Fix The Memory Leak!

[Red Harvest]

ARRRRGGGGGGG!!!

RTW 1.3 is REALLY ticking me off. This memory leak is just awful. Seriously, this makes for some really painfully bad battles. Once the leak hits most of the problem is early in the battle, while the game is hitting the disk for several seconds at a time for several minutes. This is what fire arrrows used to do in previous versions...before I modded them out for archers.

Let's put it this way, the memory leak is making a lot of battles "unfun" excercises. The frequent rebooting to deal with it is a pain, particularly since it takes so long to shut down after playing RTW.

Find the leak(s) and kill it/them.

[Garvanko]

Instead of rebooting, just place your computer on standby. Much quicker, accomplishes the same goals as a full reboot.

I think.

[Puzz3D]

Exiting RTW recovers the memory under WinXP, but it can take a while. I have 512 MB RAM, and I was restarting RTW after every 3 battles to avoid the slowdown. I think this problem would be grounds for demanding a refund.

[professorspatula]

I find I experience the memory leak on the strategy map first, which then affects the battles. If I leave the game on the strategy map for a period of time and return, the game is unplayable. If I leave the game during a battle for the same period of time, or thereabouts, I don't experience the leak. After a while no matter what, the game becomes more and more unplayable though. It's all been said loads of times before though. What a shame a quick fix/patch couldn't have been released to address the issue rather to have to wait for a bigger (possibly further not-fully-tested) patch at a later date.

[Watchman]

Weird, that. I've never had much of a problem with it. I've noticed the tactical battles eventually start slowing down if I play long enough straight (and this means like 6+ hours), but once I quit the game the unsettlingly large number of used memory in the control panel starts dwindling pretty fast...

And mine's not even a remarkably powerful comp.

[A.Saturnus]

I also didn´t experience a problem. But then, I have 1 GB RAM.

[antisocialmunky]

You can get one of them memory clearing programs. I use Freemem.

[professorspatula]

Actually I did just get the leak during a big siege battle. I closed RTW down afterwards, and noticed RTW was still using 159,000K of memory. For the next 2 minutes, the memory usage increased to 182,000K, before finally decreasing and going completely. I've seen it much higher before, and take even longer to close down fully. Perhaps all the playtesters had 2Gig of Ram, played for only half an hour at a time, and hence didn't notice the leak.

[Puzz3D]

Perhaps all the playtesters had 2Gig of Ram, played for only half an hour at a time, and hence didn't notice the leak.

Playtesters? There were no playtesters outside of what CA could do inhouse.

[Mouzafphaerre]

I also didn´t experience a problem. But then, I have 1 GB RAM.

.
It's almost established that the leak hits on 512M and lower.
.

[Oaty]

I noticed that BI tends to use a lot of pagefile memory and was running slow at times. Since I was fortunate enough to have 2 hard drives, I switched page file from the C:/D: drive to a partition on another hard drive and increased it to 2 GB from 500 MB and it enhanced the performance of the game but not to optimum.

So if you have 2 hard drives switch the page file to your other hard drive that does not have the operating system on it and the performance should be boosted.

To increase/relocate your pagefile

Right click on my computer
properties
advanced
(perfomance) settings
advanced
virtual memory
change....................... and from there selct wich drive and how much space

[Just A Girl]

You guys shure this is a memory leak?

Dosent sound like its leaking memory from the descriptions. "not actual physical ram any way"
Sounds like a virtual ram problem ,
You guys set your virtual ram right? and defraged the virtual ram drive?

I usualy have a spare hard drive used just for virtual ram,
I also set my virtual ram MAX and min as the same value,

"windows MUST have enough virtual ram, When it does not have enough virtual ram, It will make more. This slows down your pc,"
It sounds to me like this is whats happening,.

I should probably patch to 1.3 and explore this problem a bit more.

A lil busy to do it right now, but i probably will later.

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
When the bug hits, after you quit the game, the process remains in the memory with consumption ranging from 80 to 250M. You have to force it to shut down via Task Manager.
.

[Red Harvest]

You guys shure this is a memory leak?

