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OUT OF MEMORY: WE NEED YOUR HELP!

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OUT OF MEMORY: WE NEED YOUR HELP!

from Elemental Forums

There is a nasty memory leak that we're having a heck of a time tracking down.

It doesn't happen consistently and in fact, it doesn't happen to us at all.

Here is what we need:

1. If have experienced out of memory problems,  low the game resolution and run the game in a window so that you can bring up that task manager (Ctrl-Shift-Esc). 

2. On the Processes list, you should see Elemental. Its memory should start at around 600MB and, over the course of a game, creep up to around 1.2GB. This is normal. 

3. The memory, once you get going in the game, should NEVER go up by more than 5MB in a given turn.  If it does, then whatever is triggering the memory explosion has started.

4. We are looking for saved games, theories, debug.err files, anything that can help us reproduce it. If we can reproduce it, we can eliminate it in hours. But it's the reproducing that's giving us fits.

Thanks!

278,119 views 150 replies
Reply #51 from Elemental Forums Top

OK, played a new game.  the game started at 191k.  As i set the game up, built the word and started to play, it steadily climbed by 30 to 70k every second.  by the time it got to 465,284k it pretty much just stopped working.  I have posted the debug file.  It has a lot of entries of a leaked scene node.  Note sure if any of this helps.

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3289339/debug2.err

 

 

Reply #52 from Elemental Forums Top

just fyi that when i turned off auto turns, the memory usage slowed but continued to increase until it locked up again.  To be honest with you, the memory stopped climbing when ever i did not have any players selected.  As soon as I clicked on my sovereign, the memory started climbing again.  I will try again to make sure i am not imagining anything or it was some fluke but thought i would mention it.

 

no, nothing to do with clicking on the player BUT the problem is better without autoturn on.  Still eventually freezes but much better. Memory is not being released after closing the game though.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #53 from Elemental Forums Top

Going through the getting married window increased memory usage by 4M.

Reply #54 from Elemental Forums Top

I think I got something, maybe. I took a video of this:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9578304/ramloss.avi

Please observe how I can make it jump 3 MB in usage every time I press the design units button, even though it's displaying the same exact thing every time.

Reply #55 from Elemental Forums Top

I think you're touching on something there Jag.  It's almost as if the garbage collector simply doesn't work on some systems. On our setups, it goes up 3MB and then goes away after a few seconds.

Reply #56 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Publius, reply 53
Going through the getting married window increased memory usage by 4M.
End of Publius's quote

I'm not going to comment on this.

Reply #57 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 56

Quoting Publius of NV, reply 53Going through the getting married window increased memory usage by 4M.

I'm not going to comment on this.
End of Frogboy's quote

 

LOL!!!   :rofl:

Reply #58 from Elemental Forums Top

I've just played my second straight OoM game with all sounds turned off.  I don't think that's it.

Dump file is here.

Reply #59 from Elemental Forums Top

It's almost as if the garbage collector simply doesn't work on some systems.
End of quote

I almost never see the memory usage drop.

Reply #60 from Elemental Forums Top

I also played through without sound, and tried to avoid tac battles (where possible, some quests dont give you a choice), and it went a bit longer, but still oom. I wonder if it's a certain thing we are all doing to ruin it. There have been a couple turns for me where the mem dropped a bit. But it always eventually keeps going up in the long run..I also got a dmp file this time. I don't know why sometimes it produces one, and others it doesn't.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8949112/2/debug.err

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8949112/2/Elemental0_98-2010-07-31T16-46-58-426.dmp

 

EDIT: I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but I noticed that while researching adventure (i played kingdom this time), it doesn't reflect my level properly after about level 3 or so. I was on level 9 or 10 of adventure, and the goodie hut locations/quests were shoing me at 4 for some places, and 5 for others.

 

Reply #61 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Publius of NV,
reply 53
Going through the getting married window increased memory usage by 4M.

I'm not going to comment on this.
End of quote

Thanks, folks, we'll be here all week!

Reply #62 from Elemental Forums Top

My memory usage goes up 100k the first time the research window loads,

My memory, every 2 - 3 turns after go up 30k, if I don't pass a turn I can build an do other things and push it up by 100k then when I pass a turn it stays at whatever level, the most noticeable difference for me though is after the  research window loads, it goes up 100k and then about 10 - 30 k after that every turn, its usually 10k a turn 30k when I complete something, however the ram fluctuates, even if I don't build any units and leave my sovereign in the same town, it keeps going up 30k, could be whateever the hell the AI is doing, but when I investigate them, they have a city and thats it. 

I'm going to try again.

Reply #63 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Publius, reply 59

It's almost as if the garbage collector simply doesn't work on some systems.

I almost never see the memory usage drop.
End of Publius's quote

Yea, the whole garbage collection system is premised on when something is no longer being used, it is removed from memory.

However, it appears (quite obviously) that on some systems that it simply doesn't do that.

