Memory Leak?

Harkonnen said:
There is one more thing to blame - that ~e0005.exe process. Macrovision say about some memory protection in their recent Safedisk release, so that no "hacked" can read the code... Probably it's theirs memory works (BTW I found NOCD solution the same night the game arrived to me, 27th october). Wrote nothing, just searched the web... so Macrovision probably provides more trouble than does any really working protection. At best it doesn't affect anything, at worst it is the fragmenter.

Also, when I VirtualAlloc'ed too much for my own needs, DirectX renderer failed during initialization like in those ATi drivers issue.
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I'm not sure I understand you - are you saying the ~e0005.exe is part of the issues or not? Thanks for the clarification.

BTW, I just posted a thread asking for feedback from the Beta testers on this part at almost the same time you posted this - I had Deja-vu when I read your post...we are reading minds! ;)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=139346

I hope that the Beta Testers can provide insight - if the game worked with no CTD's or excessive fragmentation on the last Beta build without the cp, then the cp scheme may be a big suspect in hunting down the issue.
 
At least they tested it with older drivers, the reason most ATi users couldn't start the game.
 
Interesting thread. Watching both now. I also created a thread with "debug build" substring in it, but it's silent for past days.

BTW, I am coming to public beta with my memory mangament solution. I have already managed to redirect whole memory allocation through my own code, and its memoryprint still remains around those 600Mb. My hope is that it won't grow for 1Gb systems to 1.2Gb. At least I made nothing to keep it growing...
 
Harkonnen said:
At least they tested it with older drivers, the reason most ATi users couldn't start the game.
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I'll give them a slight pass on this one...ATI released the drivers about 2 weeks before the release date...10 days or so before it went gold. At that point the game was probably 'fast-tracked' and only the in-house Q&A was testing on in-house machines. The large majority of the public testers were probably not involved.

I do wonder if they were aware that ATI was going to update their drivers then...and if so why they didn't work with ATI on the driver beta to ensure no issues there. If not, I wonder why they were not talking with a major graphics card vendor and were not informed of the impending driver release...

Oh well, that is neither here not there and such speculation will not get the problems solved. Back on topic....

Again, I am not clear on your initial post. Please explain:

Do you suspect the ~e0005.exe copy protection routine to be involved in the fragmentation problem? Or not? TIA.
 
Harkonnen said:
Interesting thread. Watching both now. I also created a thread with "debug build" substring in it, but it's silent for past days.

BTW, I am coming to public beta with my memory mangament solution. I have already managed to redirect whole memory allocation through my own code, and its memoryprint still remains around those 600Mb. My hope is that it won't grow for 1Gb systems to 1.2Gb. At least I made nothing to keep it growing...
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Let me know - I have a 1GB system...I will be glad to help test.
 
Sorry to spam so many posts in a row - but this is important news - Sirian just posted a cause for 99% of the CTD's ..and a temp workaround in the below thread.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3293471&postcount=67

Seems like a bad call is being made by the animation engine - if you move a unit before the animation of another is doen - CTD! See thread for details!

note: this is for CTD's, not sure how it affected the memory.

I am going to test it out now!

ON EDIT: finally fixed URL. It is now correct. Sorry. :(
 
Doesn't anyone think its odd:

I already had Direct X 9.0C installed so I chose not to install the same verson on the game disk and the game would not work: error message 'could not find D3D9 file'.

When I installed DX9C from the game disk it worked.

What the heck is this? Is this related?
 
Sevenhertz said:
Doesn't anyone think its odd:

I already had Direct X 9.0C installed so I chose not to install the same verson on the game disk and the game would not work: error message 'could not find D3D9 file'.

When I installed DX9C from the game disk it worked.

What the heck is this? Is this related?
Click to expand...
The game uses new DirectX files from MS - files that have not been released to the general public yet. You could say it is a 'newer' version of DirectX than the official MS 9c release.

This is fairly common practice...MS cannot release every new improvement as it is developed...but they do allow 3rd party software developers to use them to get their new apps to work, and release them with the software as needed.