Dosent sound like its leaking memory from the descriptions. "not actual physical ram any way"
Sounds like a virtual ram problem ,
You guys set your virtual ram right? and defraged the virtual ram drive?

I usualy have a spare hard drive used just for virtual ram,
I also set my virtual ram MAX and min as the same value,

"windows MUST have enough virtual ram, When it does not have enough virtual ram, It will make more. This slows down your pc,"
It sounds to me like this is whats happening,.

I should probably patch to 1.3 and explore this problem a bit more.

A lil busy to do it right now, but i probably will later.

Definitely a memory leak, as it takes up more and more of your physical RAM. It doesn't release it when the app closes (at least in any reasonable amount of time.) It is using up all available physical RAM which is why it starts writing to the disk, the app is taking more than 512 MB total. If you have extra RAM, then you can go on for a long time without noticing the leak. But with 512 MB the margin between "base memory" usage of the game/OS/etc. and the actual memory available is not large, probably between 100 and 200 MB. With 1 GB of memory the differential would be 5 times larger (or more.) That would mean it would take very long sessions to produce the same effect.

[Just A Girl]

Ah,
And this happens to any 1 with 512mb or less?

It still sounds like the game Uses your 512mb.
Says Damn this isnot enough,
Over runs in to virtual ram,
Says Damn this aint enough either.
Windows Increases virtual ram to prevent game shuting down cos of lack of memory.
The proces of increasing virtual ram then slows down the game,
People get upset,
restart.
The game is then stuck in a white loop trying to increase virtual ram so the game wont close,
whilst also trying to close the game at users request,

Im just thinking out loud here though,
So i guess i better go install 1.3
I have a pc here with 512mb and one with 1gb Bothe 2.8ghz.
and i have a 1333 512mb,
i will see what happens on each.

P.S

How long should i leave the game on the campaign map to notice this prob on avarage?

[Red Harvest]

Playtesters? There were no playtesters outside of what CA could do inhouse.

Puzz3D,

That wouldn't surprise me, do you know for sure that this was the case?

[Red Harvest]

I did a test tonight. After a few hours the game got very choppy as usual. This time instead of rebooting, I let the machine sit for about 20-30 minutes. After taking a long time to exit, it was hitting the disk like mad for a few minutes before I left the room (same as always.) When I came back "normal" responsiveness was back. So XP did clean up the mess eventually. Rebooting is still probably faster from what I've seen.

[Just A Girl]

hey im sorry people,
But on a amd 1333 512mb "PC133" with 2gb Virtual ram min and max, Using v1.3
I dont notice the problems you are reporting.
"both the 2.8ghz pcs have 1gb+ ram so couldnt test on them"

But You can get a program called MAXMEM.
Form a company called Analogx
That lil sucker will free up any Memory that windows cant free up.

thats about all i can say to help as i dont suffer from this prob.
But then again flaiming arrows and bolders dont afect my game either and never have,



-EDIT-

Ok im a idiot,
I downloaded 1.3 last night,
i thought i installed it then went to bed,
Obviously i did not,
So i tested that stuff out in v 1.2

Im Now installing v1.3
So Maby il end up geting Agrivated at the memory leak 2

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
It stroke at its worst a few minutes ago. Usually, upon realizing the lags on the campmap, I would exit the game, kill the leak and play again. I neglected and took it longer. The game became virtually unresponsive and totally unplayable on the battle deployment screen. I had to kill it calling up Task Manager.

Please CA, this is the most important thing to address.
.

[AquaLurker]

Frustrating news. As one of my online playmate suggested, sloppy programing from CA. Hope they get the patch done soon.

[Colt374]

This problem is driving me nuts too. This is the first game I've run into with my new PC that has made me have to consider getting more RAM than my current 512MB. And for no reason other than to work around a bug. That is just wrong.

Please CA, address this soon.

Colt.

P.S. To all those people who aren't getting this problem, consider your self lucky and don't bother trying to convince others it is an issue with their system. Too many people are getting it for it NOT to be caused by the game itself.