 

Reply #64 from Elemental Forums Top

Nah it seems to be spam memory increaseing in the map editor as well, I'm going to stay on it and see if I can get it to crash. I'll keep you posted.

Reply #65 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting dsk2293, reply 49
I have 32-bit XP on my laptop and memory usage is very high, like 700-800 Mb before I have to shut it down. It becomes unplayable very quickly.
End of dsk2293's quote

700 megabytes on a game isn't high. That's actually been low for several years.  Elemental requires 1 GB of available memory. 

Even Galactic Civilizations I used more than a gig and that was 7 years ago.

Reply #66 from Elemental Forums Top

I didn't realize there was another thread already.  I'll copy and paste what I wrote in the other thread since this one seems more active.

I took some screenshots of my game with the resource monitor on while in windowed mode. 

Here it is while at the menu screen.

 

 

When I loaded up my saved game.  It had already been at turn 197.  At this point I just kept clicking on the turn button, and expanding my cities, and the by the time i hit turn 291, the game was a little bit unresponsive at this point, and it did hang at one point for about a minute.  Also, there were weird instances where a couple of battles would not take place where they were supposed to be originally.  If you look at my save game (which I'll be providing a link to), there's a patch on the map that's uncovered even though I had not moved any units there.  For some reason, a battle taking place in one of my cities all of a sudden was transported to that patch of land.  It happened on two occassions. 

 

At the time I got my error message at turn 300 (Yes, I lost):

And finally a snapshot from the resource monitor:

 

 

Here's a copy of my debug:

http://rapidshare.com/files/410231745/debug.err.html

 

and a copy of my savegame:

 

http://rapidshare.com/files/410231841/oddgame3.EleSav.html

 

I'll try running the game with no audio to see if that does anything.

 

 

edit:  I should mention that during my playthrough i did not do a single tactical battle, they were all autoresolved.

Reply #67 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting JaguarUSF, reply 54
I think I got something, maybe. I took a video of this:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9578304/ramloss.avi

Please observe how I can make it jump 3 MB in usage every time I press the design units button, even though it's displaying the same exact thing every time.
End of JaguarUSF's quote


I can confirm the same on my 32 bit Vista machine, just by starting a new game and clicking on Kingdom Info. Each time I click on Design Units memory goes up about 1.6 MB. All I do is click Design Units, Study Spells, Design Units, Study Spells back and forth. Clicking done to clear that window does not release the memory.

Reply #68 from Elemental Forums Top

Quite early in the game.  Autosave and debug.err, W7 64-bit.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16610/Elemental/20100731-CTD-622pm.zip

Reply #70 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm not sure what, but something in this save causes the game to oom without me doing anything except going forth and conquesting the hell out of Magnar.  I oom'ed earlier, then reloaded from a point about five or six turns before this and it oom'ed again.  Unfortunately, I can't be sure of much more than that.  Hope this helps.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9606798/Rob%203.EleSav

Reply #71 from Elemental Forums Top

Sounds like the game is not releasing the memory at all, when it's not being used.

Reply #72 from Elemental Forums Top

I thought I wasn't having this issue, but I just played a game that ran out of memory ~300 turns:

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9570272/Elemental0_98-2010-07-31T20-52-42-618.zip

Reply #73 from Elemental Forums Top

Have a couple from this morning, in the latest one the game had been going on for two hours so it was a few hundred turns in, and starting to get somewhat unresponsive. Vista 32.

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9636002/Elemental%20Debugs.rar

 

I think it might be the garbage collection not working. 9/10 if I quit in the middle of a game and then try to start a new one I get an appcrash error, which I suspect is down to resources not being released somewhere.

Reply #74 from Elemental Forums Top

i tried for 2 hours and couldn't get it to happen

then i tried for about 1/2 hour and got my OOM error

the only difference between the 2 times was i saw a npc battle happen while in 3d view, and got the oom error on the next turn.  In both i did heaps of auto battles, though all from the cloth map, the memory would get to 1600mb's, but never crash, it would hit there then drop back to 1580

Is there a difference for people to whether they spend all their time moving and fighting in the cloth map?

i'll try it out myself and see if i can get the oom to happen faster, could it be the garbage collector is collecting for our battles and just not the npc ones?

Edit:
the dmp and debug, nearly forgot:P
http://www.ltbb.org/images/Gwakapics/Elemental0_98-2010-08-01T17-37-38-584.zip

Reply #75 from Elemental Forums Top

Here is my latest OOM Crash:

Prefs.ini: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9164057/Prefs.ini

Debug file: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9164057/debug%20%284%29.err

Savegame (renamed): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9164057/CrashSave.EleSav

PreviousSavegame (renamed): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9164057/PreviousCrashSave.EleSav

 

Modded files:

For /program files(x86)/stardock games/elemental/data/english/core tiles/improvements:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9164057/Small_Dirt_Patch.xml

 

For /program files(x86)/stardock games/elemental/data/english/core improvements

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9164057/KingdomUnlimitedImprovements.xml

(slightly changed from the original)