A fix for the crashing to the desktop?
- Thread starter buckeye96
- Start date
Neubauer21
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
- Messages
- 11
I done the same increased my vcirtual ram to 2gig from 1 and no crashed yet
Dom Queron
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2005
- Messages
- 6
2 gigs physical ram, still crashing in late game every n turns if the map is large enough.
JiggleTheHandle
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2005
- Messages
- 63
1 gig of physical RAM and that's the only problem I've had so far (knock on wood). Not a huge deal since I'm sure it will be fixed soon but man, what a buzzkill when you're on the edge of victory with 3 turns left!Dom Queron said:
1 Gig physical and one gig virtual. 128MB 6200 Video. 2.4 GHz.
Started out with 768 MB and 64MB Video. Had movie problems and one crash to desktop during a "Normal" game. Upgraded my video that night to current level. Solved movie problem. Still crashed to desktop late in the game in Epic and Huge. Chose a Standard map. Less frequent crashes late in the game, but I noticed that when it did crash it was when scrolling the screen. Upgraded to 1 Gig physical. Less frequent crashing. Someone mentioned to increase my virtual memory to a gig. Did so. Now I'm getting MAJOR hangups when scrolling the map. All of the terrain modifications, cities, and units disapear for about 20-30 seconds, but it doesn't crash to the desktop. Well, it did a couple of times, but not too often. Hangups include the beginning of turn production queues where the system moves from city to city asking what I want to build.
Started out with 768 MB and 64MB Video. Had movie problems and one crash to desktop during a "Normal" game. Upgraded my video that night to current level. Solved movie problem. Still crashed to desktop late in the game in Epic and Huge. Chose a Standard map. Less frequent crashes late in the game, but I noticed that when it did crash it was when scrolling the screen. Upgraded to 1 Gig physical. Less frequent crashing. Someone mentioned to increase my virtual memory to a gig. Did so. Now I'm getting MAJOR hangups when scrolling the map. All of the terrain modifications, cities, and units disapear for about 20-30 seconds, but it doesn't crash to the desktop. Well, it did a couple of times, but not too often. Hangups include the beginning of turn production queues where the system moves from city to city asking what I want to build.
I doubt 1,5Gigs solves the problem, i assume we talk about physical RAM. I tried many Virtual settings between 1Gig and 4Gigs, doesn't change anything, as a matter of fact, im running in windowed mode so i can see what my Ram is doing. Paged-Ram is 4Gigs, and Civ uses less then 1 Gig of it. my processes list state that there is around 520MB used, I have 1Gigs of Ram, however, in the physical memory tells me:"Total 1047276, which is correct to 1 Gigs, but, when i hit the enter button for next turn, my Available goes down to 10MB or less, although in the processes the sum of all processes is never more thne 600 MB!" so i guess there's your proof, something in the hard-memory is handled definitly wrong, and yes, if you play smal maps, maybe you don't face this problem, but on large maps, going down in the zero direction, and i think I can assume at 0RAM i hit the desktop, is going to happen every now and then not because of too few memory but because of false memory handling of the game. actually, memory is handled by windows, so i guess the interface which civ is using to communicate with windows memory handling is the cause of all the problems even the performance issue!" that's what I would say, and unless Firaxis is going to fix it within 2 weeks im going to bring back the game to the store, if they don't take it back, the'll face first trails in europe since im not paying for things not working...if they fix it within 2 weeks, i take all my complaints back, because they show respect for their customers, but right now, not saying a word to us, not admitting something went wrong, not telling they're up to searching and fixing, leaving us in a black hole, is not getting my sentiments to support this company anymore nor its games!
as a matter of fact, i just used a memory cleaning program, and then suddenly civ only needs 80Mges for the game leaving over 600Megs of Physical ram free!! civ still running, faster now!! so why the hell does this program consumes so much RAM< making the game so slow, while using a Mem-defragmenter to release 90% of its used ram? can't they better program decend codes or in the case they cant, contact a software company who can to build in the software a automatically mem-defragmenter?