[Just A Girl]

I have been playing v1.3 since my last post,
"i checked and thats 5 hours"
I even did alt tab and opend a difrent program then returned to the game,

i sufferd no memory leaks or similar symptoms,
I was using my
Amd 1333, 512mb "pc 133" , ati redeon9250 256mb.
With 2gb virtual ram Which is stored on my f: drive.
my Windows drive c: "xp pro sp2"
is a independant hard drive, and my games are installed to d:


P.s

A common default setting in bios like
video ram shaddowing
Could cause problems like this, Most times manufacturers advize you to disable this option any way,
but for some reason they are set as the default option,
Causes lots of CTD's too.

So it could Always be a problem with the pc,

As some may know I am not A fan of RTW,
but i dont see any memory leaks in my game, So i dunno.....
maby you should stop yelling at them and check out your own config.

"I would have had to have been very lucky not to have a program that sufferd this problem.. But i cant say im not lucky either. So dont think i said its definatly not a memory leak :) but there are other possibilatys"

[professorspatula]

The issue is that this never happened before the recent patch. Our systems worked perfectly before. The fact that something has changed and caused so many people to experience the memory problem means it's something CA should address/fix, regardless of whether or not our system has such or such setting. No-one should have to mess around with a bios setting or virtual ram if everything was fine before. It's not like the game has changed enough to warrant needing more Ram or whatever.

[Orda Khan]

The only problem I have ( which is not much of a problem ) is that exiting the game is slow. As in 5 seconds or so. I have 512Mb and have seen none of the battle slow-downs that are reported here. I tested this for hours of play and experienced no problems in game. Maybe there is an explanation

.....Orda

[MulusMariae]

Greetings, all --
For anyone willing/able to spend time testing this... I will submit a unproven/untested "hunch" that the problem might be related to the
game's use of sound. I have seen the problem strike while the game is
completely "inactive" on a machine just left running when I went to bed...
Apparently no problem when I went to bed... no keystrokes overnight...
massive problems with the machine in the morning... task manager showed
over 512M of memory used by the game. What else is happening with no KB input, except switching the sound now and then, and whatever "animation" happens on the strategy map?

As I said... just a hunch, FWIW.

cheers to all...

[Puzz3D]

That wouldn't surprise me, do you know for sure that this was the case?

No, but the people I know who have done playtesting in the past would never have missed the memory leak, the naval invasion issue, the pila issue, roman diplomacy issues or the multiplayer replay issue. Then again all the people I know who have done playtesting in the past don't play RTW anymore, so maybe CA went elsewhere. I think CA made a sincere effort to improve the gameplay in this patch, but I don't want people here to think that community based playtesters let them down.

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
As professorspatula say, please don't waste your valuable time trying to disprove this bug. It's right there and hitting so many players. Just consider yourselves lucky and move on.

As most bugs it's intermittent and may not be occuring on everybody's system. For instance, in two of the three battles I played lastly the AI reinforcements bug didn't hit although my army combination was matching the proposed pattern of it.

As for offering temporary workarounds for the bug, not that I'm too confident on their effectiveness but thanks for your suggestions.
.

[Rilder]

yea its there, i got 2 pics showing the cpu usage(via task manager) when i first started the game and the cpu usage right before i exited the game

Heres the first pic just afteri started the game
https://img241.imageshack.us/img241/3733/memleak1fa.jpg
And heres just before i exited... usualy it gets up to 200,000 before i exit due to lag

512 Ram of course
https://img245.imageshack.us/img245/2666/mem8vn.jpg

[Just A Girl]

If there Is a memory leak You can Use Analogx's Maxmem to free up your ram If windows wont do it for you,
http://www.analogx.com/files/maxmemi.exe
its 214k so a really small download,
Easy enough to use aswell.

Its not a fix Its not a work around,
its just something that can free up your ram without having to restart your pc After you exit the game,

Prehaps it will make Life a little easier untill the leak is fixed,

Hope it helps

[Rilder]

yea i dled this thing called free ram xp pro i can use it while the games running and it really helps... i played 4 hours today :P