lessons to learn from NV Game Stabilizer?

[rickerhk]

Persistent references are available to the scripting engine. In order to be available for scripts, there must be a table of persistent references somewhere in RAM, I would think, and I guess it would either build a table as it loads the mods on startup, or it builds a table in RAM as cells are loaded and scripts are run.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

That makes sense. Obviously you have thought about it :)

[davidlallen]

The way I think about persistent is that when the player leaves a cell, all non-persistent objects in the cell are freed from system memory. But persistent objects are kept. So if you enter and leave a cell repeatedly, the non-persistent objects are allocated and freed repeatedly. *If* the engine has a memory leak, then this repeated operation would eventually cause all system memory to be exhausted. Then making the object persistent prevents the slow and steady increase of leaked memory.

 

However, nobody has shown any evidence of this happening. To me, it seems unlikely that the engine devs would have missed this, or that such a bug would apply only to collision markers.

[rickerhk]

The way I think about persistent is that when the player leaves a cell, all non-persistent objects in the cell are freed from system memory. But persistent objects are kept.

 

That's pretty much how the wiki puts it.

So if you enter and leave a cell repeatedly, the non-persistent objects are allocated and freed repeatedly.

There is some cell buffering. So it's not dumped right away. If you do bounce back and forth between two cells, notice how much faster it is than loading into a cell for the first time.

 

*If* the engine has a memory leak, then this repeated operation would eventually cause all system memory to be exhausted. Then making the object persistent prevents the slow and steady increase of leaked memory.

 

However, nobody has shown any evidence of this happening. To me, it seems unlikely that the engine devs would have missed this, or that such a bug would apply only to collision markers.

I don't think the game has a memory leak - unless you want to call too many mods a memory leak ;) The game runs out of memory from too many mods being loaded.

[monshael]

well, my game usually crashes because it runs out of memory after some time of playing.

Now that i think about it, time until a crash varies depending on how many cells i visit during a session or how crowded they are. For example, if i stay out in the wasteland, sometimes i can even reach 3 hours of play time, but in and around freeside/the strip i usually get to play for around 20 to 40 min, 1h tops. But either way, it builds up and it gets harder and harder to load everything, even if i run a purge (pcb).

Edited May 28, 2011 by monshael

[blove]

Lesson learned, that your posts get deleted if you call out the author over something he brought up in his mod comments thread.

 

After a quick look at his Fallout 3 mod, that I assume is similar, it is easy to see the gains. In that mod, thousands of placed references were disabled. A couple hundred dynamic spawns were removed. Some doors were glitched. Miss Launcher is unobtainable. All of that adds up to less processing.

[davidlallen]

How could your posts get deleted? I thought only moderators could do that. Which thread was edited?

[tunaisafish]

The main mod thread was edited.

 

The last I saw was that he had deleted all his own comments and was asking for myself and blove to agree for ours to be removed too.

I didn't get chance to reply as he disabled the whole thread shortly after. 24hrs later I notice that whole convo had been wiped.

 

Yeah he must have asked a mod to intervene for him. I've had no PM's about the issue.

 

Anyway, must get back to the new mod I'm making.

It's called the "Sand-Box Backpack". It's gonna be really huge so it can hold lots of those errors ;)

[deu58]

@ Tuna

Which thread is it that you say was edited? He has 4 side threads plus his main thread going on this. His main thread seems to be still active and then there are the side threads in his discussion tab. One of those reads 0 posts with the exception of his own OP which is dated as posted on the 21st. There is also a new upload file dated the 30th for his stabilizer mod.

=======================================================================================

I used his A2 I think it was and I endorsed that file and it did actually improve my game at least as far as I could see on the very surface of things. With mods installed using his mod I had no crashes in the Good Springs and Nipton areas which was a major first for me and it did vindicate at least that release of the stabilizer. Before that time I could pretty much always expect at least one crash in the Good Springs area if going to the cemetery, entering or leaving Good Springs heading towards Bonnie Springs or towards Jeans skydiving and occasionally when traveling between the Good Springs general store and the last row of Good Springs houses on the Bonnie Springs side of the map.

 

Nipton always crashed on me in front of the town hall, occasionally In back of the town hall, The area around the small hotel where all the dead NCRs are and when trying to cross the rail road tracks going up the hill towards the viper ambush site. I tried this several times. With the stabilizer no crashes. With out the stabilizer I could expect a crash in any one of those areas at any given time. I tested this several times because I was worried about if I was just having some kind of placebo experience but as far as I could tell his stabilizer at that current time was doing something positive at least on the surface of things.

 

If I do not use any mods at all then like you said elsewhere Dave I can run the game for hours without crashes but I do use the ini tweaks.

bUseThreadedAI=1

iNumHWThreads=2

 

Before I put those in I was lucky if I could run the game for 10 minutes before it started crashing mods or no mods. After the ini tweaks as I started adding mods well of course the occasional random crash would happen but at least I knew they were mod related and not vanilla game related. Also I had no DLC's until the release of Honest Hearts. On the HH release day I bought both Dead Money and HH and have both active in my game from that time until today. In the early days I tested these kinds of things out. I do use the AWOP mod and I figured that perhaps that may be the mod causing the occasional problems. FOOK Calibre and BOE were very bad for me crash wise and I no longer even use those mods.

 

Basically the crash cycle was any time in those areas expect one random crash. After the random crash I could reload and play that area generally with no further problems. Sometimes it would crash a second time and very rarely I may even get 3 crashes in one of those areas. But 3 was very rare.

 

I am not currently running any version of the stabilizer. I am not nor was I experiencing the types of endless crashes that so many others are reporting all the time. My crashes are more of the occasional nuisance crashes rather than the hair ripping kick the cat type crashes.

 

After that he released another stabilizer and has been releasing a succession of stabilizers since all with mixed yay's and boo's and as he clearly states this is all still Beta and problems are to be expected. Considering that I have my own things going on and really did not have the time to become a full time part of his testing I retired myself from that thread and have decided to wait until his final final is finally final and then try that.

 

What ever it is he is doing program wise whether it is good bad or indifferent I really do not know. I do know something's about basic programming but I am not a programmer. The deeper mysteries of the dark arts are currently beyond me thus I really am not qualified to say anymore than what I have I already said pro or con.

Edited May 30, 2011 by deu58

[tunaisafish]

@deu

The thread was the main one... with 600+ comments now.

Choose this link and select the Action Log tab.

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=41745

 

 

 

10:51, 29 May 2011Attribute change: file visible to the public

09:13, 29 May 2011Attribute change: file hidden from public viewing

08:57, 29 May 2011Attribute change: file visible to the public

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08:30, 29 May 2011Image deleted: ElminsterAU

06:18, 29 May 2011New image: ElminsterAU

 

 

 

I think about 5 of my posts were deleted.

The pic was put up during the deleted discussion, and I must have tried to reply during one of those downtimes.

 

This is not the first time that comments have been deleted from that thread.

Urbex posted to correct the statement that IWR 'deleted' objects. His post was deleted.

That was some time ago, but today the same statement is being made again.

 

The posts I've seen that were deleted were constructive criticism, and fit well with what is said to be an experimental thread of research and learning.

 

About the improvements you saw in your game, yeah I know many have seen them and I don't doubt it. I put my theory forward for that in the main thread, which fits with what you say.