Matrix Games Forums

Hi there,

Since upgrading to 678.18 large scenarios like "Havana daydreaming" and "Kingdom come" have become unplayable for me because of either out of memory crashes or game slowdowns to the point that it takes five seconds real time to run a single second of game time (even under 300X acceleration).

These large scenarios start out perfectly fine (I had no problem running the big air battle at the beginning of both Havana daydreaming and Kingdom come but after a few hours of game time problems start to rear their ugly head and the game goes belly up (I posted both problems in the tech sections).

Previous builds also had their problems but at least I could play the game so I am wondering if it would be possible to download an older build (e.g. B678.17) which did not have these problems?

W.

I would just reinstall another version from scratch. The release candidates have dropped down into the main forum.

I haven't played those...how big are they?

Havana daydreaming is really great (One of the best scenario's out there and you should really play it) and starts with an air-battle of about a 100 AC (game handles this just fine), you can compare it in size to a scenario like "Operation brass drum".

I'll do a clean install and see it this helps.

W.

EDIT: I bought the game from steam so can only get the 678.18 version and do not have access to an older build that I can upgrade to 678.17....

I would first try updating the scenario to the latest build. That usually solves the issue.

Mike

Guys

I would highly suggest not suggesting downgrades unless we mention its a good idea. Reason is we do include new files etc. that could impact the overall stability of the sim.

Thanks!

Mike

Hi Folks,

Yeah - since I'm up to my elbows in Havana right now - yeah - probably the largest aircraft battles I've seen so far... It's a truly impressive thing and almost impossible to micromanage - the mission editor really becomes your friend... I do find that the longer I play - it seems the performance does degrade over time... When I can't maintain a 1:1 ratio on time it becomes less enjoyable... I have a reasonable system - a Win7x64 Sandy Bridge overclocked to 4.5 ghz with 8 Gig of RAM... I don't think the video card matters as much with Command but I have a fairly decent one as well ( all geared to FSX )... What I've been doing is saving - exiting - and restarting Command like every 30 minutes with this massive campaign or if the slow down becomes obvious... It seems to really help as the point in the scenarios where it seemed slow - seems to come back fine after the restart... I guess the restart just clears whatever seems to load up the system over time...

I wouldn't even think of trying this scenario on my laptop...

Regards,
Scott

We try and improve performance as best as we can but we cannot limit how many units a player can add or some of the things they might add to a scenario. In those situation the best thing you can do is post a save showing us the issue so we can take the thing apart and figure out where the logjam is.

Mike

What Mike said. Always, ALWAYS please provide a save from when things begin slowing down (even better, a point before they start slowing down). Anecdotal "I was doing X and then things broke down" information is useless to us most of the time. A save file is the near-perfect witness.

The reported symptom is that the slowdown is recurrent,
and occurs after some period of play. I've seen the
same behavior in Kushan's last two (2) Twitch streams.
(Granted, Kushan is streaming, but he seems to have a
pretty beefy machine.)

It sounds like a memory leak/garbage collection issue.

I am not sure its even a memory leak. It could be that some of these scenarios are just plain too big and as they go on, and more activity from missiles, radars, ships, etc. start, memory and throughput become an issue.

I don't think it's a size problem as the big air-battles at the beginning of these scenarios run just fine, it's only after a few hours of game time (and when there are only relatively few AC airborne)that the Gremlins start popping up. I think that Javafiend is correct with his memory leak/garbage collection theory.

We _absolutely_ need saves to investigate. Even if it's recurring on you.

Let me explain why. The problem may occur because you're doing something seemingly innocent/unrelated (outfit plane-X with loadout-Y instead of loadout-Z), which two hours later triggers an AI evaluation which has a bug, and all hell breaks loose.

So, without a provided save, I have no choice but to try and recreate the error condition on my own, and I may choose loadout-Z instead of Y cause that's how I roll. Or I may split my airgroups in 2x instead of 4x. Or whatever else out of a million big and small decisions. So, because I went down a different path, the AI evaluation with the bug does not happen. So maybe 4-5 hours later I've tried a number of runs on it and I'm not seeing the problem and I'm starting to think that someone is wasting my time.

Do you understand now why we need saves, saves and more saves?

Hi Folks,

I'll gladly upload some saves but I'm traveling this week and I don't have access to my home machine... If someone doesn't beat me to it - I'll try and do some next weekend...

My experience does seem to mimic Willie's...

Regards,
Scott

ORIGINAL: wild_Willie2

I don't think it's a size problem as the big air-battles at the beginning of these scenarios run just fine, it's only after a few hours of game time (and when there are only relatively few AC airborne)that the Gremlins start popping up. I think that Javafiend is correct with his memory leak/garbage collection theory.

If you post a file we (the developers) can take a look and fix it.

These other guys can't[:)]

Mike

I played around with this one a little tonight. The scenario doesn't start out well. I see pulse counts jumping around quite bit. I did notice it has a huge amount of sensors on because of all the airbases. I never entered an order and within a couple minutes, it is starting to struggle. It never completely hangs or gets super slow, but I only played it for a hour or so game time. It is a relatively old database. I think its pre-1.07 patch I did a simple rebuild and it helped a little. I also turned off hi fi and it got a little better. But there is something going on in this particular scenario. I am going to see if I can see anything in particular that is causing scans to swing all over the place and get a save.