Possible workaround for an out-of-memory issue

from GalCiv2 Forums

In my last game I hit a brick wall.

At a certain point I was no longer able to save the game. That in itself caused no hard crash but simply aborted saving. Well, no problem, right? Just complete the game...

Problem. When the game "completes" it tries to create an "End Game" save. That was no longer possible in my game and at that point the game did crash hard. So whatever I did, I was not possible to complete the game and get a nice score to look at.

Not used to taking no for an answer I experimented. Literally for days. Just to complete that one stupid game. And I found a workaround.

The action that lead to this "no saving" condition was upgrading one ship design (1600 ships) to another in the shipyard interface. I upgraded those ships to almost identical ships with an equal or lesser number of modules. So in theory the memory load should have been equal or lower afterwards.

This looked and felt like a memory leak because even long after the upgrading operation was completed, the game was still "out of memory".

The workaround I found:

When I manually upgraded 600some ships to the next ship design and then bulk-upgraded the remaining 1000 ships the next turn, it worked.

That way the game retained the ability to save with going out-of-memory. As a result, I was able to complete the game.

So something is fishy with bulk-upgrading ship designs. Somewhere, somehow, the memory is not released after the operation.

13,289 views 18 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I am having a very similar problem, only when I try to upgrade any ship once I am 'deep' into a game. Perhapes the minimum memmory requirements should be bumped. I only have a gig. I kninda figured I would have to anyway.

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

My game was crashing its ass off last week, so i updated drivers and that seemed to fix the problem. Then as my game became more advanced it started crashing fairly regularly on the Auto save and on my manual saves as well. I got the out of memory error.

 

It would cope with about 10/15 saves before crashing each time.

 

Also i gave it a good test with a gigantic map start and repeatedly pressing CNTRL + N and see how many times i can do that before it crashed. Sometimes i could do it 20/30 times, other times it would crash after only 3 or 4 restarts.

 

Game is Dark Avatar on Vista 64 bit latest versions all round. I have 4 gig ram and 9000 paging file space.

Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Same problem here, and that work around is not really useful to me (sorry) as Idont even have 100 chips, same old problem it crashes when I try to save, does anyone at stardock is actually doing something about this cause i ve been seeing posts of this since TA is out, and I ve tried everything to work it out, mods on and mods off, low graphics, high graphics, vanilla version 2.03, moded version HRGmod 2.0, No ship changes, all ship changes, Im getting frustrated, I didnt had this problems a year ago.

Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

It is not it hapens even when you save manually or in Quicksave believe me I know Ive tried

Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

You can turn off the Autosave (at least in TA) but it's not the only way to hit the memoy barrier.

And you can not turn off the game wanting to create an EndGame save when you "win". If you can not save at that point, the game crashes. Period.

My workaround is not the only beatifying truth. It's merely one thing to keep in mind and maybe for the Stardock coders to look into.

Clearly some memory is not being released after use here and that's always bad.

Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Its the same we still need a solution from someone anywhere and the guys at stardock dont seem to be monitoring this and the guys her at the community dont seem to be able to fix it.

Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Also lets not forget this...

 

#5 on the Gamers Bill of Rights.

Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will play adequately on that computer.

Not being able to save and finish a game and having it crash does not mean adquate to me.

Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

That isnt the problem I have 8gigs and still got the problem I think is a bug of the game not of our RAM (not even Crysis requires 8gigs in the minimums come on).

Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I saw a curious fix to this out of memory problem the other day when i googled it.

There is a weird word you add to the end of the EXE file (cannot remember it now)

 

I made the change and so far i have not encountered the problem again! (Fingers crossed). I am running a gigantic map, so i will wait and see what happens mid game, that will be the real test!

Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Nope, did not work, out of memory error is unstoppable.

Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

My god no one knows how to deal with this and stardock doesnt do anything, this seems to be THE game killing bug for Gal Civ , wonder how many victims it will take?

Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

This isnt the bug reports thread? Beacause if it ist maybe thats why Stardock isnt doing shit about this rpoblem we all appear to have.

Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

There appears to be a thread on this in 'Bug Reports' see 'Out of Memory Errors Persist...' posted by Darkieus.

 

They mentioned a Virtual Memory tweeking in the Main Trouble Shooting Board. See 'GETTING HELP for GalCiv II / Dark Avatar' posted by Frogboy.

 

I hope this helps.

Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

If you see at the end of the post you should see a post of mine where I complain that no answer could be found.

Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

If you see at the end of the post you should see a post of mine where I complain that no answer could be found.