A shout out for Nikis-Knight

[blueparrot1966]

Just started playing your Knights Erebus map tonight. After 7+ pages of that thread, I'm sure there's not much new I could add. But even if I'm repeating what others have said, I wanted to thank you for going to the effort. This is quite a map. Once again, the fine FFH folks have given me something that I'd have paid good money for- indeed, better than some things I HAVE paid good money for. I especially liked the intro, it was very atmospheric, really framed the whole FFH thing well.

One thing, though. More and more, I have to get into a sort of "enforced iron man" mode with this mod. Reloading an earlier save is strongly discouraged by frequent crashes to desktop. This is particularly common on huge maps, and it happens more and more as a game of any size progresses, and there are more things going on. My machine isn't state of the art, but it's still quite respectable. Anyone know how I might tweak it to cut down on the trips back to windows?

 

[Nikis-Knight]

hmm, not exactly, but what I do when I'm in for a long game is to hit ctrl-alt-delete and shut down any extra processess I'm not using to free up extra memory.
(And the compliment is appreciated but I'd just as soon bump the other thread )

 

[Lord Yanaek]

I remember having downloaded a small programs that can shut down EVERY useless process on your machine then launch a game, then shut itself down. This way you have only your game and the processes you really need. I'm not sure where i got it, might be here on civ-fanatics. It works on my old windows XP, probably won't work on VISTA. It might help.

Oh, and i never played Nikis-Knight map so far because huge maps tend to lag a lot on my 3 years old machine

 

[blueparrot1966]

Bob, dunno if this is what you were talking about, or how useful it's going to be, but here's a link I found.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/processexplorer.mspx

 

[Lord Yanaek]

It's not what i was talking about but can definitely help identifying memory and CPU heavy processes.

I found back a thread in this forum for a small script that stops services
I guess it could be improved, but it's a start.

 

[blueparrot1966]

I'll check it out. Btw, I just noticed the way my link got shortened. The end of that is windowsexplorer.net, not SEXPLORER.net, lol.

 

[White Elk]

^^^ LoL.. well I guess I can click on the link then ;~)

One time when having a rash of those MAF errors I went into WorldBuilder and deleted all of the barbarian Bears and their lairs. I didn't count them but it seemed like there were near a hundred of 'em. It did Appear that the time period between MAFS increased. But I didn't pay it proper attention it so I can't say for sure.


I didn't know about that script, thank you Bob I will give it a go. I have been manually stopping some pointless processes before every game. But only those that I knew wouldn't mess up my computer. A slow and ineffective process compared to that script.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Mhh, i'm not a windows expert (my main OS is Linux, Windows is mainly for games), but i don't think a process and a service are the same things. It appears in the thread some people were stopping processes via task manager too.

Doing both could probably free up more memory.

EDIT i have downloaded the pskill utility and i'll see if something can be done to further increase the performances. I might be able to play Nikis map after all. FfH on huge map with 21 civs might be a lot of fun. If i don't permanently crash my computer i'll tell you more later

 

[White Elk]

I don't have a PC clue what the differences between a process and service are. I'm still such a noob. I used the task manager to check what was running on my machine and noticed that nothing was running but many things were listed. So I googled the names of them and then shut down the ones that I thought were safe. The ones I didnt know about I left. So far no problems.

If the listed things aren't running is there still a need to shut them down?

 

[blueparrot1966]

I tried that script Bob, and it was just the thing, thanks a lot. Turns EVERYTHING off, I had to reboot to get on line and post this, but that's fair 'nuff. It does no harm, and nothing permanent, and I didn't have a single reload crash, even on the huge map.

note to anyone else who wants to give it a go- I got scary messages about my firewall and anti virus stuff being off, but it shut down my dsl software as well, so I don't figure it creates a security problem.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Glad i have helped you.
You got a good point about firewall and AV software. The base script turns everything off, so you no longer have any network. However if you want to play multi on the net and try the alternative script (it's a few posts down on the first page) that restarts network services, you better identify your firewall and AV services and restart them too.

I haven't been able to play a lot with the process manager and the script. I did install the process explorer thought and it's nice to identify CPU or memory heavy processes.

 

[blueparrot1966]

Process explorer looks handy, but I've got homework to do before I tinker with that. It's very easy to assume some process looks like a minor thing, only to lobotomize yourself when you turn it off lol.

I've found it very handy to simply google something when I'm not sure what it is. Even the most obscure sounding name comes right up somewhere with a description. Whatever it is you're wondering about, someone somewhere has had that question before.

 

[xienwolf]

Nice thing with process explorer is that it has a direct command to google a process you have selected, and generally tends to find a worthwhile site for information on what it is.


But as far as I can tell, using the script (a couple posts in with networking) and then starting up your firewall and AV software before you launch the game should be your best bet.

 

[wilboman]

I get the impression the script actually slowed me down. In fact, it didn't close any systray processes at all.

 

[blueparrot1966]

Huh. "your mileage may vary", I guess. It helped me, didn't do any harm. I'm using XP, dunno what other platforms it works on...

 

[GoodGame]

I like the Tune-Up Utilities myself for helping with this type of stuff.
Short of that I'd just power down the system, and reload. I don't think that will fix a MAF bug, but it generally cures the suspicious "Waiting for Other player" hanging, in my experience.