[kasperl]

Originally posted by CP5670
I actually ran into the old-style crash with this, where it inexplicably dumps you into windows when certain keys are pressed. This used to happen in several builds around 3.5 but stopped happening at some point. For example, I have one mission where I can get it to crash every time if I enable cheats (www.freespace2.com) and press ~U, but it only happens in that one mission, and it's a simple test mission with almost nothing in it. Does that keystroke even do anything? I only hit it by accident instead of ~I. Other missions have similar issues with other keys, although this is the only 100% reliable mission/key combo I have found.

Mantis?

[Fear]

i look everywhere can some 1 help me find 5.2 launcher?

[karajorma]

Go to the 3.6 thread and download launcher 5.x. The rar says launcher5 but is in fact 5.2.

[Fear]

thnx

[Starman01]

Originally posted by taylor
Try this build: 20040729-win32.zip

I don't get any leaks with this one so if anyone else does please let me know what cmdline options you are using.  This build is plain CVS with nothing special added.  It was tested with all of the normal MediaVPs and all graphics options turned on.

Hey, I tested this build (according to the filename I already used that
one earlier). After browsing this forum, I launched FS (without reboot)
and loaded a mission. I quit and reloaded the mission 3 times (without
reboot or even leaving freespace), and encountered no big memory-leak
at all. Game-speed was at normal 100% (my scale, just for
explanation)

So far so good. I rebooted, and used the new build again.

After loading the same mission the first time, my game-speed was
only 70% of the old speed. Without exiting Freespace (or reboot
again) I reloaded the same mission, and the game-speed was down
to 20 % !  Another reload would either freeze it, or CTD.

I fear that this will be a hard thing for you guys fixing it, but I'm
pretty sure you will find the error. Don't give up !

[Darkhill]

Its weird, we are running just the vanilla 3.6 and don't seem to have these problems.  There is the memory leak, but we don't seem to get crashes or have the performance decline.  But then again we don't run *any* of the extra graphical goodies you guys have come up with.  I just wonder if it would be worthwhile to look into how the game is using all the new *.vps that have been added in.

[StratComm]

darkchrono, that's not a memory leak, it's just high memory consumption.  The memory leak is memory that is not released even though it isn't being used, resulting in huge and contiunally growing pagefile/ram usage and eventual out of memory errors (crashing).  The RAM thing needs to be brought under control as well, but it's a completely different beast.

[Starman01]

I forgot to post my flags:

-glow -jpgtga -fps  -ambient_factor 100

that is all, nothing special at all. Also I don't use any of the new
vp's.

However, I'm pretty sure that our (WC-Saga) stuff is uge, but in
the testmission are only 2 different capships, 2 different allied
fighter-types (6 at all) and 2 different enemy fighters (14 at all, but not
launched while this testing). However, there is a bunch of capships
coming in at the end of the mission (8 at all, 3 different types).

[Kazan]

make sure you're not confusing high memory usage w/ a leak --- WCS has huge usage even without a leak (700mb)

[Starman01]

No doubt. But as I said, the performance drops every mission, since
this build I have to reboot after each played mission.

[Tolwyn]

Originally posted by Kazan
make sure you're not confusing high memory usage w/ a leak --- WCS has huge usage even without a leak (700mb)

the usage increases with every build, Kaz.

Additionally, I have troubles with the interface. Sometimes certain images won't be preloaded at all (there is really no pattern here: once I had no pilot avatars in the pilot room, another time debriefing background was not loaded, once (and only once) a mask file could not be found)

I am using: 29072004B_fs2_open_r.exe


Here are my specs

P4 2.67
1024 MB DDR Ram
160 GB
Radeon 9700 Pro

spec -glow -pcx32 -jpgtga -d3dmipmap -ship_choice_3d -2d_poof -snd_preload -dnoshowvid -ambient_factor 90

[taylor]

Originally posted by Starman01
No doubt. But as I said, the performance drops every mission, since
this build I have to reboot after each played mission.

If you have to actually reboot your computer to get the game working at a good speed then it's probably a system problem.  Anything that the game does should be undone when it exits.  Going to one of WMCoolmon's recent builds doesn't do this?

[Cyker]

Originally posted by taylor

If you have to actually reboot your computer to get the game working at a good speed then it's probably a system problem.  Anything that the game does should be undone when it exits.  Going to one of WMCoolmon's recent builds doesn't do this?

This is the theory but I've found that with Windows this is very rarely the case. Heck, even Linux doesnt always cleanly clear released memory blocks (I restart X now and again specifically to try and clear the creep from KDE!)

