Memory-fix by Harkonnen is out!

Thank you for this patch, Civ4 is now running much more better than before. Before this patch, it was not possible to play the game for more than about 5 minutes or 10 if i was lucky, then the mouse was freezing, but now, i can play about 30 to 60 minutes, before the mouse is freezing, then i have to save with the keyboard, exit the game and restart the computer, because the mouse is also freezing in windows. Any idea what's the problem ist?

My System:
AMD Athlon 1800+
MSI RX800SE 256 MB
512 MB RAM
Asus A7V333 Mainboard
 
matthias73,

I had the same problem with a similar system and threw in another 256 meg of ram and it greatly reduced. I would guess that as your map becomes more crowded with units and graphics that your system can't handle it and that a ram upgrade would work wonders.
 
My machine has 2 GB of Memory, a 6600GT GPU and a Barton XP.

My huge game in 2150AD used 840 mb before the patch, now it uses 640 mb (- 200 mb!) plus it doesn't CTD anymore, but I cannot use insane mode.

Thank you very much, now I don't have to remember to save every single turn!
 
I'm running Civ 4 on a laptop, 2.8GHz, 512RAM GeForce FX 5200 graphics card. Your memory fix has definitely improved the game's performance as it was really struggling on large maps. Now even huge maps are playable, even if slightly laggy, so a big thank you Harkonnen!:)

The only slight problem is that the wonder movies seem to be worse now. Somewhat curiously the first few of the game (Stonehenge in particular) seem to just stick on the first few frames. The later ones are more choppy than they were before the patch, but do still run. I was wondering if it was something to do with stonehenge centering the map, but the Oracle movie also has the same problem. The intro and victory movies work fine.

It doesn't really bother me, since I always skipped the movies anyway, and the improvements to the game speed more than make up for it. :)
 
Hi Harky!

Your patch is now listed among the few most important 'notices' in main Civfanatics screen beside 1.09 patch and GOTM.

Congratulations! :goodjob:
 
Gaias said:
I believe it has already been mentioned about the problem when zooming out. I do believe that Harkonnen has it fixed in his unreleased current patch. He has mentioned that he might be able to get the patch out in 3 or 4 days.

@Harkonnen
For some reason my BIOS will not let me change the AGP Aperture Size, more specifically it does not even show it. Is there anyway (application, BIOS Flash, etc) that will allow me to change said setting?

Dear Harkonnen,

I reread this thread trying to find an example of my situation, and I found only 1 similar post (sorry, forgot post ID). This patch has me excited that I will be able to play hotseat without a delay between turns; I tried a large save that was taking a good two or three minutes between turns, and this patch brought that down to about 7 seconds.

Now when I zoom out, without fail, the game crashes to desktop with video set to 180. A reply was posted to my earlier note mentioning this problem has already been addressed. I see a lot of posts describing a lag when zooming to globe view, but only the one describing an actual crash when zooming out. Again, the game shows massive improvement with your patch, but crashes to desktop everytime I try to zoom out - it crashes at the point where the game would normally slow down/stop for a moment when zooming out. I lowered the video option to 50, and this has reduced the number of crashes so I can now expand to the globe view. Here the frame rate is about every second or two.

If anyone could advise if I'm a rare case or if you have any suggestions, it would be much appreciated.


PS, Gaias, I had to take a look through my mb manual to find where AGP settings are hidden in BIOS. Found them in Advanced/Chipset in BIOS on my board. Maybe yours are hard to find, too?
 
polyphemus
I have 2048-2048 (fixed 2gb swap file on drive D where Windows is, and civ4 on E). If you have slow-downs or visual bugs, increasing it will not help. If you have CTDs, setting something like 3gb-3gb fixed size might help.

ravarse
Current version of the fix helped almost noone with Ti/Mx cards. Probably the next one will.

Ottoman79
I am happy for you :) Look for an update though...

lord_graywolfe
Your card is PCI and that's why it has no AGP... Well, it's pretty low-end I must say, so only next version of the fix should work fine with it (can't promise anyway).

Loopy
You definitely shouldn't alt-tab during loading with 'insane_mode = 1', but if it also fails for 'insane_mode = 0'... I will check the function pointed by the offset you have given. Thanks for the help!

lolmeup
Please check this thread frome something like page 17. I think you might have AGP off. Just your video memory size shouldn't cause such trouble.