Genie,
I know EXACTLY what you mean. I also used a memory cleaning program and it helped initially. But play a few turns and ull see civ4 eat it up again. What I find really frustrating and in all honestly really really disrespectfull is how come the beta testers whom i do see here posting on the pros of the game...havent mentioned a word about this obvious FATAL FLAW!!! This is a broken broken game. I mean sure I can play on a tiny map or whatever, but how in the world could you have missed this memory problem? I mean i played for a few days and I found it. Really sad they released this beta...no way in hell is it finished.
btw. before you come in here posting your game works fine, play on a large/huge map, 9+ civs, industrial + era, and discover most of the map. The reason I say this is because I KNOW the game is playable on medium/tiny.
I know EXACTLY what you mean. I also used a memory cleaning program and it helped initially. But play a few turns and ull see civ4 eat it up again. What I find really frustrating and in all honestly really really disrespectfull is how come the beta testers whom i do see here posting on the pros of the game...havent mentioned a word about this obvious FATAL FLAW!!! This is a broken broken game. I mean sure I can play on a tiny map or whatever, but how in the world could you have missed this memory problem? I mean i played for a few days and I found it. Really sad they released this beta...no way in hell is it finished.
btw. before you come in here posting your game works fine, play on a large/huge map, 9+ civs, industrial + era, and discover most of the map. The reason I say this is because I KNOW the game is playable on medium/tiny.
yup, got the same experience now, it works on the beginning the memory defragmentation..but in the end the crash comes again..so, there is no software in the world able to fix it, then it must be the source code, and yes you're right, on small maps the game is very playable, i first got my crashes as i went to "large" and there's nothing I can do expect for reloading the game every 20-30turns..however i must say, the game is getting unplayable slow as the game progresses on the large map..so, i'll just stick to the smaller maps for the game, untill they get a fix for all of this.
I wonder if buying me additional 2Gigs of RAm would actually help on playing at least the large map, maybe still the huge won't work, but I'll be happy if I could only play a large map...
as for beta testers...
how do they pick them? "check who is incapable playing the game so they'll always play small games?" first thing I would do is make my own map, up to the max, and see what happens..even if i know nobody would ever going to play a map of extra extra extra huge, i just would have tested it just for the memory-consume...to me it makes logical sence!!
as a matter of fact, im student mechanical engineering, and first thing you must do as mechanical engineer, is finding the maximum tensions, forces, etc etc of every material and construction, then you must well consider the security factor, which means, if i know(else i first must TEST it) steel can handle 210.000N/square(mm) then within my construction i count:"angels, reduce the 210000 to 80.000(more or less depending on the structure)) heating and cooling(summer winter effects) 60000left, and so on...at the end you'll keep only 30.000N/mm left..then I just know if I build this car this way, and I do a dynamic force test on this material, the metal will brake at around 20.000waves...or it is safe over long-term(10.000.000) and depending on how i know customers will use the car(small cars, big cars, terrain cars, etc etc I know if my construction will hold or not) there is a huge scientific base and research and knowledge behind it, and 90% is based on testing...
and I hate it to see other engineering industries(software the most) doing nothing for testing..they dont understand the rules of testing, you always must test MORE then you'll actually want to handle...of course, a car can kill lifes, games probably not, but still, its a simple test, and anyone should be able to come to the point:"hey, i must test more then needed to be sure the system spezifications and working-field is confident with this product and they can trust the product and us"
I wonder if buying me additional 2Gigs of RAm would actually help on playing at least the large map, maybe still the huge won't work, but I'll be happy if I could only play a large map...
as for beta testers...
how do they pick them? "check who is incapable playing the game so they'll always play small games?" first thing I would do is make my own map, up to the max, and see what happens..even if i know nobody would ever going to play a map of extra extra extra huge, i just would have tested it just for the memory-consume...to me it makes logical sence!!
