Performance Boost for PWI...

Joe - Momaganon

and all other games based on the same Engine like JD, FW aso...

First: Can a GM or Mod approve that it's not against the ToS to use the program I'm trying to introduce. After all it doesn't mess with the client files nor does it change any gamecode and stuff like that.

I recently found a Programm called Minimem by Kerkia. It's absolute freeware (but you can support Kerkia if you like) That programm is simply magic on PWI. Sometimes while having maxed out settings and walking through Archosaur I useally have a RAM consume on my client for ~900 MiB - 1,2 GiB. With that programm running it 200 MiB - 350 MiB of RAM! Thats hilarious! Sometimes when the Client is in the Background running it even goes down to 45 MiB!

Why I found this: I was checking around because I'm well aware of the Memory leak issues which makes the client pop when the RAM usage tops a certain Point (1,4- 1,7 GiB of RAM I think) and I checked google for a solution to this problem. While Searching for memory leak and stuff I just found this little program and thought that I'd like to give it a try.

It works like intended and even better then expected. Even my framerate doesn't seem to drop that much anymore when many players are around. Though this fps gaining aspect is more or less just a positive side-effect. That Program is amazing for ppl that play PWI on low RAM machines with like 1 GiB or 2 GiB only.

They could play even 2 clients now without messing their RAM usage which makes it nearly impossible to use other programs without forcing the ram to outsource itself to the harddrive/ssd which would lead to enourmous performance drops.

I really hope this is not against the ToS but since it doesn't mess with the code or anything I guess it's fine (still needs to be approved!). It simply does the Memory Management and memory Garbage control for the Client.

Althought the memory usage dropped to nearly under 50 MiB even while walking through Archosaur I never had loading lags or stuff like that, so you see, the clients needs way less RAM then it actually takes.

The program is MiniMem by Kerkia.

Bladed_Tony - Raging Tide

dang i think i wanna get that lol..

Joe - Momaganon

if it isn't against the ToS I would surely test this any further because this tiny program has not even the size of one MiB and is nearly invisble while running in the background. The things you can do with this powerful tool are not even fixed to PWI...you can keep your brwoser clean for example...or skype...they tend to turn lots of memory to garbage too.

I havn't encountered any problems with this prog so far and PWI even runs smoothly with all settings maxed out. Back then I got all my settings down and got less FPS and way higher ram usage xDDD

Haila - Sanctuary

Think there was someone posting something like this and the link got removed that time.
I thought val replied with it was against ToS but not sure tho.

Tnx for sharing b:thanks

Joe - Momaganon

Haila - Sanctuary wrote: »

Think there was someone posting something like this and the link got removed that time.
I thought val replied with it was against ToS but not sure tho.

Tnx for sharing b:thanks

Well I just remember someone posting a Patch or something for the elementclient.exe which would directly change the game code...so I guess this one is different, because it just influences the way the operating system / software handles the Memory.

Not sure tho, clearification would be great Val (:

Haila - Sanctuary

Joe - Momaganon wrote: »

Well I just remember someone posting a Patch or something for the elementclient.exe which would directly change the game code...so I guess this one is different, because it just influences the way the operating system / software handles the Memory.

Not sure tho, clearification would be great Val (:

Ah yeah you are right it was a patch.

SinfulLia - Archosaur

I smell a virus/**** accounts galore.Also giving that much control over your computer to a program that has a potential to be dodge is not a brilliant idea. IJS

No offense or insult intended Joe.
Just being cautious

Joe - Momaganon

SinfulLia - Archosaur wrote: »

I smell a virus/**** accounts galore.Also giving that much control over your computer to a program that has a potential to be dodge is not a brilliant idea. IJS

No offense or insult intended Joe.
Just being cautious

Don't be afraid I checked it as much as you can possibly check a Program. It doesn't perform any Internet Actions at all and it doesn't change a tiny bit of code from the involved processes. It's definitly no virus and it's safe. After all it's an allround programm that never was intentionally made for MMORPGs so I assume your accounts are safe.

