Memory Issues?

[MacroGuru]

I have been playing BBCF for a bit now, and I decided to run a career with Utah State University and I am in the year 2023 (I started at 2006), I have ran the career with 1.46, 1.47, and now 1.48.

One thing I have noticed over time is the game seems to use around 171,000K in the memory side. Slowing some things down, but eventually locking up sometimes on a save. Now I do tend to leave the game up on my desktop when I walk away and I am gone for most of the day.

But it will do the lock up generally when I try to save it. Everytime it does this, I check and the memory is up there, now I just running base without me doing anything after loading my league it is at 153,000K.

A new league is running at 138,000K....

My system specs -

Dell Latitude D810 Laptop
1 GB RAM
2.18 GHz Centrino M processor
128 MB ATI Mobility Graphics Card
Over 40 GB Free Space on the HD.

Now, I like to run my music, surf, and do other things while games are simming, so I don't know if it is a combo of everything bogging down my laptop, however, seeing the amount of memory being used by the game is a concern to me.

[Woodbine Wolves]

I have found the same problem. I have also reported on this problem several times.

It appears that the game is not clearing memory after its use. Eventually it hogs all of the memory and slows down the computer

It would be nice to get this fixed, not everyone can have the latest, super-fastest computer....

[MacroGuru]

Ran an un-install, rebooted, reinstalled ran with out the patches, ran a patch install, and ran all the patch installs, I am still getting the same high use of memory.

So the question is left to beg, are there only two of us experiencing this issue or are others out there experiencing the same thing.

[Deltoidius]

just close it and re-open it every once in a while. not a big deal.

[MacroGuru]

Originally Posted by Deltoidius

just close it and re-open it every once in a while. not a big deal.

Honestly, I do not want to get into a flame war here, but I have to say, are you for real? Close it and reopen it? If this were a commercial application and I told my end user that, what kind of storm would happen there.

We have paid for the application, it is eating up the RAM on my computer like it was candy to the point it SLOWS everything down. If I can get some sort of blanket statement on this, I won't pester. Try playing 24 seasons straight, and having it crash every 4th week during the season sucks. When it all came down to it, it boils to the memory.

[TC Dale]

I have seen issues with the game in longterm saves grab a lot of memory and not release it after it shuts down. Rebooting your PC or restarting the game isn't a good "fix". The game needs to release the RAM in a timely manner, and right now the game isn't doing it.

You might want to send a zipped file to Arlie about it, and have him look into the memory issues.

[FranklinNoble]

Originally Posted by MacroGuru

Honestly, I do not want to get into a flame war here, but I have to say, are you for real? Close it and reopen it? If this were a commercial application and I told my end user that, what kind of storm would happen there.

We have paid for the application, it is eating up the RAM on my computer like it was candy to the point it SLOWS everything down. If I can get some sort of blanket statement on this, I won't pester. Try playing 24 seasons straight, and having it crash every 4th week during the season sucks. When it all came down to it, it boils to the memory.

If it were a copy of Microsoft Word, or maybe an enterprise-class server application, then, yes, even a minor memory leak is a huge problem.

This is, however, just a game. If you can play 20 seasons before having to close and re-open the application, I'd say that's pretty good for a piece of entertainment software developed by a small publisher.

Like yourself, I'm not trying to start a flame war. I happen to open and close the app frequently, so maybe it's just my style of use. From my perspective, I haven't had a problem.

[Arlie Rahn]

Originally Posted by TC Dale

I have seen issues with the game in longterm saves grab a lot of memory and not release it after it shuts down.

This is simply not true. When BBCF ends, it cleans out all data structures and releases all memory used during processing. That's why it will take between 8 and 15 seconds before the application leaves. If you watch it in the task bar, you can see the allocated memory decrease from 130-100-80-60-50-40-20-10 and then the app disappears. This shows that the app hands all the allocated memory back to the OS.

Rebooting your PC or restarting the game isn't a good "fix". The game needs to release the RAM in a timely manner, and right now the game isn't doing it.

Again, this is simply false. While the game is in memory, it may fluxuate up and down over time between around 130K to upwards of 170K based on data/activities. But, once the game is shut down, you can watch the memory reallocate back to the OS as the game leaves the taskbar. Now, Windows is notorius for holding onto a little memory from every app as a "buffer". But this is something that should not impact the stability of your system and is the same for FM, FOF, BBCF, MS Word and any other windows-based application you run.

