Memory-fix by Harkonnen is out!

Just adding my 2 cents, I have a decent enough speced system that game speed was not a big factor but I was getting random CTDs late in the game on huge maps. After using this patch I have not had a single CTD yet playing on a huge map after several hours of gameplay.

Athlon 3200+
1 gig ram
6800GT 256mb vid
silly amount of HD space
 
Hark' ... you are a genius man with the tenacity of a pit bull ... I commend you! :notworthy:

You have, I assume, made oyur findings know to Firaxis? To my mind, they should be paying you for what you've done here (which is clearly more than their entire programming team).
 
Harkonnen, I may have found a (none critical) problem ...

I used to be able to double click a saved game from within outlook, which would fire up civilization with the load in question (typically used in PBEM games).

Doing this now, however, causes a "Error Opening Harkonnen.ini!"

I tried moving said file to my desktop and got the same error ... so I would conclude that i can't open a game by double clicking a save anymore with this patch installed.
 
Ahem sorry for wasting post space w/ praise, but harkonnen, you are the man, i am a cs student, in school right now, and i never even would've dreamed of doing something as massive as this, it works great on my machine, and congrats on beating firaxis :}
 
well Harkonnen i disabled the firewall but i still cant open them. i can download them but it says windows can not open dll file so i havent been able to use them, i had similar problems with the art pack fix they posted that didnt work for me either lol. well something in your setting adjustments sure worked for me cause its going great with no problems at all except for the in game movies being a bit jerking but i can live with that
 
Lord_graywolf... umm you are not suppossed to open them just save then to your civ game folder...
 
Um... Well I rechecked and my Civilization4.exe file is in the Prefetch folder. I am ok with that cause I got you patch to work and my game is playing great now. I finished (First time ever) my game that was at the year 1970 in around 2hours which is about as long as it took for 10 turns before. Also the movies are perfect now no stuttering or anything. My hotseat game is still a little slow but that is probobly because there are two humans and needs to load twice as much stuff. I will be getting another 512mb ram either this weekend or next week so hopefully that will help.

But thank-you Harkonnen I actually finished a game which is something I never thought I would. (I lost by the way. They called me Dan Qualye. I think that is bad LOL)
 
Another thank you to Harkonnen for your great work.

I can play for longer now between crashes but I still get CTDs. Do I have to replace the python24.dll or is the original one (post 1.09 patch) ok?

(Athlon 1800+, 1GB, 6600GT 128MB, standard terra map, hotseat, 2 humans, 7 AI, late-middle game, vid_mem_usage 64, insane_mode 1, low for all settings, 1024x768, no AA)
 
Great work Harkonnen !!! Civ4 is finally playable.

Just want to say that before I installed your patch, I got a huge performance boost by setting AllowScreenShots = 0 in civ4.ini. Don't know if this was only a lucky shot, but it helped me (ATI9600). It's even commented as performance affecting (and how often are you really taking a screenshot???).

Why weren't you around when I tried to get CivNet MP to work on Windows 3.11 when that game was released? :) I bet you could patch that one as well :D
 
I am happy to say that this helped on my work PC to be able to load and run HUGE Maps w/ 18 Civs!
Loaded an old game that would CTD and/or slowdown during the Industrial Age and w/ this fix it runs decent on my work PC.
It even improved the performance on my Home PC as well!

But I try the same fix to my Home PC and was hoping to be able to bump up the settings more due to thinking its a better PC and not get the results I was hoping for.

Heres my PC Setup:

Both PCs:
HarkFix: All Default Settings
Graphics: All Set on Low
Windowed Mode
.INI File Modified
ART PAK unzipped
Work PC:
P4 3ghz
1GB RAM
GeForce FX5600XT 256mb RAM
​


Home PC:
P4 2.4ghz
1.7GB DDR RAM
ATI X850XT 256mb RAM
​

I was thinking that I should be able to run my Home PC w/ at least vid_mem_usage=180.
But when I do that the game would CTD when I load a HUGE Map w/ 18 Civ game that is in the Post Industrial Age.
It still runs PERFECT if I leave the settings in Default.