Howey
If you are playing in windowed mode, this might be caused by some graphics-intensive application in background. Flash banner for example. If you are going full-screen this might be due to alt-tabbing. In any case setting 'insane_mode = 0' can solve these problems.

Quaqi
Thanks :)

Gaias
If even your BIOS does not have it, then probably you don't have it... Probably this is due to PCI-Express card. I'm not yet acquainted enough with PCI-E technology to have a clue on answers about AGP vs. PCI-E, especially with my fix. All I can say for now is the thing I am saying to everyone on last 2 pages: the update might fix it just because it's effects will have a little different nature.

Bast
The globe view will be fixed in the sense that it won't be anymore slower if you had it faster before the fix. There is no code yet which will make "Disable Buildings in Globe View" to actually work. This will come either in installer release or in the next release; this thing should make it faster then it was before.

TrOpical
Yes, Firaxis knows that - I saw some posts by Soren on other not-so-popular forums. Currently they consider it as a "stop-gap" solution until they release their own memory-saving solution. I don't know if they are bluffing or not... the message appeared around 10th December, so it weakens the strength of Soren's claim (by 10th my fix was in full force on this forum).

cerebusdapope
No, you should apply these changes to 'Harkonnen.ini' file - it's one of the files extracted from .zip (or directly downloaded via alternative link in post #1). 'Civ4.ini' (in case you want to access it, though not necessary with my fix) can be found this way: just double click '_Civ4Config' shortcut in Civiliation4 folder - the folder where you put my 3 files.

KevinTMC
As for now, setting 'vid_mem_usage = 50' (or 55) might solve this issue or make it less frequent. Another possible solution is restarting the game once it happens - it should delay this problem several turns further. As long-run solution I can suggest subscribing this thread to get intermediate release notification from me to test if this problem becomes solved. Thank you.

Lary33
Double-clicking savegames (including autosaves) is as minor bug with current version of the fix; it is solved, but not yet available for download while I work on other issues. Just start the game (civ4 shortcut) and click 'Load Game' from game's menu, then select your last autosave FROM GAME MENU and it should work.

sumoworm
Wow! Very strange bug indeed... I am personally using primarily keyboard it was ok all the time. Perhaps you were running in windowed mode (not necessary actually), and it just loosed input focus. Try clicking with left mouse button somewhere on the map (I mean big part of the screen), and see if keyboard works again. It would sooner start drawing circles on your monitor than affect keyboard or sound...

Thank you for your kind words in your 2nd paragraph! :) At least I have all your "thank you-s", so it's not an entire waste of time... When I won my 1st olimpiad in maths being nothing before, it was a concept of success, and it changed my life. Today I've got a concept of recognition which will change it either... It means more than cash just because it's direct application into pleasure of life (like eating tasty food is another form of direct application for those who like it). Even in terms of cash, you won't make a single dollar without a granule of belief in success, and this belief has risen tremendously over these days. So thanks to everyone! :)

Matthias73
Freezing mouse looks like some overheating, but since you've got this later with less memory usage (my fix), it is probably somethign with motherboard, rather than with video. Just mouse cursor is very very hardware thing... At least with my PC, frozen mouse means frozen everything, even keyboard. Whole Windows might be kneeled when mouse pointer still rolls over, even animated and with XP shadow.

MrCynical
Wonders movies will probably become better with the update. So far I am glad that major issues are now ok with your system.

kettyo
Wow! :) Thanks for pointing that, I wasn't expecting anything except official patches and GOTM events to appear there.

Thunderfall
Thank you! :goodjob:

P.S: For the 4th time writing big replies in notepad first saves me a lot of nerves when the forums refuses to get reply :D
 
low end?? how do you figure that. it may be a few months old but they havent jumped that far ahead since then, i do wish i had pick up the 6800 cause that has a custom setting for civ IV

this is my system info:

CPU-AMD Anthlon 64 3200+....Processor-GeForce FX 5200....BIOS-4.34.20.42.37....IRQ-16.....BUS-AGP 8X....Memory-128.....Forceware Version-81.95...TV Encoder Type- Intergrated....RAM-512
 
on the virtual MEM screen there in option not to use a Paging File..do you know if that would help in speeding up the game?
 