These files should install during game installation...but I guess sometimes they don't. You can manually install them by installing DirectX from the DirectX folder on the game CD, and not the download from MS if you are having issues.
 
oldStatesman
Like it sometimes happens to me, you copy-pasted URL as plaintext... try to click it :)
 
oldStatesman said:
The game uses new DirectX files from MS - files that have not been released to the general public yet. You could say it is a 'newer' version of DirectX than the official MS 9c release.

This is fairly common practice...MS cannot release every new improvement as it is developed...but they do allow 3rd party software developers to use them to get their new apps to work, and release them with the software as needed.

These files should install during game installation...but I guess sometimes they don't. You can manually install them by installing DirectX from the DirectX folder on the game CD, and not the download from MS if you are having issues.
Click to expand...

Thank you for this Statesman:goodjob:
 
I have been learning about and working with computers of all sizes for 30 years. I have played many different games over the years. I have been a systems programmer, application programmer, and done several other things in computers. (Enough of credentials)

From what I see in this thread, there might be a memory leak. But it looks more like just a lot of memory use. Ribannah, tegilbor, Harkonnen, xguild, phalzyr, and alexti2 have made some good points that I mostly agree with.

Computer systems and their programs have been getting more and more complex. It would help the developers if we all used the same hardware and software. But we don’t. It makes it very difficult to test new applications in all situations, or even in a large majority of them. How many situations can a software company reasonably test?

In my case I have seen three CTDs in the last two weeks. (And I am on vacation this week with plenty of time.) I play only on large maps. My desktop PC was bought specifically for game playing. My laptop was bought for high performance, mainly for non-gamming applications that use a lot of memory, CPU, and some graphics. I have played mostly on the laptop which is a maxed out Presario R4000 (2 GB memory, AMD Athlon 64 processor 4000+, and ATI MOBILITY RADEON Xpress 200 series). I have a lot of protection and automatic maintenance programs that run in the background. At least one of the CTDs happened when my virus scanner took the foreground at its scheduled time. I also have a few other commercial, non-game, applications that also have problems. So these rare crashes may be something outside of the game.

For the record, I use alt-tab periodically to access other programs when playing. Time to switch out of the game isn’t noticeable. To switch back to the game is about three seconds. I see this as acceptable considering how much data must be involved in the games graphics and sound.

Request
Although I have found this thread entertaining, I would appreciate it if only problems, possible solutions, and discussion of the same were posted. Ranting and complaining should be posted in a thread specifically for that purpose.

I seldom come to these forums as I would rather play the game. I am looking through these now for any solution to the minor problems that I have experienced. These include the improper installation redirection and the occasional CTDs. While reading, I will reply only when I have a possible answer that others haven’t posted or to reduce the ranting.

Please, lets keep these forums usefull and to the point.
 
Request
Although I have found this thread entertaining, I would appreciate it if only problems, possible solutions, and discussion of the same were posted. Ranting and complaining should be posted in a thread specifically for that purpose.

I seldom come to these forums as I would rather play the game. I am looking through these now for any solution to the minor problems that I have experienced. These include the improper installation redirection and the occasional CTDs. While reading, I will reply only when I have a possible answer that others haven’t posted or to reduce the ranting.

Please, lets keep these forums usefull and to the point.
Click to expand...

Goosse, I understand your point completely and I agree with you.
With the greatest of respect, there will always be some of us that voice our opinions as the chance presents itself. This is an open forum and people are free to express themselves.
Unfortunately, I have seen no threads soley for complaints.

If you consider that people have not only re-installed the game several times, updated drivers, done endless virus scans, bought new hardware because they thought their previous hardware was not up to spec, and physically taken apart their PC's and removed RAM just to see if the game works any better...you must know that there are a lot of us who are rightfully very angry. No game, even with the worst bugs, should require this level of user-maintainance. It is unnaceptable.

I have had several years of experience with computers, work with them every day, build them, and have worked for a software company. I know all about beta testing, quality control and getting the product to retail. I was head of marketing & PR for a software company for 3 years.

It is simply UNACCEPTABLE by industry standards to release a game so unstable. In fact, I am astonished. I have nothing but respect for Firaxis and I loved the previous CIVs. I know how much hard work has gone into producing CIV 4 in all its areas, but still, a huge mistake was made and regretably, many many people are very annoyed and very dissapointed.

