Catshop or AFK Issues
Comments
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Nothing seems to change after the patch. It crashed again just now, when Im afking in CAT shop, once again.b:angryb:angryb:angryb:angryTo act is to live.0
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memory leak still here, seems worse on a vista machine than an xp system tho. as i can trick the xp system to reset the memory being used simply by minimising and restoring game window, this doesnt however work on my vista system. xp system will eventually crash just takes longer using this method0
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I can't keep a catshop up for more than a half hour or so. No probs at all with regular game play, just get error report a few mins after setting up stall. What gives? Does it on all 5 of my pc's so.......? Anyway, hope it gets fixed soon, gonna have to have a summer sale soon I guess. Stock is backing up,lol.
*Edit* Forgot to mention, does it on Xp and Vista machines both.0 -
maybe they should add a new gfx option....
disable loading other player genies y/n0 -
You can send us a ticket to Tech Support here: http://support.perfectworld.com/ticketing
after reading this: http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=2005612&postcount=33
We'll take a look at your system and see what is going on hopefully, ok? b:pleasedDo you need help learning about patching the game, installing it, changing antivirus/firewall settings, changing network settings, learn how to use a computer, keeping your PC maintained and more?
Visit our BRAND NEW Knowledge Base & Support Website! - Tech Support Flowchart - Panda Caught on Camera0 -
I see the memory leak is still there.
I usually have to close the program when the VM size reaches 900,000k.
Wasn't this thread a sticky ?[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
My Sigs >> myweb.tiscali.co.uk/squeek/pages/sigs/sigs.htm0 -
Certain hardware configs may encounter this issue some more then others.
You can send Tech Support a ticket here: http://support.perfectworld.com/ticketing
after you have followed the directions here: http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=2005662&postcount=37
We'll take a look at your system and see if we can help you troubleshoot your issues, ok?Do you need help learning about patching the game, installing it, changing antivirus/firewall settings, changing network settings, learn how to use a computer, keeping your PC maintained and more?
Visit our BRAND NEW Knowledge Base & Support Website! - Tech Support Flowchart - Panda Caught on Camera0 -
your fixes dont work its like tring to fix a chain link with a paper clip its just gonna break again its obviously not our machines it is some coders fault who was to sleepy and forgot his coffee and didnt realize his code was ****0
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darthpanda16 wrote: »Certain hardware configs may encounter this issue some more then others.
You can send Tech Support a ticket here: http://support.perfectworld.com/ticketing
after you have followed the directions here: http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=2005662&postcount=37
We'll take a look at your system and see if we can help you troubleshoot your issues, ok?
There is nothing wrong with my hardware.
There is nothing wrong with my drivers.
This problem only happens with PWI.
This problem only started after the "Genie" introduction.
It doesn't mater how much memory I have because "elementclient.exe" just grabs more and more memory all the time the game is running.
Try this.
1. Stand in west Archosaur where all the cat shops are.
2. Put the game into "window" mode but still visable.
3. Open up your "Windows Task Manager"
4. Select "Processes" tab.
5. Click in the "VM size" label to get the highest at the top.
6. Watch "elementclient.exe" use more and more memory every time someone comes into view in the game.
7. Grab a beer and look at it in 2 hours time to see if your PC has ground to a halt because it has run out of memory.
Every time some one comes into view it increases it's memory usage but never reduces it.[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
My Sigs >> myweb.tiscali.co.uk/squeek/pages/sigs/sigs.htm0 -
The game eventually runs out of memory because it's a 32 bit executable, and can only access 2GB of memory. After that, it will crash. From all the testing and research I've done, it's almost definitely a problem with loading invalid textures/models, and it's almost certainly something to do with the genies. I can play the game all day as long as I'm not near a bunch of people (Archosaur), but the second I am, the game will crash. The fact that there are thousands of invalid model requests in the log files is a dead giveaway. Eventually the game runs out of memory and tries to call a model that it actually needs (a player model), and then dies because it cannot fit it in memory. Then, it fails again trying to load a file from the Error package. The last error I get is:
AFileImage::Init Not enough memory!
There's really no way our computers can be at fault for this. My computer has 6GB of RAM in it and another 2GB in virtual memory, but that does PWI no good unless they compile it in 64-bit. Even that would only delay the inevitable, because the leak needs to be fixed.0 -
After quite a bit more testing, I've found out a bit more about the situation:
1) Turning all settings down to the bare minimum, and then levitating all the way to the top of the map above Archosaur still results in the engine trying to call a specific NPC .ski file inside the Models pck file.
2) Walking down the path in West Archosaur where there are hundreds of cat shops results in the above file being called a lot.
3) When I move far enough away from the cat shops (so they're right at the edge of the clip plane), the memory usage quits climbing constantly. If I move forward so they show, the memory usage resumes climbing.
These observations lead me to believe that it's something wrong with the cat shops. Since they do not obey either of the distance settings, this is probably a big issue. Maybe if you made it so that they worked with proxy visuals like people do, it would help.
