SE:V v1.30 Changelog

Not many fixes, but it is good to see improvements in the AI

I really really really hope to

v1.31
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1.Fixed - Memory Leak.

That's great! Keep going!

crazydog, it might not be just a single memory leak, and I doubt if Aaron can trace them all in such a sort time span. You should expect this problem resolved little by little on each patched version.

release date of a new patch??

Yes, i know the ML is not an easy one - I'm a programmer myself.

Is that, with BM 1.04, the game is much more fun but also, the ML is bigger.

That is really annoying.....

There are some tools you can get to run down memory leaks. They've been around for years. Whether Aaron has them or not is another story.

What I'm waiting for improvement in the files generation speed in multiplayer. Sometimes the turn processing takes 20 minutes or more even on my dual core with 2 g's of memory.

The memory leak has something to do with the quadrant mod... The game was totally stable previously, and now... well... isn´t. Maybe you should release a version without it Captain?

There are also free tools that spot memory leaks. And it's not too difficult to come up with a small lib to do basic memory management stuff.

I bet Aaron is focused on other bugs that have a large gameplay impact, since the leak is not noticeable in stock. But sometimes he might spot that occasional missing delete.

Just by saying that the quadrant mod makes it worse, you narrow the code hunt.

Hi Folks,

Been away for a while (actually playing the latest release). I'm just ecstatic that the resolution/CTD problem is "still" cured!

Sincerely,
Kahn

The memory leak is not related to any mods, but can be worsened by them. I think the some of the graphics resources for the space objects are being duplicated for some reason, based on the quadrant mod's effect and some other things people have reported over time.

Even if it can be narrowed down to graphics-based, finding memory leaks can be really difficult if you weren't setting things up to find them. No simple utility can be used to identify a memory leak - memory tracking must be coded into the program itself usually.

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Space for rent - please contact owner

MM is attending some conference?

Still waiting on my invite to the SEV conference

When is 1.30 to be released?

A very strange thing about the memory leak, is that almost all of the memory used in ram can be reduced from ~800Mb --> 50Mb by simply (in windows mode) minimizing, then restoring the screen. It doesn't help the swap file, but it does help, if you need to save, as saving bumps up the ram usage 150-200Mb for me.

Waterier the cause or causes of the memory leak I don’t think that they are all that easy to find let alone fix. The only clue I have in this regard is that is proportional to the number of AI’s in the game and I can confirm saving aggravates it.

However my experience with minimising and restoring is the opposite of Cornflakes as I do this a lot , listen to the radio via the internet and work on the same computer etc, it seems to make it worse for me and AlT Tab crashes the game most of the time. I also get crashes on exit if I bail out when the games performance gets very slugish

There are professional tools like GlowCode (costs much money) that should come handy when you want to or have to profile windows applications - as a developer, of course. (Sadly, SE5 isn't a linux application, then one could use valgrind)

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Well, there are certain applications that it seems SEV just can't work with. My music player, DBPoweramp, has a small scrolling marque that displays song info, etc. When it's activated, the game slows to a crawl. When the marque is closed, the game is much more responsive. And if I play music in firefox instead (Mp3s or Pandora), it's completely unnoticeable in the game.

I don't know about alt-tabbing, and I use that minimize button in the corner of the game screen to minimize it, or when it gets stuck open, and *thinks* it's minimized, going to the taskbar, telling it to maximize then minimize usually gets the trick done.

Nice can't wait for the official patch.

Hmm, after reading so much about the memory leak I might have to add something.

I don't experience any exorbitant Memory usage of SEV. I didn't play too long games so I can't really tell but I had games with 100+ turns.

And Alt-tabbing works perfectly fine for me. So does saving.

Maybe it's a problem with certain windows cache/memory settings?

If there is need tell me what info I can provide to make the game better .

If you play in small games, you won't notice the memory leak - it increases with galaxy size. Mod your game to have 250 systems in a large galacy and many empires, then play a few turns and look in taskmgr how much memory SE5 uses.

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Hope the retrofit problem will be fixed , for those who doesn't know , a window would open stating taht the retrofit of some ship could not be done cause there's no shipyards but at the next turn it would do it anyway ! Damn anooying bug !

Minimizing doesn't work for me.

Just wish I didn't have to have autosave every turn on as I know it's going to lock up towards the end of processing after all players turns.

About the memory leak, on my slow 666 mgz computer with 768 megs of ram when i minimize to the taskbar and that i do ctrl-alt-del to see how much memory it is using , i see that it's use only about 1,700 megs Ram , and i am at about at 100 turns done (in balance mod 1.04) but it's true that the game is very slow but i have to say that i am playing with 7 computer player + me amd i play on a 225 system map

Should I looked better but for my defense i have a sore eye now so i only see with my right one..lol , Thanks Kwok for replying , can't wait for next patch..

