quick question, is my computer too slow to play this game.

Most of the lag is due to a slow memory leak rather than any outrageous requirement of computer resources. The whole space empires series is singularly undemanding as far as specs go SEIV will run on a PI 75mhz and I have run SEV on a 700 MHz Athlon though it was running Windows 98 not Windows XP which would have helped.

Lag in nebulae systems not uncommon and happens even on my highest spec machine some people have similar issues with systems with lots of asteroids in them. Turn processing generally gets slower as the game goes on but knocking out most of the AI’s should have helped that. Since it is the size of AI empires which cause this from what I can tell.

There is as yet no cure but a number of things help

1 the memory leak builds up as you play saving and quitting then reloading will clear the problem or rather reset it. How fast it builds up depends on a number of things but the number of AI’s and size of map seem to be important.

2 are careful with autosaving as it can help and equally as it puts a high demand on ram and virtual memory it can make it worse becoming the straw that breaks the camels back

3 try to have 8+ GB of free drive space on the primary partition

4 expand your virtual memory and allow windows to control the size of it

5 try not to run other especially greedy applications at the same time

6 some people find minimising and restoring helps some find it makes things worse

7 try running the game in a window as some people report that it also helps.

8 I find it helps to have the free space on the primary partition as contiguous as possible so will defrayment that partition if its not. Other people find this makes no difference

General note we really ought to have things to do about the memory leak as a sticky

Please don't interpret these questions as an attack on MM...

1. Is there a setting of any sort in SEV that can free up processor bandwidth? Just sitting there looking at a system in SEV, TaskManager shows it usually taking up somewhere north of 95% of processor time. Turning off the background image dosn't seem to have an impact.
2. Is this issue somehow related to the memory leak, such that fixing that will lead to an improvement in processor load?
2. Is this the sort of thing that MM is likely to address anytime soon?

-Gusset

I read some time ago here that disabling font smoothing could help (right click on desktop / Appearance tab / Effects)

1&2 not that I know of, but the ferocious processor usage seems to be tied to certain events such as restoring the game saving the game and quitting the game when its got really sluggish due to the leak. I don’t think its a function of the memory leak which tends to manifest as virtual memory low warnings but I don’t know they aggravate each other as the leak does it would appear use lots of Virtual memory which is as a disk cache where an over loaded processor would be caching stuff.

3 I think he is looking for the cause of t he memory leak but as the temp folder and virtual memory gets cleared when the program closes down its not that easy to trace I suspect. It doesent make the game unplayable but I will agree it’s the last major issue.

It’s not an attack on MM its fare comment but for a small company with a one man programming team you have to appreciate the effort Aaron puts into perfecting his baby he has done more than most companys have this far