I know I am going to have to just to run it at Default settings for now but I am really thinking if I can tweak it to run better :D

Any Ideas?
 
Kolyana said:
I tried moving said file to my desktop and got the same error ... so I would conclude that i can't open a game by double clicking a save anymore with this patch installed.
Click to expand...
I'd hazard a guess that the patch files are looking in the current directory for the INI file, which in the case of double-clicking a file in Outlook would be somewhere in the depths of a "Temporary Files" directory.

The game itself most probably gets it's install location from the registry, so it'll find it's files in any case, and of course the Civilization4.ini file is in your profile, which also is at a fixed (or easily found out) location.

Checking "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\INSTALLDIR" and using that when looking for the INI file should fix it... :)

np: Eric B. & Rakim - Paid In Full (Paid In Full)
 
Briareos, I'm not sure I understand you.

Prior to installing Harkonnens fix I could click on a civ saved game file form any locaton and it would open Civilization and load that save automatically.

Now - after Harkonnens fix - that no longer works.
 
I also have found the same problem as Kolyana, in that I used to be able to double click a civ4 save, no matter where it was(if I just downloaded it from the internet onto my desktop, say) and Civ4 would load up straight to that game automatically. Now it just gives a 'Error Opening "Harkonnen.ini"!'

Not a major problem by any means, just noteworthy.
 
Kolyana said:
Harkonnen, I may have found a (none critical) problem ...

I used to be able to double click a saved game from within outlook, which would fire up civilization with the load in question (typically used in PBEM games).

Doing this now, however, causes a "Error Opening Harkonnen.ini!"

I tried moving said file to my desktop and got the same error ... so I would conclude that i can't open a game by double clicking a save anymore with this patch installed.
Click to expand...
That's was my problem too (that I posted earlier) until I realize I had to run the game first. I was loading saved games from the desktop.

Also if I exit the game and reenter my map turn black excepts cities and farms. Sometimes it crashes if I reenter a game.( I haven't been playing from the window mode though)
 
The file type association probably points to the original Civ4 files. You may be able to fix this by putting the Civ4 folder containing the file that it is looking for in your 'path'. The Operating system must know where to find a file...the 'Path' statement will tell it.

To do this, right click on 'My Computer", select properties. Select the Advanced Tab\Environmental Variables. Under System Variables find the "path" statement. Click Edit. (Use caution - do not delete anything that is there now!!!!) At the end of the Variable Value line add the path to your Civ4 game files. For example, mine is G:\Firaxis Games\Sid Meir's Civilization 4. Substitute your info....be sure to put a semi-colon at the end of the existing line before typing in the new info...and again, do not delete any of the old line...just add your info to it. Click 'Okay" all the way out to the desktop, and re-boot.

Not guaranteeing this will help...but at least you maybe have learned a little thing about Windows and the path ;) ...I tried it and it did not work...but I may need a reboot for it to hold - I cannot reboot right now.

Otherwise Hark may have to add something to his dll code to compensate for this...maybe something to do with the copy protection stuff...
 
All
Yes... I didn't check for main executable folder when I load .ini file, so it looks in the current folder which can be "whatever" when you double-click savegame, this will be fixed.

Kilim
First of all, try 'insane_mode = 0'. If it helps, try downloading 5.11 ATi drivers and 'insane_mode = 1' again. If you are already with 5.11, then 'insane_mode' doesn't work for newest ATi cards... Though, their 256Mb of video memory should make it very-very playable, especially in 1Gb RAM configurations even under 'insane_mode = 0'.

Smidlee
Crashes upon reentering the game can be solved by setting 'insane_mode = 0'. That's why I named it insane... It improves memory usage at the cost of stability, especially alt-tabbing stability.

lord_graywolfe
I think next version will come with installer, so you won't have those problems...

oldstatesMan
Thanks for comments but that won't help :( I just 'fopen' that file. I will release installer with this thing fixed before globe view fix since that one gonna get more time.
 
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