Tide_Surfer - Archosaur

SinfulLia - Archosaur wrote: »

I smell a virus/**** accounts galore.Also giving that much control over your computer to a program that has a potential to be dodge is not a brilliant idea. IJS

No offense or insult intended Joe.
Just being cautious

Just cos you were **** ;o which I still find very hard to believe since you're broke as hell and you're a nab

_Elaiya_ - Heavens Tear

SinfulLia - Archosaur wrote: »

I smell a virus/**** accounts galore.Also giving that much control over your computer to a program that has a potential to be dodge is not a brilliant idea. IJS

No offense or insult intended Joe.
Just being cautious

+1 think about itb:kiss

Crimson_Moon - Momaganon

Thanks, Joe! I'm going to give it a try on my old PC. I've scanned it and seems to be clean.

Allisandre - Sanctuary

Haila - Sanctuary wrote: »

Think there was someone posting something like this and the link got removed that time.
I thought val replied with it was against ToS but not sure tho.

Tnx for sharing b:thanks

Because that program actually makes changes to the elementclient.exe file.
Although this is a 3rd party program that doesn't seem to change the code, it's going to change the memory addressing for the client and change the way it's managed. Not 100% certain that this wouldn't be a violation also because cheat programs use a similar approach to inject code for hacks.

It's a thin line. I'll do some testing later today to give accurate numbers on what kind of a change there is, and I'll look into what exactly it's doing to the client to force it to unload the memory better. (That's basically what the problem with the client is. The higher your settings are, the more RAM it uses, and it doesn't unload data when it's done using it efficiently.)

OIdpop - Heavens Tear

Hell i get game crash(memory leak)type stuff when porting to like tideborn,tellus,maybe a random error in other places for no reason and i have like 16gig of ram...

Allisandre - Sanctuary

OIdpop - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Hell i get game crash(memory leak)type stuff when porting to like tideborn,tellus,maybe a random error in other places for no reason and i have like 16gig of ram...

The problem with the client is htat it hits a hard memory cap of 2GB. Can't go higher than that, so basically, 14GB of your RAM is useless to the client. (Without editing the executeable anyhow.)

The game crashing when you teleport to those locations has nothing to do with the memory leak. It's a fault in the client not being able to load the area textures quickly enough. This can be alleviated by reducing running processes and freeing up the primary CPU Core. (Since the client can only use one core.) It's also easy to turn off the landscape option and/or reduce the draw distance slider.
The random error teleporting to other places can either be the client not loading the landscape quickly enough, corrupt client files, or your security software interfering.

None of those have to do with the memory. Typically, (95% of the time), when the client crashes due to the memory issue, you don't get an error at all. (I have discussed this in depth here in this thread.)

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands

Allisandre - Sanctuary wrote: »

Although this is a 3rd party program that doesn't seem to change the code

I might be wrong on what I will say, but I think 3rd party program are violation of the TOS even if that change the code or not.

Mosz - Heavens Tear

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands wrote: »

I might be wrong on what I will say, but I think 3rd party program are violation of the TOS even if that change the code or not.

windows is a 3rd party program to pwi, this is just an advanced memory cleaner

Allisandre - Sanctuary

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands wrote: »

I might be wrong on what I will say, but I think 3rd party program are violation of the TOS even if that change the code or not.

It depends on whether it's directly changing the behavior of the client, or just changing the behavior of the OS

Mosz - Heavens Tear wrote: »

windows is a 3rd party program to pwi, this is just an advanced memory cleaner

Supposedly, although it appears to be application-specific, which is where the possible violation could come into play. I will begin testing in a minute.

Joe - Momaganon

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands wrote: »

I might be wrong on what I will say, but I think 3rd party program are violation of the TOS even if that change the code or not.

That would be a bit of a very fine Line. For Example: if you just press the print button and put the screenshot into Paint that would also be the use of a thrid party program. Or if you shut the elementclient.exe task down via taskmanager...that would also be a thrid party...you see?

If I put keys and actions on my gaming mouse's sidebuttons...would that also be use of a third party program? What about the people that run PWI under Linux(wine) or a VM?

Minimem does nothing specific to the elementclient.exe as his way to work is similiar on every single task you use it on but I don't know how exactly it works.

HrunsPanda - Archosaur

Joe - Momaganon wrote: »

hy I found this: I was checking around because I'm well aware of the Memory leak issues which makes the client pop when the RAM usage tops a certain Point (1,4- 1,7 GiB of RAM I think)

with pop you mean the client crashes ?
So that means it doesnt matter how much ram you have, it will crash at some point (bacause i have 4Gb, and it indeed it does crash sometimes) and this will solve that ?

