I Fixed The Maf Error... Here Is How!!

[MarkJohnson]

Rise of Mankind 2.8 FULL, with the 2.8 hotfix 3 (that should be 2.81). And im not using the mega civ pack nor any other modmods.

Hmm, I couldn't seem to get it to run at all. I have only used a couple of mods in the past and always had trouble setting them up.

I download 2.8 full and the 2.81 patch.
I extracted the folders in my c:\program files (x86)\2K Games\Fraxis Games\Sid Mier's Civilization 4 Complete\Beyond the Sword\Mods

I start the game, go to load a mod, select Rise of Mankind and then it closes and tries to restart the game but seems to error out on restarting and just leaves me at the desktop.

I then try loading your game from withing BTS and I get an error,"Cannot load version 302, expected version 301 or lower" and then I get a popup from windows saying error and to close and clock it installed succeffully.

I then try to double click the quicksave file and it starts up bts, but it goes in a low-res mode and tries to start a new game. It acts like it is in warlords mode or something.

anyway, is there a trick to get it loading, or am I missing something. also, this is a fresh install with only a 3.19 patch from within the game.

-=Mark=-

 

[MarkJohnson]

I got the RoM mod going finally. Tutrns out the in-game updating doesn't work. I downloaded patch 3.19 and it is working except I get an error when I load your quicksave. It says error decompressing data file.

Can you zip it up and re-upload it again?

Thanks
-=Mark=-
ps... I'll try a game in the mean time. Which map did you select in the game? and all other settings as well, in case I can't get the saved game to load.

 

[MarkJohnson]

OK, I had a little problem running the game after loading the RoM mod. It turns out I had to,"Run as Administrator". Luckily I have the option in the new Win7 games menu by right-clicking the BTS icon.

Maybe try the, "Run as Admin" option and see if it plays better now.

Good luck
-=Mark=-

 

[guczy]

I got the RoM mod going finally. Tutrns out the in-game updating doesn't work. I downloaded patch 3.19 and it is working except I get an error when I load your quicksave. It says error decompressing data file.

Can you zip it up and re-upload it again?

Thanks
-=Mark=-
ps... I'll try a game in the mean time. Which map did you select in the game? and all other settings as well, in case I can't get the saved game to load.

Here it is, hope it will work. And im always running the older gams as administrator, doesnt help though. TBH im getting more and more convinced that i need more RAM for this to work.

Edit: settings: perfect world map script, large map, start anywhere, default number of starting civs, all victories enabled cept for space, everything else default

 

[MarkJohnson]

I'm still getting errors on loading that file. Maybe it is choking on the quicksave. Do you have a regular save? If not, I'm playing a game right now. It is very, very llong and I'm about 100AD and going strong. I should be finished maybe in a day or two.

What year are you at right now?
-=Mark=-
ps. I'm not trying to kill anyone to get as much stuff in the game as possible.

 

[guczy]

I'm still getting errors on loading that file. Maybe it is choking on the quicksave. Do you have a regular save? If not, I'm playing a game right now. It is very, very llong and I'm about 100AD and going strong. I should be finished maybe in a day or two.

What year are you at right now?
-=Mark=-
ps. I'm not trying to kill anyone to get as much stuff in the game as possible.

Im in year 1906, oddly no wars going on, despite everyone hating eachother. (except for me, everyone loves me

 

[MarkJohnson]

Well, I still can't get it to load. I keep getting can decompress data.

I did however, make it to 1983 in my game with 15 civs counting myself and it plays fine. It lags a bit on turns, especially the more civs that are at war. I'm still at peace and doing well.

you are probably right, you will probably just need more memory. It might possibly be your video card as well, but mine is a GTX 205 at 1920 x 1200 resolution with all graphics settings maxed out and I have no paging issues. Yours will probably have less video memory and lower screen resolutions, so it should be any trouble, other than just a faulty card that doesn't handle big loads.

Not sure what others issues it could be as you have a fresh install of windows, so malware should be an issue.

-=Mark=-
ps, what exactly was your error and where/when did it occur?

 

[guczy]

Well, I still can't get it to load. I keep getting can decompress data.