We have not seen a single response from Firaxis about these major issues, and I hope we shall, but until these issues are resolved we shall continue to see many complaints.
 
Great points. Hope all keep them in mind. :goodjob:

But if you think this thread is bad, go to GD...this one is quiet as a library during finals week in comparison...;)

I too understand why folks are doing it though; they love the franchise and want to play, but can't because of the issues so they are frustrated; or luv the franchise and can play and want to defend it's honor. Real Passion for Civ drives both sides.

I applaud all the indepedent programmers on this thread for keeping it on topic...hopefully we will get results from them sooner than we can anticipate an official patch which will have to adress many other issues as well.

That said...I am waiting patiently for Harkonnen to release his beta mem manager for 1GB users to see if it helps my issues.
 
@ oldStatesman : Your link on post 86 contains no mention of the content you were talking about, I dont even see any posts by Sirian. I was hoping to read that, if you have the correct link do repost (if i havent missed anything obvious).

I am actually surprised that you guys would be going into such great lengths trying to debug this problem without first trying the least "demanding" fixes. Harkonnen (dune?) great job, but have you tried switching to older drivers for your GFX Card? Specially since I see you have mentioned that testers must have used older drivers (obviously coders did the same too). Which is actually true for the striking majority of games being released.

I also see people comparing hardware specs and GFX card specs, with comments like "I have got the same hardware, howcome it works for you but not me?" and yet nobody compares the driver versions on those rigs.

As for me, I have a P4 3.2Ghz , 1GB DDR RAM, GeForce 6600 256MB PCI-E card. I used to suffer from CTDs every 10 minutes or so, I got sick of reloading my games just to play for an extra 10 minutes (always on huge or larger map). This happens while using the latest nVidia driver (released October 20th 81.xx).

After downgrading to an older driver from June I believe (71.xx) I have not suffered from a single CTD. It has been days now, and dozens of hours of game play on large maps with up to 10 AI players. Smooth, no crash, no slowdowns.

As oldStatesman has said that Sirian mentioned a bad call to the animation engine, that call could go through the graphics driver that has somehow changed in terms of how it processes it in the latest nVidia driver. I also came across an interview with someone at Firaxis who did mention there were some "nvidia driver problems".

It is also worth mentioning that someone has suggested a downgrade of drivers for ATI users, and the success rate and elimination of CTDs has been to the tone of 100%. Both posts can be found in the Technical forum for Civ4.

Great job nonetheless, I only wish Firaxis was as technically vocal as you guys rather than leaving us in the dark till this moment regarding these issues.
 
WarX said:
@ oldStatesman : Your link on post 86 contains no mention of the content you were talking about, I dont even see any posts by Sirian. I was hoping to read that, if you have the correct link do repost (if i havent missed anything obvious).
Click to expand...
Thanks, and my apologies again.

(Man, I am having a rough time today! :cry: )

It is in this thread in GD, which has been locked BTW. I fixed the link in my other post to point to the exact post - post #67

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3292816#post3292816
 
Goosse
Well, this was a long thread and if you read it just now, you could easily skip some points (no offence) :)

I told several times that I am with older drivers. Also, drivers might cause CTD or so but not _user_ memory usage or even fragmentation, at least on the order of 2 which I am trying to achieve.

Here's my system again: P3-1.3Ghz, 51MB RAM (PC133), ATi Radeon 9800 Pro (128Mb).

I'm on 4.10 or 4.12 drivers - pretty old stuff, so I avoided crashes and CTDs. The main reason is sluggishness, it drives me mad enough to patch unknown executable for rather inernal stuff - its memory management. If I'll succeed, I'll move towards patching its DX9 calls :D
 
Harkonnen can you send me a link of the 4.10 drivers? im having the ati radeon 9800 pro and the CTD's drive me nuts..if you don't get them with those drivers im eager to try them also, thanks :)
 
ok, tried the older catalist drivers 4.10..the game is running like a mad rocket outta control now and pressing 30turns next next and no chashes yet wooohoo :) and so fast!!! i never would have thought civ4 be so fast at later ages on huge maps!! scrolling 1A, outzooming to global view, 1sec to max and 1sec to minimize and all flawless! :) awesome so at least that fixes the performance issues that firaxis has :)
 
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