Windows 2000 and XP are not too bad at clearing an unloaded program out of RAM but they never seem to clear the handles to any shared libraries completely, and also I've had many cases where programs have crashed (e.g. FS2 ) and screwed something up in the system, causing all sorts of weird stuff to happen until reboot (Protected Memory my backside!)

I won't even talk about Win98 for this kind of thing...  Although on the bright side it reboots very quickly

I personally haven't had many problems but I'm still using the release version of 3.6 - It's working beautifully, even in Win98!

[Singh]

Dunno bout you guys, but the win32 is the most stable and fastest build I've played to date - combined with the media Vp, it runs smoothly.

*sets this build as his current default

[taylor]

Originally posted by Cyker
This is the theory but I've found that with Windows this is very rarely the case. Heck, even Linux doesnt always cleanly clear released memory blocks (I restart X now and again specifically to try and clear the creep from KDE!)

That's why I said "should"   The Linux VM works pretty differently so they don't really compare but X can do some freaky stuff sometimes.

Going by his post he said the when he first tried it everything was fine and at 100% even after multiple mission restarts.  When he rebooted his computer things went downhill.  That screams of a system problem so if it now happens with other builds too then we'll know that for sure.

This memory leak fix is one of the main goals of 3.6.1 though so we need to make sure it's working well for everyone.  I'm going to post a new test build this weekend for the new pilot file format stuff so I want to try and get any additional memory fixes in there for testing too.

[castor]

Originally posted by Singh
Dunno bout you guys, but the win32 is the most stable and fastest build I've played to date - combined with the media Vp, it runs smoothly.

I can confirm this regarding the 98-version.
Yet I seem to get frequent crashes on multi with this one? (didn't get those with previous 3.6 based builds).

[Starman01]

Originally posted by taylor

If you have to actually reboot your computer to get the game working at a good speed then it's probably a system problem.  Anything that the game does should be undone when it exits.  Going to one of WMCoolmon's recent builds doesn't do this?

You get this wrong. Pls read my post above, I made some test with
different builds, and just for make sure, I have rebooted the system
every time before FS loads (just to make sure the memory is clear).

With standard 3.6 and escpecially the 20040401-build, I have no
slowdown, and can load missions many times without slowdowns.

But with the new build I can only play 1 mission (and that slower than
in the other builds), and then when loading another mission, the
game is nearly freezing.

I have no knowledge about the coding-stuff, but it is obvious that
the memory isn't cleared anymore when exiting a misson.

Of course Kazan's is right, WCS has a high-memory use, but we
haven't encountered this kind of problems before.

(edit) Thats the post I was referring to :


Hey, I tested this build (20040401) (according to the filename I already used that
one earlier). After browsing this forum, I launched FS (without reboot)
and loaded a mission. I quit and reloaded the mission 3 times (without
reboot or even leaving freespace), and encountered no big memory-leak
at all. Game-speed was at normal 100% (my scale, just for
explanation)

So far so good. I rebooted, and used the new build again.

After loading the same mission the first time, my game-speed was
only 70% of the old speed. Without exiting Freespace (or reboot
again) I reloaded the same mission, and the game-speed was down
to 20 % !  Another reload would either freeze it, or CTD.


Once again, this are my system-specs and used flags:

-glow -jpgtga -fps  -ambient_factor 100

P4, 2,0 GHz, 512 MB RAM,
WIN98SE, GF4 TI4200 64 MB

[Tolwyn]

also take a look at this

[taylor]

Originally posted by Starman01
You get this wrong. Pls read my post above, I made some test with
different builds, and just for make sure, I have rebooted the system
every time before FS loads (just to make sure the memory is clear).

I did read it wrong sorry 'bout that.  Memory is cleared at the start of a mission and not the end but it's always been that way.  Are you using newer MediaVPs?  Try it without them and see if it makes a difference.  The mission load freeze sounds more like the known issue with hi-poly models, especially the Fenris.  I'm not sure about the slowdown though, this is the fastest build I've used in a long time.  Memory usage is a lot better than it used to be and the D3D leak is fixed so I don't know what's going on here.  I'll play with it some this weekend and try to recreate any of your problems.

[Tolwyn]

Originally posted by taylor

I did read it wrong sorry 'bout that.  Memory is cleared at the start of a mission and not the end but it's always been that way.  Are you using newer MediaVPs?  Try it without them and see if it makes a difference.  The mission load freeze sounds more like the known issue with hi-poly models, especially the Fenris.  I'm not sure about the slowdown though, this is the fastest build I've used in a long time.  Memory usage is a lot better than it used to be and the D3D leak is fixed so I don't know what's going on here.  I'll play with it some this weekend and try to recreate any of your problems.

Starman is using WCS data set. But I can confirm that same happens with FS2 (TGA maps, no high res models; I will have to make some more testing on this matter)