I did however, make it to 1983 in my game with 15 civs counting myself and it plays fine. It lags a bit on turns, especially the more civs that are at war. I'm still at peace and doing well.

you are probably right, you will probably just need more memory. It might possibly be your video card as well, but mine is a GTX 205 at 1920 x 1200 resolution with all graphics settings maxed out and I have no paging issues. Yours will probably have less video memory and lower screen resolutions, so it should be any trouble, other than just a faulty card that doesn't handle big loads.

Not sure what others issues it could be as you have a fresh install of windows, so malware should be an issue.

-=Mark=-
ps, what exactly was your error and where/when did it occur?

Well, the error is the most basic MAF: "Bad memory allocation". My video card is not really the best, but TBH i dont think that it is a problem, im pretty sure its because of the memory. I'm also sure about not having malware, im all for security. Thank you again for your help, i will solve this issue in 2 weeks when i get another 2 gigs of RAM, now i jsut need a 64bit WIndows...(which as a student is for free, so it wont be a problem)

 

[MarkJohnson]

Rise of Mankind 2.8 FULL, with the 2.8 hotfix 3 (that should be 2.81). And im not using the mega civ pack nor any other modmods.

It was bugging me this evening that I couldn't get you file to work. So I went to my backup computer and installed CIV IV Complete and proceeded to install everything again. I did a re-read of your messages and this one always bugged me, so I went searching for this hotfix, as the author had replaced it with 2.81, and found it. I installed the hotfix version instead and VIOLA!! it loads and plays just fine!

It starts at end of turn so I press ENTER to start the next turn. a little over a minute it starts my turn with no problems. I then press ENTER to start the second turn and 2 and a half minutes later I get a civ waiting to trade. I click through to the end of the turn to see how slow it's going to be to the third turn and it was a tad shorter of about 2 full minutes, but no civs wanting to talk, so that may have sped it up.

My backup system is an E5200 (which is a dual core pentium 4) with a smallish ATI 4650 video card, and 4GB RAM. so ours systems are very similar except you have an older but faster/bigger video card and 32-bit bit Win 7.

I'm sure the 4GB of RAM will serve you well!

-=Mark=-
out of curiosity, wow long do your turns take? n Curious to see if it's RAM or Video card slow downs, or maybe both?

btw... My main rig takes maybe 20-30 secs a turn normally, but it is a Core i7 920 with a GTX 295 and 6GB RAM.

 

[Novawatcher]

Slyflyer,

For a first post this opening was right on target. Been dealing with this issue for a while in GgalCiv2 : Dread Lords and though this really wasn't the same program, it solved my problem very handily. Thanks for the fix & double thanks for the download address of a really great add-on tools -the CFF Explorer.

Novawatcher

 

[Propunk]

Could someone please help me out here? I have a win XP 32 bits (portuguese) and couldn't successfully apply the changes shown on the first page. Would a kind soul help through the process?

 

[Flash1]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /3GB

Yes..

That is the stuff the program linked in the first post of the thread does

[boot loader]
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer

how do I add the 3gb switch to this?

Flash

 

[exodustpa]

Well im installed a clean version of Windows 7 Pro 64 bit and i have 4 gb ram and im still crashing with MAFs every few turns when playing Total War on a huge map with 14 civs. Im using my old save game and my graphics is already set to low. Is there anything u guys can recommend that might help?

 

[HahnHolio]

Well im installed a clean version of Windows 7 Pro 64 bit and i have 4 gb ram and im still crashing with MAFs every few turns when playing Total War on a huge map with 14 civs. Im using my old save game and my graphics is already set to low. Is there anything u guys can recommend that might help?

most likely the problem resides with the modified core files from the mod and/or
not cleaned code for unloading textures by the game ...

I got a Core2DuoE8400 with 4 gigs RAM and an ATI5770 with 1 gig of VRAM running Win7 and still get crashes from some mods, so i think the problem is with the mods developers using outdated core elements in development ...

thi sjust my best guess, ass all posted fixes here simply do not apply to Win7/my Hardware ...

cheers

HahnHolio

 

[jojoweb]

most likely the problem resides with the modified core files from the mod and/or
not cleaned code for unloading textures by the game ...

