Havin problem with PA

Discussion in 'Support!' started by maxi017, January 8, 2016.

  1. maxi017

    maxi017 New Member

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    Allerady explained my full problem here:
    [steamcommunity.com]app/386070/discussions/1/451850213953876740/

    I had the problems on the maps 'Clutch' and 'Lock'.
    DxDiag.txt is uploaded.
    Uploaded the error image.
    error.JPG
    It says more or less that i should close the running programm PA.exe because it could lead to information loss.

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: January 8, 2016
  2. mikeyh

    mikeyh Post Master General

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  3. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    Increase the size of your page file or download buy more RAM. That's the message Windows shows when it feels in risk of going out of memory.
    What's happening is that PA likes to eat memory a lot, 8GB overall system memory is at the bare minimum side of things for it.
    Also: You for some reason have a lot of your 8GB page file already in use (4GB?! is that normal?), maybe you have a lot of background application you could close while playing?
    DeathByDenim likes this.
  4. maxi017

    maxi017 New Member

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    Uploaded todays log files of PA :)

    Uhm i allready know exactly what the error messages means, the problem is that it doesnt really makes sense that this message shows up because i have 8GB Ram in my machine atm. I allready borrowed additionally 4GB Ram of a friend, installed them and tryed it again (12 GB RAM)-> the error still appeares. It doesnt even matter which map i choose or how much players/planets i set up. The error always appears at some time. I allready thought about if the amount of units/buildings (and their ai) could eat up all the RAM but the time when the crash appears seems to be totally random. Sometimes right after the beginning and sometimes after 1h+ of gameplay.

    Little question for the devs: Tbh i dont want to whine about bad optimization etc. etc. but could somebody pls explain me how its possible that a game like PA can "easily" eat up more than 8-12 GB of (DDR3) RAM while a lot more complex and graphically astonishing games like Total War Attilla run fluently with less than 4 GB RAM? I´m myselfe a programmer so you can take your time and exactly explain me what justifies such big hardware requirements.

    Edit: checked my RAM usage while only Firefox and Steam were open (like normally) -> 2GB RAM. Weird, gonna see if i can lower that and which software that causes. The problem is that i allready tryed playing the game with additional 4GB of RAM. Gonna try that tonight again and if the error occurs again i will upload the log files too :)

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: January 8, 2016
  5. mikeyh

    mikeyh Post Master General

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    Also need client logs... those are server logs.
  6. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    12 was not enough was well? Hmm. How much memory does PA actually use while ingame? How much memor is in use before starting the game, how much is free before you start PA?

    2GB with firefox and steam doesn't sound bad. I am at 3.5GB right now, with only my typical background stuff loaded.

    Graphical quality isn't everything. Just gameplay alone can fill 12GB of ram if your gameplay is of a certain kind and PA goes into that direction ;)
    Afaik two main factors of ram usage are a thing in PA:
    1. Planet geometry and pathfinding stuff. PA uses something called constructive solid geometry to dynamically build the planet geometry. This is a rather complex process. To support pathfinding on such a pretty much arbitrary 3 dimensional structure it uses voxels, which also have to be hold in memory.
    A flat map RTS like Total War can do these things a lot cheaper, using tricks not available for a game that uses the surface of a 3d object as a map like PA:
    2. The UI system uses something called coherent UI. It's basically a webkit browser. This has many advantages, mainly from the developers perspective. It's fast to develop new UIs on it. It's also really really great for UI modding of the game. However it does have extra performance costs, especially since to improve UI speed the UI is split into multiple "browser tabs" that all render separate parts of the UI. This means a more responsive UI (and something very unusual: A multithreaded UI!), but it also means a dozen coherent processes that all eat up extra memory.

    Also another thing is that PA is split very clearly into a client application and a server application. This has many advantages, it provides a clear separation of pieces of software that should be separate from another. However it does mean that when you play offline singleplayer the game will start a local server on your computer and the client on top of it. Both the server and the client hold data structures about the planet, so you basically have a considerable amount of redudant data loaded. Once by the server.exe and once by the pa.exe
    Maybe you could play online instead, in the options there is setting to force PA to use an online server to play. That would save you 1 or 2GB of memory.
    DeathByDenim and Alpha2546 like this.
  7. DeathByDenim

    DeathByDenim Post Master General

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    sineater666 likes this.
  8. sineater666

    sineater666 New Member

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    I readed this problem and I think clean up Your space at disk,ok? then You have to do what guys said.
    But 8gb should enough...and 12 should be good.

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