I also wonder if the core problem is that PW just loads too many textures into memory, and the inclusion of the genies (which means more models loaded all over the place) caused it to reach a tipping point. I really don't see why anything in this game would require it to use 1.5+GB of system memory. If it really needs to, perhaps the game needs to be recompiled so that it can use more, but that means your system requirements are inaccurate.
I also don't understand why it appears that more powerful computers are affected more, but even with the settings turned all the way down to their minimum the issue is still present. I'd be more than happy to run a debug version of the game and give you anything you wanted/needed to help fix this issue. It's not hard to reproduce on my end.0 -
I just got it to crash, too, and I was watching the process in Visual Studio. Here's the error:
Unhandled exception at 0x0073642f in elementclient.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x00000004.
That's bad. I don't think much of anything exists that low in the memory address space. Right before the game crashes it gets these errors in A3D.log:
[21:32:45.031] A3DSkinModel::BindSkeletonFile, Failed to load skeleton !
[21:32:45.031] A3DSkinModelMan::LoadModelFromFile, Failed to bind skeleton!
AF.log has a couple of the "Not enough memory" errors at the exact same time. So, the game probably tries to load a skeleton, fails because it's out of memory (2GB process limit), but then tries to use that skeleton file when it's uninitialized. Cascading problems.0 -
Going to bump this thread because its happened to me everytime i try as well, and the GM's and MODs need to see this and fix it or tell us if they purposely did it to limit catshop time0
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Thanks for all of that info Camrin. I've passed it along to the developers to help them in resolving this issue.
EDIT: No, Median, this is not intended to limit time spent in your consignment shop. Were we to do such a thing (and we have no current plans to do so), we would hardcode a time limit to automatically exit your shop rather than causing the game to crash.==/Senior QA Lead/==
Surtr from the south wielding fire
The gods' swords shine in the darkness, like stars in the night
Mountains collapse into rubble and fiends shall fall
Man walks the road to ruin as the sky splits in two0 -
Median - Dreamweaver wrote: »Going to bump this thread because its happened to me everytime i try as well, and the GM's and MODs need to see this and fix it or tell us if they purposely did it to limit catshop time
I really don't think it would be for limiting your vending session, because I don't even have to be vending for it to crash. Even if I just browse other people's shops in Archosaur's West District for more than about 10 minutes it will kill the game. It has to do with a high-population of catshops in the same area. Of course, getting people to spread out their 300 shops is nigh impossible, and also inconvenient for people. It's nice to have them all in the same area. They just need to stop leaking memory like a sieve.
Besides, there are much easier ways to limit an activity than causing the game to consume too much memory. A timer is much simpler.0 -
Okay, here is the best thing I can give the developers. It's a 7:43 demo showing the problem. http://www.dragontomes.com/demo.avi (29.5MB). It's viewable in VLC, Media Player Classic, and just about anything else that can play xvid-encoded videos. If the developers cannot reproduce the issue by following the video, I don't know what else to do.0
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Just to get circumstances out of the way, when the developers are unable to recreate the issue, are they using a separate test server, or are they actually going to a fully populated server to try it, and doing it for the longevity of time that usually cause people to crash?
If they're using a blank server, i'd suggest to sit around in West Arch in Heaven's Tear for a few.0 -
bump diddi bump[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
My Sigs >> myweb.tiscali.co.uk/squeek/pages/sigs/sigs.htm0 -
We've done both. Trust me, we're doing everything we can to resolve this.Just to get circumstances out of the way, when the developers are unable to recreate the issue, are they using a separate test server, or are they actually going to a fully populated server to try it, and doing it for the longevity of time that usually cause people to crash?==/Senior QA Lead/==
Surtr from the south wielding fire
The gods' swords shine in the darkness, like stars in the night
Mountains collapse into rubble and fiends shall fall
Man walks the road to ruin as the sky splits in two0 -
I noticed something interesting today. Since everyone got booted for maintenance, when I got back on, there were no memory issues in Archosaur. This definitely narrows it down to people (or cat shops), and not some environment model glitch.
Also, even now, after a few hours and quite a few more catshops out, the memory usage isn't climbing excessively. One thing I can think of is this:
If there is an array (linked list, stack, etc.) of players that the game creates to remember their locations, it could be having a problem if there are more than the array can handle. For instance, if the array can only hold 300 objects, when the 301st object comes up, one of the old objects has to go. However, if they're arrays of objects, that means that the array is a pointer array. If you just create a new object and overwrite one of the old pointers, the old object is still there (orphaned), and there's no way for the program to clean it up. Then that old object asks to be put in the array again, and another object gets orphaned. Rinse and repeat, and eventually you end up having all your memory taken up by objects that you can't access and clear.
Just a thought. I've seen it before--I'm a programmer by day.0 -
To Instance Arch giving it several World Channels so if say world channel 1 is too crowded you move to say channel 5. The only ones that might take issue with it is afk catshops. Word chat is global so no real effect there
My connection is DSL, and my graphics card is kinda high end, but I crash in Arch its like every third time I enter even on low settings it crashes.
Might want to put CS and WQ npcs in each dist?
I mean JD beta has world channels. Why not here?[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] Get your helmets ready0 -
That wouldn't really fix the problem because you'd just end up with multiple instances that would lag your computer to no end. It would also make it really inconvenient to look through all the shops because you'd have to browse through X channels just to find the best prices (which is the point of an open market).