The reason that you only see 1.7MB is that SE5 frees all memory when minimized. Look at the "Peek Mem Usage" column to see how much memory SE5 had when it was maximized. (A simplified and partly wrong explanation, but in this case sufficient to display the real memory usage SE5 has)

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Why must every Changelog include someone asking about a date? What if your personal peeve was never, ever, for f'ing ever fixed in any patch? Would you (everyone) stop playing the game you love in some lame attempt at protest? SE IV has plenty of bugs are you (pkoko) still complaining and protesting about a patch to fix those?

I get a little miffed and emotional after having a few beers... Besides someone always asks the same lame question even after others have posted a best guess date (no not in this case).

Yes memory leaks can be a problem... I only have 2G of RAM and memory leaks are the least of my concerns. So what's all the hubub (way too much attention) about a memory leak? They happen in ALL applications (including Microsoft) and games. Some may be more noticeable than others but this is nothing that has impacted my SEV gameplay on my PC... and your PC is probably better than mine (wouldn't be the first time). All I'm trying to say is stay focused. People talk about 100 turns. Damn I'm a game junkie, a game-aholic, a geek. I'm single. My life (not that its's anyone's business) is games. I come home and I play SEV. On the Weekends I wake, play, eat, play, and sleep. AT NO POINT HAVE I EVER PLAYED 100 TURNS IN A SINGLE SITTING. When I close ANY application the MEMORY leak is gone. The Memory requirement for ANY application is proportional to the time invested.

Sit down and write a page in your journal. How much memory did that take? Now write a chapter in your latest short-story. How much memory does that take? Play one turn of SEV how much memory is used? Play 100 turns, is the memory requirement the same? Is this due to a leak? NO! You closed SEV remember! Play 100 turns, record the memory used. Close SEV. Run SEV how much memory is being used? NOW the difference between these is the memory leak (sort-of and close enough). NOT some perceived notion that the game is using more memory after 200 turns. DUH! I am also NOT saying there is not a memory leak.

Sorry, I've probably offended everyone here and their mothers by now... Did I mention that I've had a few beers? No, I'm not cutting back! If you guys can rant about senseless topics I can rant about refuting them.

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-my "Ministers are more sinister than Ministers... But who cares?"

I've had a few beers too. It IS Thursday after all, start of the weekend. Just don't expect me to get much done at work on Friday. I don't think anybody's offended.

Darkmoon may have run 100+ turns without shutting down because not everyone turns their computers off unless they have to. Or he may have got the number wrong.

And there's nothing wrong with asking once when the patch will be. Nobody is going to do a search about something as current as a patch release to understand that there's a 4-6 week release cycle with patches. Perhaps there should be a sticky somewhere in the forum. Remember that the current topics are listed down the right hand side of the forum so if a newcomer sees patch notes they're going to want to know when the patch will go live.

Well. I never played 100 turns without saving and shutting SEV down. And I also play mostly medium sized Galaxies.

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-my "Ministers are more sinister than Ministers... But who cares?"

Will, in the entire patch, the increasing combat speed lower the turn wait?

Like I know if an AI has a lot of battles going on the turn could take Civilization 4 end game amount of time and I can't stand that. I hope that is fixed.

Also if there is no memory leaks the AI and other things can be allowed more calculations or scripting with less of a performance impact.

I was wondering if there was any fix for the saved empire can't reload bug? Its the bug that prevents saved computer generated AI empires from being reloaded into another game.

It’s not exactly a bug it’s just that it’s quite easy to fix. Change the game tech and racial point’s levels to allow the empire to load and then edit these back to default starting levels start a new game with the edited empire re save the empire and dump the game you then have a custom race you can play in any game.

Hope that helps

It wont allow me to change the tech levels to 0. The technology points go negative which means I spent too much. So I'm not seeing how you were able to get it to work. The only way was to reset the technology to none on the other screen. When the game started I was at maximum technology. Either I did something wrong or this is a bug. At the least it can be fixed so that it is originally saved with default starting technology.

its working the tl's you cant reduce below tl1 are the defalt minimum techs like your home world type colenization. if the points go negatiove you have over spent and it wont let you start but it will work with any amount of positive points

I've been having trouble sifting through the changelogs, but does anyone know if the problems with simultaneous LAN play, lack of working population transport, and the almost useless point defense? Also the lack of multitargetting and overkill?

Point defence and over kill issues have apparently been fixed. As apparently has the one hex short issue which has been affecting amongst other things population transport in stock.

Multi targeting apparently always worked but it was masked by the over kill issue in that weapons where supposed to deliver enough damage to destroy a target and then move to another target but weren’t as the script which set what was considered enough damage was broken. So every thing fired at the first target regardless of what was needed to destroy it and there was nothing to fire at the next target.

I note that CSM’s have been balanced upwards to cope with the new power of the point defence weapons.

I am not sure about the multiplayer issues as I only play by post and that’s worked ok from the start.

So basically I have to reduce all techs to starting tech level, that would a very long time. I'm not going to sit there and click 100,000 times to get it to work. I'd much rather see a better work around for this. Maybe add the stock races so you can use them.