Basic Issues

[lightknight]

Okay, so I'm returning to the game after a hiatus and noticing a host of issues. I don't know if they're involved with the latest patch or a previous one, so I'll mention them all here.

 

Issue 1: MEMORY. Academagia begins using about 450MB of RAM (a rather high amount, considering what the program does) but after playing the game and saving/loading several times, that number climbs steadily; after about an hour of play, it was using nearly 1 GB (!) of RAM. This cannot be right. Quitting and restarting the game (and ending the process in the task manager; see below) resolved the issue, but I'm certain you don't want your players to do that. It got so laggy after that time that the music would skip if I scrolled down even once and it took up to 10 seconds to register a click. This is on a Qosmio, one of the highest-end gaming systems on the planet. Is this a result of the "memory optimization" mentioned in the latest patch thread?

 

Issue 2: When I close the game, the interface closes, but the game continues to consume resources; the music keeps playing in the background, the game hogs 500MB to 1 GB of RAM, and does not shut down unless I go into the task manager and end the process myself. Again, not good.

 

Issue 3: I cannot help but think that there may be something wrong with the RNG. Creating a new character, I decided to spend an early weekend doing the "Run a Potentially Crippling Route" to raise my Fitness statistic. The game states that each time I do this, there is a 10% chance that the Fitness statistic will raise permanently. I tried it twice and then a rest; nothing. I did the same again the next day; nothing. I reloaded and tried this again (4 attempts per weekend); nothing. Again; nothing. 27 more times; nothing. Knowing that sometimes bad luck strikes, I began keeping a count.

 

Drum roll, please.

 

I TRIED 216 TIMES. No expansion. On a 10% chance. After this, going a bit berserk, I ordered my poor student to do NOTHING AT ALL but run a potentially crippling training route at every possible moment of his life for 2 months of school time.

 

Nothing.

 

My luck cannot possibly be that bad. It is stastically more or less impossible to roll a 10-sided die 200+ times and /never/ get a particular result. I even had a +2% standing bonus to all actions, so that should have been a 12% chance. Statistically, the vast majority of people will roll the desired result in 8 tries. I tried 216 times; lost an entire evening in the effort.

 

How can this be? I left the game months ago, and feel very frustrated to return to it in this state. Are these known issues, or something else?

[Legate of Mineta]

lightknight;

 

Thanks!

 

Unfortunately, #1 is actually correct memory size- the size of the database is huge, and it does consume a great deal of memory. That said, the swiftly rising amount of memory needed definitely sounds incorrect, although I do not see anything near 1 GB in an of our test environments. This sounds like a leak we have missed, and almost certainly due to the optimizations.

 

For #2, this is something of a known issue. We've seen this happen before on one of our test configurations, but not the others. We haven't puzzled it out yet, though.

 

For #3, 216 misses on 12% is statistically improbable, for sure. We've done some tweaking on these Chances in the past, but a new issue may have come forward. We'll test it again to make certain.

 

A quick question about #1: We just spent about an hour of play to see if we could get to a Gig, but we were never close. You mentioned saving/loading- can you describe a frequency there, so we can try the test again? Is this once a week, or more frequent?

 

Thanks again!

[lightknight]

To be precise, the highest I got was up near 900 MB. What I was doing was beginning at a weekend (the second of the game, second week of Athonos) and attempting to Run a Crippling Route twice on Saturday then a rest and then twice again on Sunday and then a rest, and if (read: when) that failed to trigger the Fitness increase, reload back to that point and try the two days again. Sometimes, after an interesting random event, I would play for a few days more, and then reload. I was constantly reloading back to the same place, though. I just tried it again, and once again after perhaps four or five goes at that weekend the memory usage has started to skyrocket; it's already at about 550 MB, up from 460 or so at the beginning. I think that it rises when I play random events during those days (almost always failing, being so close to the beginning) and then reload to before them, but that's pure conjecture. After slightly less than an hour or so of such play, the game would be so memory-bogged that it needed several seconds even to register scrolling one item down a list. Again, quitting and restarting (and shutting it down in the TM) solved the issue.

 

I hope that helps!

[Legate of Mineta]

lightknight;

 

Thanks! We'll try this pattern for testing. Hopefully we can get similar results to what you have seen!

[Schwarzbart]

I can confirm that after some reloads the menue also get slugish for me (v1.59 because I havn't played for some time)

[CremePudding]

Me too, especially for DLC 14 - the music skipped for the first time for me.

[Legate of Mineta]

Schwarzbart and Creme;

 

Thanks! Can you two comment on when this happened for you- how long of play, how many reloads?

[Schwarzbart]

Sorry no clear observation from my side beside that it looks to be related to reloading. (Or I would have reported this already)

[Legate of Mineta]

Schwarzbart;

 

Understood, thanks!

[CremePudding]

It happens without saving or anything - it just rise as I play, and after a month in game the usage has doubled from 500 to 1GB around..

 

It happened twice after I installed DLC 14, but nothing like that happens again after I restarted.

[Legate of Mineta]

CremePudding;

 

Hmmm, thanks! The hunt continues.

[HeatTalon]

Feels fine to me,but I checked the task manager and the RAM usage is higher after i got the new DLC.Don't remember how much RAM before the new DLC tho,but current DLC I use about 500 to 800MB....

[Legate of Mineta]

HeatTalon;

 

That amount looks correct, but 1 Gig is almost certainly the result of a leak. We're looking at some fixes now which should alleviate the problem.

[decourcy2]

I will throw my 2 cents in as well.

 

I am also running a Qosmio and everything for me runs fine under DLC 13. Then i put 14 on. Major slowdowns, and some stuttering. I have never had a stutter before or any particular slowdowns.

 

That said, i feel the need to soapbox.

 

I despise game companies that throw out half finished games, expect us top pay $60 for it, and maybe give us one pathetic patch for their game. Bioware, Obsidian, I am looking at you.

 

On the other hand I think the people involved in Academagia should get awards for creating a work of art. You have gone above and beyond while creating this game and world.

 

Michael

[Legate of Mineta]

George;

 

Thanks for the kind words! The transition from 13 to 14 was the memory optimization, which appears to have introduced a leak or leaks.

 

I believe we will have a Patch fairly soon to address this, though- certainly next week, but possibly over the weekend.

 

Thanks again!