Just an FYI on this. I have 3 dev PCs, one is a P4, 2.8 GB with 1.0 GB of RAM and 48 GB of open HD space (current one I am one). I will routinely sim 20-30 seasons. Then, while simming, open the code and work on issues. Then, I will close the app and run it in debug mode (stopping and starting the app around 20 times in a given session). I would estimate that I reboot this PC *maybe* once a month and have never had stability/memory issues from starting and stopping.

Now, I think what MacroGuru is talking about is that over the course of playing multiple seasons (and not shutting down the app), things may seem to slow down. This *might* occur if you have a bunch of other programs also open and never restarting. Firefox or IE could easily take over 100-150 MB if not shutdown and restarted, ITunes could take 50-60MB, BBCF 130-160MB, Office (outlook and word) can take abother 70MB. Then, add in the *normal* 35+ processes always running under windows (~350 MB) and you could easily start to hit that 1 GB threshold. Once you hit that, the game will start needing a swap file to do some of the data storage and simming activities. This could slow things down a bit and even cause an OS lockup if it reaches more than the available HD space.

The problem is that there's not a lot I can do to help that given 80-90% of the data is already stored in an Access DB. Just look at the save files, they are only around 20-30 MB depending on the leagues (which, not coincidentally, is a little less than the ingame memory flux you will often see). My recommendation would be to save and close the application after each session of playing as it gives all that memory back to the OS. Plus, when you restart later, chances are the app will not be using any swap space and that will also help.

I am not against taking another look at the memory management of BBCF, but I don't know that small 10-20 MB cleanups that I may be able to improve while simming will solve this problem. The best way is to close BBCF when you are done and then just take the 10-15 seconds to reopen and load the save game next time you sit down to play.

[MacroGuru]

Originally Posted by Arlie Rahn

This is simply not true. When BBCF ends, it cleans out all data structures and releases all memory used during processing. That's why it will take between 8 and 15 seconds before the application leaves. If you watch it in the task bar, you can see the allocated memory decrease from 130-100-80-60-50-40-20-10 and then the app disappears. This shows that the app hands all the allocated memory back to the OS.


Again, this is simply false. While the game is in memory, it may fluxuate up and down over time between around 130K to upwards of 170K based on data/activities. But, once the game is shut down, you can watch the memory reallocate back to the OS as the game leaves the taskbar. Now, Windows is notorius for holding onto a little memory from every app as a "buffer". But this is something that should not impact the stability of your system and is the same for FM, FOF, BBCF, MS Word and any other windows-based application you run.

Just an FYI on this. I have 3 dev PCs, one is a P4, 2.8 GB with 1.0 GB of RAM and 48 GB of open HD space (current one I am one). I will routinely sim 20-30 seasons. Then, while simming, open the code and work on issues. Then, I will close the app and run it in debug mode (stopping and starting the app around 20 times in a given session). I would estimate that I reboot this PC *maybe* once a month and have never had stability/memory issues from starting and stopping.

Now, I think what MacroGuru is talking about is that over the course of playing multiple seasons (and not shutting down the app), things may seem to slow down. This *might* occur if you have a bunch of other programs also open and never restarting. Firefox or IE could easily take over 100-150 MB if not shutdown and restarted, ITunes could take 50-60MB, BBCF 130-160MB, Office (outlook and word) can take abother 70MB. Then, add in the *normal* 35+ processes always running under windows (~350 MB) and you could easily start to hit that 1 GB threshold. Once you hit that, the game will start needing a swap file to do some of the data storage and simming activities. This could slow things down a bit and even cause an OS lockup if it reaches more than the available HD space.

The problem is that there's not a lot I can do to help that given 80-90% of the data is already stored in an Access DB. Just look at the save files, they are only around 20-30 MB depending on the leagues (which, not coincidentally, is a little less than the ingame memory flux you will often see). My recommendation would be to save and close the application after each session of playing as it gives all that memory back to the OS. Plus, when you restart later, chances are the app will not be using any swap space and that will also help.

I am not against taking another look at the memory management of BBCF, but I don't know that small 10-20 MB cleanups that I may be able to improve while simming will solve this problem. The best way is to close BBCF when you are done and then just take the 10-15 seconds to reopen and load the save game next time you sit down to play.

Bingo....and the blanket statement is made, this is all I am concerned about, and thank you Arlie for your insight to the issue.

I do have some apps open, mainly outlook and a browser, but I will things a tad bit differently and see if it handles things a bit better

[Arlie Rahn]

Let me know. I will look at some other ways to handle memory as I work on the pro game. But, if things are OK with the above actions, it will make it less of a major focus.