Seriously screw this memory leak

from Elemental Forums

I swear this is the most annoying memory leak of any game I have ever seen. 9 times out of 10 it crashes when I press quick save. The very point where I want to save the game to save progress is where it crashes....what a sick joke. This is the same problem/leak that has been in this game since release. Having played the game long enough it's just a characteristic of the game.

 

Oh and one more thing auto save BEFORE turns not after.....why would we want an auto save after the turn is done? Really? Which game does this? Is it great that my city got sacked?? Well thanks to auto save that happens AFTER the turn that sacked city is immortalized forever. The fact the game crashes on quick saves OFTEN makes the fact that the auto save happens after a turn even more problematic.

I try not to quick save as I feel it is only degrading the performance faster and leading to the memory leak crash. Quick saving has become like Russian Roulette you never know if it will save your progress or dump it all right there on the spot.

elemental
6,070 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

 

  A crash during a save probably isn't a memory leak.  Its a ref issue.  Some object is marked as no longer used even though something is still referencing it.  So when the save happens the referencing object tries to write all its values (one of which is a pointer to a deleted object) and we get a crash.

  Memory leaks are the opposite issue.  We are keeping references to object we don't need anymore.  Every reference kept consumes memory, over time these unneeded referenced consume more and more memory until you have taken all available memory and the game crashed.

  I don't say any of this to argue your stability concerns.  Just to provide a little background.  We fix lots of memory leak issues (where references are claimed but not released) and doublefree type crash issues (where references are deleted when they aren't claimed or deleted twice for one claim).  But there is work left to do.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

FWIW, I've never had a crash when I quicksaved. Many fewer crashes with v1.1--only 1 that I recall.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

strange enough.. sots does autosave before and after turn change... i think (well.. there's auto save.. autosave end turn.. and one other one anyway... )

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Well, I will say this, quick save crashes happen only after a while in game. If the quicksave cannot attribute to the memory leak directly then it must simply be that quicksaving utilizes some resources that require more at a time when the memory leak degradation has reached the tipping point and is ready to crash. The quicksave simply pulls resources that are not avilable and this is why I see a crash at those times.

Quicksaving early in a session, right after game startup is fairly stable. It's only when the system gets bogged down with memory problems does quicksave become an issue. I can even tell it is getting close to crashing after awhile and I know that my quicksave might cause the game to crash...I always press quicksave and hope I can skate by. I am just saying that I believe if the memory leak was not an issue that quick saving would not crash the game.

I will say this, that it makes me quit in disgust quite often when I lose progress right when I wanted to save it. Replaying a difficult or tedious battle is not much fun because of a crash. I guess at somepoint the memory problems will go away, and I imagine quicksaving will also be fixed. The auto save AFTER a turn thing is bad imo...defeats the whole purpose almost.

 

BTW I have a 4870 1 GB card, I7 920 quad core, 6 gigs rams, Windows Vista....latest drivers.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quicksaving early in a session, right after game startup is fairly stable. It's only when the system gets bogged down with memory problems does quicksave become an issue.
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Acutally from what Derek has told us I'd infer that when you have been playing a while more objects have been created and destroyed and dereferenced so the chance of a bug where an object still having a pointer though it's been cleaned up increases as has been said that wouldn't be a memory leak but in fact the oposite of a memory leak.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

well whatever is causing it, fix it, please :Pi get Out of Memory crashes and just straight crash to desktops, most of them seemingly random, and it sooooo annoying :(