PS, i cannot immagine this being a problem. I see people are used to thinking very much in the bureaucrat way and discussing the TOS to the fine details. I think thats not what matters. Its not like gamedevelopers are gonna fight in court over banning accounts with their lawyers using the TOS to justify. I think its just common sence, and if they feel they need to ban someone for cheating without him breaking the TOS, i dont think thats gonna stop them. And when something like this would be against the TOS, i dont think its gonna make them ban anyone.

Allisandre - Sanctuary

HrunsPanda - Archosaur wrote: »

with pop you mean the client crashes ?
So that means it doesnt matter how much ram you have, it will crash at some point (bacause i have 4Gb, and it indeed it does crash sometimes) and this will solve that ?

Yes, by pop he means crashes. The cap is 1.8GB Once the client gets to around this much private memory and requires more, then it will crash.

HrunsPanda - Archosaur

Oh and for those that warn about virusses and keyloggers and stuff like that: This piece of software is not designed just for PWI, nor just for any game or just for games in general. So it would be difficult for designers to target any progamms passwords specifically and it would be illogical to design something so general for that. Besides that, if they want to **** accounts, they probably dont need you to download stuff. I am very carefull to what i download, what links i click etc and i got my diablo3 account ****. Blizzard claims i was infected by a keylogger, i actually think its their servers that arent safe. But well, if blizzards claims are true, they can get keyloggers on your PC in pretty nifty ways....

But more importantly, just google the name of it, you get 54000 hits and the first 3 pages show nothing to indicate any bad reputation. That pretty much means its safe.

skaitavia

Based off of Rule 21 of the Terms of Service, labeled "Acknowledgement", this program does not fall into any of the categories listed as an "unauthorized" third party program. The categories are quoted below:

ToS 21. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS wrote:

(i) ENABLES OR FACILITATES CHEATING OF ANY TYPE; (ii) ALLOWS USERS TO MODIFY OR **** THE SOFTWARE INTERFACE, ENVIRONMENT, AND/OR EXPERIENCE IN ANY WAY NOT EXPRESSLY AUTHORIZED BY PWE; OR (iii) INTERCEPTS, "MINES," OR OTHERWISE COLLECTS INFORMATION FROM OR THROUGH THE SOFTWARE

At least, in my eyes, I do not see this program as an unauthorized third party software. A full diagnostics of the program would be great to be listed here in the near future, though!

*pokes Allisandre*

Even though this is my opinion that is completely based off of the ToS, Val has the final say. I'll forward this to him in the meantime.

Regards,
-Skai

Sarrafeline - Sanctuary

Since it has the potential to 'fix' things, I'm willing to guess that v4l will say 'no'. PWE doesn't actually want things fixed, just more money.

PS. The Memory Cap at 1.8 GB sounds like it may actually introduce security issues, IE, buffer over run vulnerability. Makes me even more leary of the game...

Eh. Would be hilarious if someone actually wrote a virus just for the PWI client.

The game engine was AWESOME. 4 years ago. It's not even 'neat' today. >_>

Allisandre - Sanctuary

Sarrafeline - Sanctuary wrote: »

The game engine was AWESOME. 4 years ago. It's not even 'neat' today. >_>

The engine hasn't changed. It's just that they've added more effects which makes it run slower and load up on memory faster.

On final phase of testing now, not seeing a lot of improvement though.

skaitavia

Allisandre - Sanctuary wrote: »

On final phase of testing now, not seeing a lot of improvement though.

That's a shame. b:sad

Joe - Momaganon

If you put the settings right then the main thing that little fine program does is prevent PWI to waste too much RAM and prevent the client to reach it's memory cap at ~1,8GiB. With that I can run PWI even on 1 GiB Machines which is great IMO.

I set the program to automatically optimize the ram for the elementclient.exe every 10 seconds without RAM usage limitations so I unchecked both boxes on the right side of the interface below the task box. (If you got more then 2 GiB of ram then the prog will practically do nothing if you don't uncheck both boxes xDD)

Works very well on Programs like Firefox, Skype, word and stuff like that too (:

I tested it this way...without the prog on I walked through archo...a whole circle through the entire city...then I ported to tellus, raging tides and done another round through archo and my client got laggier and FPS dropped very bad on the final walk through west Arch. Then I put the little prog on and the ram usage went down from 1,3 GiB to 200 MiB which is more then amazing and even my FPS got higher a bit and went to good after porting to City of the Lost^^ I then made another circle while constantly checking the RAM usage and the client never went above 500 MiBs before being shrinked down to ~200 MiBs again and so on.