as a matter of fact, im student mechanical engineering, and first thing you must do as mechanical engineer, is finding the maximum tensions, forces, etc etc of every material and construction, then you must well consider the security factor, which means, if i know(else i first must TEST it) steel can handle 210.000N/square(mm) then within my construction i count:"angels, reduce the 210000 to 80.000(more or less depending on the structure)) heating and cooling(summer winter effects) 60000left, and so on...at the end you'll keep only 30.000N/mm left..then I just know if I build this car this way, and I do a dynamic force test on this material, the metal will brake at around 20.000waves...or it is safe over long-term(10.000.000) and depending on how i know customers will use the car(small cars, big cars, terrain cars, etc etc I know if my construction will hold or not) there is a huge scientific base and research and knowledge behind it, and 90% is based on testing...
and I hate it to see other engineering industries(software the most) doing nothing for testing..they dont understand the rules of testing, you always must test MORE then you'll actually want to handle...of course, a car can kill lifes, games probably not, but still, its a simple test, and anyone should be able to come to the point:"hey, i must test more then needed to be sure the system spezifications and working-field is confident with this product and they can trust the product and us"
Still getting the crash to desktop. Funny thing is that when I played a game last week on a Huge map I had maybe one or two crashes, but they were immediate crashes to the desktop without any lingering around while my system worried about what to do. Now I get these pauses where all I can see is the bare map without any units, improvements, or cities for about ten seconds whenever I move around the map - and I'm on a Standard map with only seven civs. Eventually it does crash to the desktop, although sometimes I get a Black Screen of Death (the Blue Screen's cousin, apparently). This is when the game has crashed so bad that my monitor won't even register a signal from my PC after two or three seconds.
What I'm saying is that the game seems to be getting WORSE! I keep downgrading my requirements by building smaller maps, taking out any superfluous graphics (unit combat), lowering the number of AI civs, and turning off the music.
What I'm saying is that the game seems to be getting WORSE! I keep downgrading my requirements by building smaller maps, taking out any superfluous graphics (unit combat), lowering the number of AI civs, and turning off the music.
gunnergoz
Cat Herder
I can't envision the game being tested without catching a lot of bugs; this one got away from them somehow. I suspect it is a problem that consists of several linked defects; memory management, audio/video integration and driver sensitivity. They may have run into it during beta testing, but they may not have. Only widespread use of a product by thousands of people can turn up some of these problems. When only a few dozen people are testing a game, you don't get the same range of possible configurations as you can when you finally release the software to the public. I'm sure the beta team caught a great many more bugs, some perhaps even worse, and they have been fixed to the point that we don't even know about them. But some bugs hide under the rocks until release and that's I think what we have in this case. I'm confident there will be a fix, it will just take some time. Thank God Sid Meier's name is on the product, or else we'd be stuck with another Master of Orion 3 morass. I have faith that Sid will whip the development team into action if for no other reason than that he doesn't want "his" game and his name to go down in infamy.
oldStatesman
Cybernaut
Very true. I posted in another thread that in the game development cycle, the last few weeks most independent beta testers may not be involved due to the 'fast track' nature of the development cycle. The larger beta catches most of the bugs, in the case of a game they help get it balanced, and make sure it is playable. Once that occurs, the developers enter the final stages, and only in-house testing is done.gunnergoz said:
Now, normally the last phase is not started until the developers are assured there are no major issues. But sometimes, this can be rushed for business or other reasons - the original Civ3 was a case in point. From my understanding, some major changes were made in the 'fast track' stage after the independent Beta Testers were gone...and the in-house effort was not sufficient to catch the bugs caused by these changes.
I am not saying this has occured here - we do not have any evidence one way or the other. Only time will tell.
I am fairly confident there will be at least one patch...but as Take2 does not have the most stellar reputatuion, I am unsure how much long term support they will fund.