If graphics lag was your only issue, that would more easily be solved simply by implementing the viewing distances to encompass cat shops as well as people. My graphics card has no issue whatsoever in West Archosaur, even at 1920x1200 and full settings. It's the fact that it crashes the game within 20 minutes because it runs out of memory that is the bigger issue.
Besides, if the only reason you're in West Archosaur is because of the NPC merchants, all of them are in North and South Archosaur as well, and there are a lot fewer catshops in those areas (at least on Sanctuary). Even Southwest Archosaur where the legendary forges are doesn't give me memory problems.0 -
This has been going on for a long time now, when is PWI actually going to FIX IT ?!?!
We can talk all we want about it, but at some point PWI just needs to FIX IT!!!
Sure we can all change our behavior to work around a flaw in the client that causes a memory leak when there's too big a crowd, but shouldn't they just fix the client to handle this situation in some way that doesn't crash ???0 -
I noticed something interesting today. Since everyone got booted for maintenance, when I got back on, there were no memory issues in Archosaur. This definitely narrows it down to people (or cat shops), and not some environment model glitch.
Also, even now, after a few hours and quite a few more catshops out, the memory usage isn't climbing excessively. One thing I can think of is this:
If there is an array (linked list, stack, etc.) of players that the game creates to remember their locations, it could be having a problem if there are more than the array can handle. For instance, if the array can only hold 300 objects, when the 301st object comes up, one of the old objects has to go. However, if they're arrays of objects, that means that the array is a pointer array. If you just create a new object and overwrite one of the old pointers, the old object is still there (orphaned), and there's no way for the program to clean it up. Then that old object asks to be put in the array again, and another object gets orphaned. Rinse and repeat, and eventually you end up having all your memory taken up by objects that you can't access and clear.
Just a thought. I've seen it before--I'm a programmer by day.
The thing is though, even if this was strictly related to a limit in a given list or array, the number of people is far above a byte limit (256), and far below even the next smallest integer limit (65,536).
The exception handling and garbage collection is now flawed, where it wasn't before the genie patch.
Also, this bug is only in the viewing portion of the client. Its not on the server, as evidenced by the fact, that the cat shops stay functioning even after the client is crashed, as long as the process isn't terminated.
It is likely as you say, but from the point of view of displaying a single model over and over (more people = more times a given model gets used), and not releasing its resources when the person left the screen, thus crashing the subset of the client that is responsible for drawing/updating the screen. The "heartbeat", that the server uses to make sure you're still there, is functioning appropriately, even after the visual portion is crashed.
I would assume the developers have some sort of source control on their development systems. I would think they can just look at the Delta between the build right before the genies, and right after, and look for changes in the visual side of the client, and look for improper cleanup routines. Most likely they added a new class or two to display the genies, or for the new vendor dialogue box, and one of them isn't cleaning up resources properly.0 -
Here's something else interesting. Now, even with the catshops back up to their usual 30/sq.in., my memory usage isn't going berserk. It appears that the server reset fixed something. I haven't restarted my computer since I posted that video, and yet, things are working. Granted, it still takes 1.5GB of memory in West Archo, but it won't crash.
Perhaps the server is sending the client garbage data that's getting stored, rather than dumped. Very odd.0 -
Okay, here is the best thing I can give the developers. It's a 7:43 demo showing the problem. http://www.dragontomes.com/demo.avi (29.5MB). It's viewable in VLC, Media Player Classic, and just about anything else that can play xvid-encoded videos. If the developers cannot reproduce the issue by following the video, I don't know what else to do.
Thank you for posting that, it's -exactly- what happens to me.[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Thank you Skybelle for the wonderful sig
Where did you go, where did you go? How did you know to get out of a world gone mad? Help me let go of the chaos around me, the devil that hounds me. I need you to tell me "Child be still". If the darkest hour comes before the light, where is the light?0 -
I quess there is still no word on this issue?0
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I had a radical thought that I submitted in a ticket. It could provide a temporary fix for our problems.
*If we had the option to disable genie models in the graphic display settings*
This problem started with genie patch and I suspect either its because of the genie models themselves OR the invisible genies that catshops have equiped (not the ones for sale in inventory).
If genie models are disabled, maybe the client would behave like it did before genies came out?0 -
I had a radical thought that I submitted in a ticket. It could provide a temporary fix for our problems.
*If we had the option to disable genie models in the graphic display settings*
This problem started with genie patch and I suspect either its because of the genie models themselves OR the invisible genies that catshops have equiped (not the ones for sale in inventory).
If genie models are disabled, maybe the client would behave like it did before genies came out?
Hiding genies won't fix anything. In MY-EN, the memory leak came in with the patch that brought in zoom out feature. They don't even have genies released.
From what I can tell (I don't know how games works), the game is trying to load everything to make sure zooming out won't lag (or something) causing the memory needed to go up. Either that or the game isn't deleting old data, and it keeps piling up as new people come into your view.0 -
YAY! Im not the only one with this problem!
I dont have to smash my computer! woo!
<_< now.. FIX IT PWI![SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]0
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