It could be just me but even the overall performance was better for me then without...I got ~7-8 FPS in Archo without and after restarting the client I never got below 13 FPS in Archo so...well it could be just me idk.

PS: All testing were done with absolute maxed out settings (range, effects, textures, aso...). I dunno if it's less or more improving with lower or lowest settings but it runs pretty stable and smoother then without minimem.

Even if it doesn't improve performance that much, it still saves alot of RAM and prevents from reaching the memory cap. I guess that's at least something isn't it?

Allisandre - Sanctuary

OK, final results are in. This is going to take me a few to post. The final results were fairly disappointing.

Here's the short of it....
I did a fairly exact test. Took one of my testing characters and placed it in an exact location in Whetstone Keep. (Spot you port out of WraithGate on.) I then turned around, went to the teleporter, teleported to DreamWeaver Port, and then to South Archosaur. I then got on my mount, went to the road and followed the road to the Arena Manager in SW Arch. I then followed the road to the center of West Archosaur, turned the camera 360 degrees and stopped. I then took the road up to the Illusion stone and ported into Wraithgate. Then I exited Wraithgate and landed in Whetstone Keep again. At each location, I paused for a minute and then took readings on FPS, and for memory I recorded Commit, Working, and Private.

Here's the data I gained. (Skip to the bottom for the conclusion if Data bores you.)

Setup..
My PC Specs taken at the time I did this test.
Game settings are all maxed with the following exceptions (Because I wanted to have some FPS.)
Shadows, Soften V-Sync, and terrain are all turned off. The distance slider is at 4/5, and textures are at 2/3.
Client was run in Windowed mode with a resolution of 1140x900. (Because I didn't feel like digging out another monitor just to see the resource window.)

Results
Standard
Location _________ FPS ___ Commit ____ Working ____ Private
Login Screen _____ 30 _____ 632 ________ 526 ________ 509
Character Screen _. 32 _____ 635 ________ 533 ________ 517
Whetstone _______ 34 _____ 734 ________ 648 ________ 632
DreamWeaver ____ 27 _____ 810 ________ 715 ________ 698
S Archosaur ______ 17 _____ 937 ________ 849 ________ 867
SW Archosaur ____ 15 _____ 1154 _______ 1033 _______ 1016
W Archosaur _____ 10 _____ 1185 _______ 1091 _______ 1074
Wraithgate _______ 42 _____ 1128 _______ 1021 _______ 1004
Whetstone _______ 34 _____ 1142 _______ 1041 _______ 1025

Using Minimem with default settings (FPS did not change so I shall leave those numbers out.)
Location _________Commit ____ Working ____ Private
Login Screen ______ 636 ________ 530 ________ 514
Character Screen _._ 649 ________ 547 ________ 529
Whetstone ________ 739 ________ 656 ________ 634
DreamWeaver _____ 838 ________ 736 ________ 703
S Archosaur _______ 937 ________ 1024 _______ 1013
SW Archosaur _____ 1190 _______ 1061 _______ 1045
W Archosaur ______ 1254 _______ 1138 _______ 1121
Wraithgate ________ 1184 _______ 1086 _______ 1049
Whetstone ________ 1226 _______ 1110 _______ 1093

Using Minimem with custom settings*
Location _________Commit ____ Working ____ Private
Login Screen ______ 636 ________ 80 ________ 78
Character Screen _._ 647 ________ 44 ________ 43
Whetstone ________ 742 ________ 102 ________ 98
DreamWeaver _____ 844 ________ 138 ________ 141
S Archosaur** _____ 1025 _______ 226 _______ 202
SW Archosaur** ___ 1231 _______ 194 _______ 181
W Archosaur** ____ 1271 _______ 281 _______ 268
Wraithgate ________ 1177 _______ 86 _______ 85
Whetstone ________ 1214 _______ 128 _______ 127

Conclusion:
While the custom setting provided the best overall impact on the Working and Private memory stacks, the commit charge is still high. I have not tested it to see if the Client will crash if the Commit charge goes over 1.8GB yet, but plan to in the near future.
This had a major drawback though. When moving into new areas the framerate dropped considerably, and there was the occasional stuttering of movement when Minimem performed the optimization operation.
Overall, while my client may not hit the memory cap and crash, the impact to in-game performance was not desirable at all.
I will continue to test this on some of my older systems to see if they have similar results.

