[perihelion]

When BP Complete came out, some of us kept getting "MALLOC FAILED" errors or something like that, and we were told to go grab the experimental 64-bit build because we were running out of addressable memory or something?  I'm not going to pretend I understood what the problem was or how that build was supposed to fix it, but it did work.  Sort of.  Not bug-free, but at least it was playable on my machine when before it was not.

I just checked the standard SSE2 build of 3.7.4 RC1, and I'm still getting that error when I try to start Universal Truth Pt 2 in the mission simulator.  I'm not actually playing the campaign right now, so this isn't a problem for me, but I do wonder if it would be a good idea to make a 64-bit build to go with all the rest?

Again, I'm speaking largely out of ignorance.  I'm deeply grateful to all of you for the work you've put into this game!

[m!m]

The 64-bit build were compiled using a different build system than the one that is currently used. Compiling 64-bit build with the current build system would require a lot of work but the different build system should be merged at some point after the 3.7.4 release so it might be possible that 3.8 will have 64-bit builds.

[AdmiralRalwood]

As a stopgap, maybe it would be worthwhile to provide LAA-enabled builds of 3.7.4.

[perihelion]

I didn't have the impression that everyone had to use that 64-bit build in order to play those missions. Only some of us. Why is that? [/tangent]

[AdmiralRalwood]

I didn't have the impression that everyone had to use that 64-bit build in order to play those missions. Only some of us. Why is that? [/tangent]

It's important to remember that a malloc failure dosn't mean that you're out of memory, just that it can't find a large enough contiguous piece of it for whatever FSO is trying to allocate. How your computer responded to its previous requests changes how free memory is laid out later, and so seemingly-unimportant things (like looking at ships in the tech room) can change if/when you hit a malloc failure.

[m!m]

As a stopgap, maybe it would be worthwhile to provide LAA-enabled builds of 3.7.4.

I don't think it's worth the effort if true 64-bit builds are going to be possible "soon". Additionally, LAA would need to be tested well because it may break things that currently work (I don't think that's actually the case but it may happen).

[AdmiralRalwood]

As a stopgap, maybe it would be worthwhile to provide LAA-enabled builds of 3.7.4.

I don't think it's worth the effort if true 64-bit builds are going to be possible "soon". Additionally, LAA would need to be tested well because it may break things that currently work (I don't think that's actually the case but it may happen).

I used LAA while testing something else (that consumed more memory and hence caused more malloc failures without it) and encountered no problems in some very intense missions, but that's obviously a very small sample size; I was thinking more along the lines of simply having them available with lots of warning text that they may cause unexpected problems. If nothing else, the old LAA test build thread could just be revived with some more up-to-date builds.

My only problem with waiting for proper 64-bit support is that we have no idea how far in the future "soon" will be, and people keep having malloc failures in the present... and the 64-bit test builds kept running into problems that are present in Antipodes rather than being inherent problems of 64-bit builds (not that finding problems in the SDL Everywhere code isn't worthwhile, but it's not helpful to people who just want to finish Blue Planet without crashing).

[m!m]

I guess LAA builds could be provided as additional builds (I thought you wanted to enable it on all Windows builds).

[herkie423]

I played the BPC (and completed it) using 3.7.3 which I got from the download page. I did not get a mal-allocation error (MALLOC). But my framerate is really poor, something like 21fps. I used the 3.7.4 RC, the framerate was even cut in half. Its the same thing with my project, The Aftermath. If I use the 3.7.2, the framerate is around 60fps (in a mission with 4 Erebus and 2 Sathanas with 100 clashing fighters). Now, when I use the later versions of FSO, the 3.7.3 SSE2 and 3.7.4 RC,  the framerate is cut drastically. So I am wondering why do this happen?

[AdmiralRalwood]

Try disabling shadows (if they're enabled) and deferred lighting.

(Additionally, RC1 is out-of-date, and you should use RC2 instead.)

[herkie423]

Thanks Admiral. The Aftermath seem to be running fine with the later builds except for my normal and shine maps, they are pretty distorted in-game. That fault is in my end here. I never quite got the correct way to make those textures.