wildmana720.fpk file from mods\FFH Wildmana\Assets folder and test if you still get one by loading+loading again?

anyway, good to know that the crash happens while Graphics Initializing, that a first sign that my theory for the cause of the MAFs might be true.

Sephi said:

if you have a save where loading and then loading again in game produces a MAF, can you please try to to remove the Wildmana720.fpk file from mods\FFH Wildmana\Assets folder and test if you still get one by loading+loading again?

anyway, good to know that the crash happens while Graphics Initializing, that a first sign that my theory for the cause of the MAFs might be true.

Click to expand...

Sephi,

As a general rule, the MAF crash is during the end turn process. I would say in my test this is 80% to 90% of the time once that threshold is reached. when I reload the last save, as a rule it will be the turn that crashed. So the process made it to the autosave (which i have configed for every turn) but could not complete to the new turn.

The other time it is experienced is during a LOAD GAME process which i generally dont report because it can be worked around. Here is how that generally goes.

I am testing/playing and want to reload the last turn. I go to the menu and load the save game directly while the existing turn is in memory. 90% of the time this will cause a MAF during the load.
Restart the Game Execute, load the save cleanly and almost always it will reload without a problem. The exception was last evenings total crash.

graywarden said:

Sephi,

As a general rule, the MAF crash is during the end turn process. I would say in my test this is 80% to 90% of the time once that threshold is reached. when I reload the last save, as a rule it will be the turn that crashed. So the process made it to the autosave (which i have configed for every turn) but could not complete to the new turn.

Click to expand...

I've been getting these, too. Around turn 500 on standard/epic.

Hi you all

Like Vitek I noticed bad allocation issues and therefore crash at the very popping up of the graphics initializing while loading a save. On what I can look at the loading window when the process succeeds is four stepped:
(overall) Initializing (takes its time...) - Init Graphics (takes now a lot of attention but no time at all) - Setup Players - Setup Map - then short black screen (initializing of ) - at last, game screen/view.
When successfull: it's curiously this very Graphics Ini notification which pops up just in a glance, even shorter in time imo than Setup Players which lasts itself well shorter than the Setup Map message. I find this strange, precisely because Sephi was right with suspecting some graphical elements being the trouble makers in some way. Therefore, regarding the huge amount of art involved, with what exactly the prog is struggling during such a ridiculous short loading period, significant enough however for being able to mess up the whole process?

Sephi - up to now I still haven't understood your advice about the removal of the 720.fpk file. Two dead ends for me in doing so:
either you can start a new game, then red blobs and lots of art files missing
or you attempt to load a previous game, then no loading possible at all/CTD

A few further thoughts on that matter:
What processes in the background are very inclined to ruin the ongoing game?
I thought of perhaps music players (winamp). I read somewhere that this game could crash because the ingame music is disabled, for whatever reasons. Besides it's quite bizarre as the ingame music itself do (rare for games) still play while loading a save. What might be your experiences with this?
Are there known standard background progs (antivirus et al) involved in issues?
I think also, since it's quite tempting because fast, the idea of minimizing the game in order to fulfill other vital tasks, like this very one here , is not a very great one after all (ram...).
Are there differentiated CTD/MAF behaviours observed while playing fullscreened or windowed?

Though and like many folks I find it as cute as practical, I do still feel uncomfortable with the implemented BUG (still 3.6?) for I've experienced many, many MAFs in late games just by activating the advisors screens, in which BUG seems heavily involved. As the BUG mod is very popular far beyond the FFH world, I'm also still wondering why it is to date not even planned for being implemented in i.e. Orbis or RifE but because increasingly tricky to handle as the modmods grow big and sophisticated? This relationship is perhaps only troubled in my own dumb estimation though
Anyway, in my current game (7.54,small,epic) I start right ahead with as many BUG options unchecked as possible. For instance the advisors TAB: I've noticed no crucial differences with all checked/undone. Or the clock one. In particular the era relevant options. Good for civ, completely without use here.

Well, we'll see.
Greetings (and on the battles go...)

I am also getting rediculuous amount of MAFs mid to end game - whereas my human opponent does not get them as frequently. So, could be something that got corrupted in my game install so I'll reinstall the mod.

wapamingo said:

I am also getting rediculuous amount of MAFs mid to end game - whereas my human opponent does not get them as frequently. So, could be something that got corrupted in my game install so I'll reinstall the mod.

Click to expand...

since which version do you get the MAFs?

I am currently optimizing the art files, so hopefully they will cause a lot less MAF issues next patch.

newest patch, 7.54