Any optimisation plans?

[gregon]

After 3 or 5 updates still not playable on my 4 GB RAM Linux box, probably because of memory leaks.

[FamousPig]

what are your pc specs?gpu cpu etc.


lots of ram do not make a fast pc.If you actually max out your ram you might want to close some background programs while playing.

[gregon]

AMD FX 6300 6 cores, NVidia GTX 660 2 GB. More than enough to run Battlefield 3, Metro and other games with far more advanced graphics than NS2.

While trying to launch NS2 I see RAM usage going up to the top. And at some point the game simply cannot allocate more memory and crashes.

I remember times, I could play NS2 some hours long before crash, but than something was brocken. Yesterday I was only 20 seconds long in he game.

[gregon]

> Use Windows
Change your gender. What? Your current gender is supported by volunteer work only ;-)

How do people become a volunteer? Haven't found any info on the homepage.

[gregon]

Todays test. First run: after loading of the map just black screen, nothing on the terminal, killed the game. Second run: file mismatch, maybe server issue. Third try: actualy, I played it somewhat an hour long! But then a segmentation fault while there were 118 MB free memory or less.

It would be realy nice to check the source code with valgrind :-/

[Loki]

Go here if you wish to help with linux
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/135095/we-need-you-linux-developers-to-join-the-cdt

[gregon]

Thank you very much!

[Sytch]

Is your kernel 32 bit or 64? Because 64 bit gives much more memory for a single process, even for 32-bit executables. I'm on 64 and it works like a charm. On 32 you should lower textures to medium or even low and also texture handling, no matter how much VRAM you have, texture handling causes crashes if set to 2 Gb+. I have 2 Gb myself but had to set it to 1.5 Gb so the game won't crash every minute. If you're on 32 bit kernel, this should be lowered even more. The game doesn't leak, it fragments memory a lot so it's basically out of virtual memory though resident memory is fine as well as physical. And since it's 32-bit only, it can't address more than 4 Gb.

[gregon]

64 bit kernel, all settings set down to absolute minimum.

What do you mean with "lower textures to x GB"? There is no megabyte setting or so, only minimal-medium-maximum. Or do you mean there is some special VRAM setting in BIOS or video driver?

So, a week ago I wrote an application as advised. No answer since then. It's disappointing me a little.

[gregon]

Upd: aha, found it, "texture handling". Was off. thank you, I'll test it with 1,5 GB.

[Sytch]

There are two settings, textures as low/med/high and texture handling. If everything else is set to low, then your crash may be something else. You can try attaching gdb and getting a backtrace on segfault, then send it to devs.

[gregon]

Ok, I'll try to catch it with GDB, thanks for advise.

[Sytch]

You can also post it here, I can check if it's something known or new. Have some, you know, experience in visual segfalut recognition by backtrace. This skill develops if you play a lot of NS2 on Linux. Though now it's much better than a year ago.

[gregon]

Yep, I must agree, better now.

Yesterday a quick try with new setting for 1.5GB, crashed at entering the map from waiting room. Today ran with GDB attached, no crash after several hours, except one freez, no clue why (GDB log was clear, game simply didnt response, could not use alt+tab, killed).

Investigation continues :)

[Sytch]

Are you sure it wasn't a segfault? GDB freezes the app so you can get a backtrace.

[gregon]

Yes, I'm sure. I went to menu, pressed "go to waiting room" and at the same moment my team lost. Then picture got frozen, no response to mouse, alt+tab, etc. After I killed it via tty1 there was nothing at GDB, just that the programe got the SIGKILL signal. Because of this now I'll run GDB at tty1, so I can access it always.