source taken from UO U.Hall


[b]Greetings,

I have brought this topic up in other threads in U.Hall in the past, but usually the Threads have initially been about other things or the Graphics in general, so this issue has been lost and never gotten any attiention from the Dev's it seems. Probably because they missed it in the "storm" of threads that is about KR:

About KR and the Memory/Eating up the CPU usage problem. Maybe this will help The Dev's search for and Pin-Point the problem. Maybe Contact the Developers of Civ IV so You don't have to research things they already have tried that didn't help.

Have anyone here ever played Civ IV ??? It suffers from what is reffered to in most Gamers Forums as a "Memory Leak".
(I've been a Sid Meier and Civ Fan ever since the first Civ on Amiga/Commodore 600, when it used 4 Disks, 2 in at the same time to play, he he he, and I do like each new Civ and it's Upgrades, even if Civ III was a bit too easy, and I like the new Art and Style in Civ IV, so I'm definetly not against it's progress in itself and it's new gameplay is awesome)

They have released patches to try to fix it, but has never succeeded. They have managed to improve it a little, but it's still very bad. The more Graphic You uncover on a map, the more it slows down Your system so bad that it almost comes to a halt. An XL map is almost unplayable.

You need to shut down and reboot the Game and clear it's cache over and over inbetween turns (they had to release an explanation on how to do that by pressing down a couple of keyboard buttons while Civ IV loads).

Even at a System way above it's requirements. I'm running a Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.06GHz (2 CPUs), Nvidia GeForce 7300 GS with 512 MB, and 2048 RAM, still it happens in both Civ IV and KR. Sounds Familiar to anyone ??? Yeah, it seems KR suffer the same problem. What do they have in common ??? Anyone ??? Gambryo, yes !!! Top View, certainly, but in Civ IV You can zoom and pan and tilt around from a certain amount of angles/sides in the world as well. Almost Fully 3D, but the default view when playing is as UO, Top View from the Top a bit sideways, that I happen to love in games


When I first bought it I tried running Civ IV on an Acer Notebook that had just the required recommended Specs and some above. It couldn't run properly. The more I uncovered a map, the more it stood still. I shut down all graphic effects, set effects to lowest etc. Still it would come to a halt completely. I thought it was just the Notebook having a Celeron Processor that caused it, so I bought a new Stationary Computer, with the specs I mentioned above about a year ago, but it sure didn't help Civ IV's Memory Leak Problem. Yes, I have all the patches.

I'm definetly not a Technical PC Wizard, so their identical symptoms could be unrelated, but when 2 patience has the same symphtoms You usually try to look for the same reasons that might cause it. Maybe Gambryo Graphic Engine simply can't handle top Isometric View ??? DAoC is not the same View. Maybe Top View has too much graphic details at once on the same screen. Nothing that can be blurrier because it's in the far distant background ???

I don't know, but it's very weird that 2 games using the same type of top view, using the same Graphic Engine, suffers the same Memory Leak Problem.

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It as nothing to do with that, memory leaks are created when any program does not release the memory when it is suppose to. We had the same issue for years with UO 3d. I've seen it in many other games and programs as well.

I will make it easier for people to understand it: BAD PROGRAMMING. If UO:KR was still in beta I would not say this, but because they took it out of BETA prematurely, I believe that we are entitled to say it was badly programmed.

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But is it top View, or more 1st person over the shoulder view (like DAoC) ??? I couldn't find any ScreenShots there of "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion".

My thought, that might be totally wrong, is that top view demands that all items onscreen must be equally detailed while in 1st person views only the few nearest objects are very detailed and things in the distance are not so detailed. Just an idea. That might not be that at all that causes the Memory Leak problem that both Civ IV and KR seems to suffer.

Might be something other with The Gambryo Engine or not the Gambryo Engine at all, as Abalister suggests, but they must start to look for the problem somewhere and these 2 Games both uses Gambryo and has Top View with alot of items and details on the screen at the same time and they both suffer the same problem with using up the CPU, until it's almost unplayable.

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I have Civ 4 and have not experienced this Memory Leak...
I play the biggest maps and have no lag at all.

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There are system requirement limitations, for sure - and there are also compatibility-with-2D requirements, which is why we're planning for SA to be KR-only.

E. Jeremy Dalberg
UO Community Coordinator
EA Mythic

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Warsong of LS wrote: *waves* hand in front of Lord Funk :

There is no memory issue.

There is no environmental problem.

These are not the driods you are looking for

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