I got a Core2DuoE8400 with 4 gigs RAM and an ATI5770 with 1 gig of VRAM running Win7 and still get crashes from some mods, so i think the problem is with the mods developers using outdated core elements in development ...

thi sjust my best guess, ass all posted fixes here simply do not apply to Win7/my Hardware ...

cheers

HahnHolio

I agree, but for an amateur modder it is difficult to know which part of the code produces the MAF issue. Many people have the "bad allocation failure" message and the associated crash, regularly, with my Total War mod. But i don't have the sufficient knowledge to understand what is the matter. That is all the problem...

 

[MarkJohnson]

I've been running into this problem for years now, and it happens on all 32-bit programs and is an issue with Windows. They have fixed it a little a few times, but never completely. I even get it on my new i7 rig with 6Gb RAM and Win 7 Ult. x64. It still has the hame error. It used to give me an error around 1GB memory use by the game and pop up an eror saying problem paging video memory into ram as I have 1GB video cards. So as soon as it hit2GB the error occurs. I still get the errors and win 7 has the /3GB switch by default and installs the 32-bit applcations with the allow greater than 2gb switch. but it seems to still be crashing at the 2GB limit.

The only solution I have found is to play on smaller maps. I usually can play on large maps fine, but Huge maps always error out close to modern era and after very long sessions of several hours and dozens of turns. Very late game seems to be fine, but around modern era I really get my army going and lots of air/land/sea units roaming around. Once I've gotten controll of the board and wiped a couple civs, things mellow out.

also, adding mods may take up more RAM and cause it fill up quicker. I just use the BUG and BUG type mods and no real altered map/game mods.

also, I had more problems at 2GB of RAM than 4GB. I think the pagefile may be interfering as it is on your hard, and using hard drive memory for RAM is just way too slow! I always disable pagefile to speed things up. but even keeping it enabled makes no difference.

So try smaller maps until you can comfortably play the game. I hate big maps anyway as it makes for a very long game.

-=Mark=-

 

[Aquila SPQR]

I also had MAF errors and after a hundreth MAF in my last game I said "enough" and uninstalled Civ IV. I hope Civ V will be MAF-free (no SoD - no MAF I hope). But this 3Gb switch was not so good for me - after I added those /3Gb in my boot.ini suddenly Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2 started to behave strange. All two games were constantly freezing and I was unable to play. After removing /3Gb everything is fine.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

most likely the problem resides with the modified core files from the mod and/or
not cleaned code for unloading textures by the game ...

I got a Core2DuoE8400 with 4 gigs RAM and an ATI5770 with 1 gig of VRAM running Win7 and still get crashes from some mods, so i think the problem is with the mods developers using outdated core elements in development ...

thi sjust my best guess, ass all posted fixes here simply do not apply to Win7/my Hardware ...

cheers

HahnHolio

Just FYI, it isn't "outdated core components" in mods that cause the problem. Modder's can't change the game's graphics engine. That code was never released to the public, because it is proprietary. We can change the art files, and how the game works by Python, XML, and C++, but the underlying "core components" remain the same, and they were written in 2005, before machines commonly used more than 2 GB. The game was written for older technology, and the amount of memory used by the game is substantial. Add in the notorious memory leak, and you have a MAF just waiting to happen.

Running a very large mod with a huge map is known to cause issues. The computer has to hold a lot of things in memory, and paging out the graphics card RAM just adds to that. In most cases, it just causes things to slow down as more units must be paged in and out of memory, but eventually the user potentially hits a memory wall and the game crashes. Part of this is Windows itself, and part of it is a problem with the game and how it uses memory.

There are mods that are more prone to MAFs because of their size, but most "release" version mods have had the errors checked out and dealt with. That isn't to say that the mod doesn't always cause the problem by itself, because it can, but sloppy Python/XML/C++, is usually not the cause of a MAF. That causes other, more unfortunate errors, like C++ exceptions and loading faults. BAT 2.1 had a specific issue with late game saves, and it was due to a specific unit graphic in the art files being incorrectly defined in the XML. There was no coding involved, just something out of place. Those are the types of errors we can prevent (and we do try very hard), but MAFs are another animal all together.

 

[djenghis]

hi, i tried to fix the MAF problem and followed the guidelines.
Now i get the following message:

Runtime error
program:...BTS\civ4beyondsword.exe
this application has requested the runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact bla bla bla

i think i have a 32 bit visa (how can i check this). And i can not load a saved game from GEM, but i can load other saved games from other mods.

D.

 

[bestbrian]

GEM is too much for your machine, and most machines, AAMOF. Sorry.