* The default settings for Minimem are to Optimize every 30 seconds, to not optimize foreground processes, and to not optimize if overall RAM available to the system is above 300MB. For the custom settings I disabled these last two options, and set the optimize interval to 10s.
** Overall FPS remained the same, but it regularly dipped by half when loading new structures.

Joe - Momaganon

Weired...we got almost the same system, with the exception that I got a Q9550 Quad Core @ 3,4 GHz and a slightly OCed Nvidia GTX460 and 8 GB DDR2-1066 (5-5-5-15 CR2)...and I never had FPS drops, like I said before they did even improve. My settings were absolutely maxed out and yes I feared that it will go on the CPU. My CPU usage was also slightly higher but I never had any FPS drops or stuttering...

Well as we all know this game heavely depends on CPU-Power and pushing data in and out of RAM surely produces some work.

But I didn't even had these drops on my Netbook with AMD E-450 and the common onboard HD7320 xD and this system is by far weaker then our main systems.

That is for sure weired. well I will play with this setting a few weeks/days and see how well it works. I try to check if my client still goes down before NW.

Allisandre - Sanctuary

To be fair, My system spent the last 12 hours or so encoding video, had not been rebooted recently, and I did not take any effort into optimizing my system before playing like I usually do. I wanted to get the results as close as I could to what I have come to see as the average gamer here. (Which is to say, a partially under-powered system, not optimized at all, and typically running with outdated drivers and plenty of bloatware on the system. Not to mention all the toolbars, chat programs, and other various things people have loaded and never bother to close.)

On a side note, my current GTX650 performs almost exactly the same as my old 8800GT did. On top of that, your GTX460 is a similar rare find as the 8800GT in that it can still out-perform some of the better GTX680's, and even some SLI rigs.

I do have older systems to test on, (nothing newer than my aged Q6600 yet though), and will be seeing how they perform. I'll also do some longer optimized tests with this system to see if my usual settings get rid of the dips in FPS and the occasional stuttering. The FPS taken in these tests is much lower than what I usually run with using the same display options, yet in 1680x1050 fullscreen mode. I think the stuttering was largely caused by the impact on the CPU when Minimem optimized the RAM. The FPS was because the client was basically having to load textures into RAM again.

Joe - Momaganon

Allisandre - Sanctuary wrote: »

To be fair, My system spent the last 12 hours or so encoding video, had not been rebooted recently, and I did not take any effort into optimizing my system before playing like I usually do. I wanted to get the results as close as I could to what I have come to see as the average gamer here. (Which is to say, a partially under-powered system, not optimized at all, and typically running with outdated drivers and plenty of bloatware on the system. Not to mention all the toolbars, chat programs, and other various things people have loaded and never bother to close.)

On a side note, my current GTX650 performs almost exactly the same as my old 8800GT did. On top of that, your GTX460 is a similar rare find as the 8800GT in that it can still out-perform some of the better GTX680's, and even some SLI rigs.

I do have older systems to test on, (nothing newer than my aged Q6600 yet though), and will be seeing how they perform. I'll also do some longer optimized tests with this system to see if my usual settings get rid of the dips in FPS and the occasional stuttering. The FPS taken in these tests is much lower than what I usually run with using the same display options, yet in 1680x1050 fullscreen mode. I think the stuttering was largely caused by the impact on the CPU when Minimem optimized the RAM. The FPS was because the client was basically having to load textures into RAM again.

I just recently did other test with lowest setting and minimem off and on...I actually havn't noticed any difference cept that my FPS were still higher (I always use fraps for that purpose btw, in game fps count is not reliable xD) I even got less lag and stuttering with minimem on..and I have just around 3% more CPU usage with minimem on...

My PC is always clean, I can't bear to even start an office application when my PC isn't really really clean (no toolbars, just my trustworthy progs running, clean autostar, all temps cleared, no garbage in my registry, up-to-date drivers, aso) yeah I'm kinda psychotic in that way. And I even don't have a java runtime installed...dunno but I saw java kill whole systems xD maybe minimem don't like java at all xD and I always perform a restart before testing anything. Well only time will tell how well it works for the unique player.

Haila - Sanctuary

Well i run pwi on much older comps 1st generation quad core and a pentium I or 11 or something. On both pwi is running much smoother, so i'm very thankfull b:chuckle

Edit: and no random client crashes so far