Joined mainly to thank you for the fix, although I have still some issues eventually I was able to find a set of options that enables me to play with your huge savegame (which always caused a bluescreen with an error in nv4_disp.dll before).

The only settings that I have found work right now are medium quality, windowed mode, insane_mode=1 and 160 for video ram. I have an AMD 3500+ with 2 gigs of ram and two Nvidia 6800GT cards in SLI. Playing in fullscreen with insane_mode=0 causes things to crash unfortunately.

The globe view is quite slow (from when the clouds appear) but I guess others are having the same issue as well, the wonder movies chop for a few seconds but are smooth afterwards, definitely not that big of a deal.
 
lord_graywolfe
'low-end' I mean about video card. PCI versions are useful only for dual/triple/quad-headed systems (i.e. several monitors), but they are slow when it comes to exchanging data. Either you have misspoken some specs (namely PCI videocard) or I misunderstood something... In other aspects - yes, your system is good.

wdreamsmaycome
Thank you. Yes, the globe view is a problem right now (and many have reported it became worse, I am working on the issue). Please watch e-mail used to register here. I will PM you (and others) to test it again when update is ready.
 
i started up a new game and decided to try something diffrent this time and went with a custom map. i am to 1000 ad and its working great no black map problems with wonder movies or leader pop ups. the only slight glitch is the wonder movies being jerky. why does it play better on the custom map than the regular ones? i cant even play a large map on a regular game but it works fine now on custom. i find that a bit odd
 
hello, i've had problems since the game came out, before the patch it used to just crash to desktop alot, after the official patch it made a civilization4.e.exe error when id be about 1-2 hours into the game.

I tested your patch and it looked like things would work this time, but no, 2 hours of play then suddenyl a crash to desktop.

Here's a zip with the log files, MSInfo and DXDiag if u got time to look over them, i really need help
http://iggy.evilweb.net/Logs.zip
 
Unbelievable. Have my babies, please?

This patch has fixed ALL my problems. No more CTDs or waiting 5 min every turn. Today marked the the first time I ever built a Modern Armor (could never reach the modern era before this patch).

Thanks. And Firaxis should give you a job.
 
OK, I'm about to try this patch out, and I'm following all the details pretty well, but I have one question- What exactly is Insane Mode??

Thanks is advance, and cheers to Harkonnen- not only for doing Firaxis' job for them, but also for being so accessible is these forums:goodjob:
 
Siccmade
Thanks for the logs, it seems to be ok though... What can I offer now is the following settings 'vid_mem_usage = 120, insane_mode = 0'. This might at least make crashing later or solve it completely.

HounddogLGS
I am sorry, I cannot say right now what 'insane_mode' actually is :) For reasons of Firaxis still to have interest in my code in case they actually have some own alternative. I think what is claimed not legitimate in D3D docs, still remains actually legitimate long ago, thanks to John Carmack. Quake2 always had alt-tabbing problems, and Quake3 had it blocked. Probably they used same bad trick. I didn't check Q2/Q3 sources, but blocking alt-tabbing is the thing almost required with insane_mode...

Thanks to John we have OpenGL in some games, otherwise it wouldn't hit PC or even consoles. So this man had power to bring entire API to Windows station. He also had enough power to bring some extensions into OGL/D3D with Doom3. I think stencil shadow improvements like double-sided stencil render state appeared thanks to his tech. So I see no reason for the feature used by 'insane_mode' not to have become appeared due to his efforts as well.
 
Harkonnen said:
Siccmade
Thanks for the logs, it seems to be ok though... What can I offer now is the following settings 'vid_mem_usage = 120, insane_mode = 0'. This might at least make crashing later or solve it completely.

it actually made the game studder even more, i appreaciate your help though and thanks for making this patch even if it didnt work for me, a last resort is to hope the officials will somehow fix this on the next patch, ill keep an eye on this thread and try whatever updates you come with for sure though, thank you
 
hey hark!

thanks for your patch!
doing a great job! (both: the patch and you ;) )
memory usage is now down to ~ 650MB from >700 in my savegame!
no swaping anymore! :woohoo:

i'm going to mess around with my graphicsettings and your .ini file to get the best performance, later this day.
will report later.

so long and keep up your great work!!
 
Hey I guess I was right my T1 went down early today... And is back up obviously. so I'm good for at least a month... Crosses fingers...
 
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