DEVs - EC Client has a severe memory leak

[Old Man of UO]

After the last patch, the stability of the EC client went to pot. Things started going whacky, and the frame rate goes way down until it seems you are dragging things through molasses... then WHAM! Client crashes!

Open up Windows Task Manager and watch the memory usage of EC Client. When I first load the client, memory usage is about 150K, give or take. Loading a character brings it to about 350K. As I start running through dungeons the memory usage starts to climb and doesn't get reduced. On a run with my dungeon thief I hit Doom, Fan Dancer's DoJo, Yomotsu Mines, and both entrances of the Abyss. Once I've made it to the Abyss, memory usage is up in the 800K to 850K range and the video is stuttering and unplayable.

I usually use Pinco's UI and thought that might be it, so repeated with no UI loaded and go similar results... Pinco's adds about 12K to memory usage. Refreshing the screen (ctrl-R) doesn't change memory usage at all, and log out/in brings it down to about 660K. Only completely closing and restarting the client resets the memory.

Here is one example that I ran into in the Abyss...

Most people who play the EC have seen this black area, but it was fixed almost a year ago... now it's back. The strange thing about this one was that I was able to run along the edge of the black area, but could not enter the black area - it was a fixed object. Logging Out and back In fixed it.

So, whatever you did - added Punkbuster or whatever - please undo the last patch! The game is pretty much unplayable for me after 15 minutes, and it was just fine before that.

 

[Arcus]

800k ? Seems low to me. As far a punk buster. Heh, right.

 

[Old Man of UO]

800k ? Seems low to me. ...

I guess the point went right over your head. Whether it's 800K or 2,500K doesn't really matter. The game is grabbing RAM and not letting it go. It's taking a performance hit until the client finally crashes.

I'd say that's a serious issue.

 

[Mapper]

I've seen the black issue before, Usually a sign I need to reboot.

 

[hawkeye_pike]

The EC always had memory leak issues which cause occasional crashes and freezes. This has been a known issue for almost 2 years and I'm tired of posting about it.

 

[Arcus]

I guess the point went right over your head. Whether it's 800K or 2,500K doesn't really matter. The game is grabbing RAM and not letting it go. It's taking a performance hit until the client finally crashes.

I'd say that's a serious issue.

Size DOES matter. When the client has consumed somewhere near the limits of your physical ram that is a memory leak. I see no signs of a memory leak.

Edit: I emphasize "I". I am used to this problem from the old classic client so I am sensitive to this issue, I just don't see it happening at all and 800k or 2500k doesnt mean anything. 1 gig? Yea, thats an issue.

 

[Pinco]

try to go against the shimmering effusion, 10 minutes and the game starts to lag like hell and if not crash you have to restart it because it became unplayable....

 

[Vlaude]

try to go against the shimmering effusion, 10 minutes and the game starts to lag like hell and if not crash you have to restart it because it became unplayable....

Thanks for the head's up. I am going with some guildmates to this peerless within the next few days and have been using the EC almost exclusively the last couple months. Honestly, going back to the classic client is becoming more and more of a temptation.

 

[[JD]]

I have been noticing the same symptoms you have. Large black areas, sudden crashes to desktop, molasses mouse movement. I have been rebooting to fix it, but a memory leak fits the description of teh cause. This all started at the "Sonoma upgrade day". Prior to that none of this happened.

I will do the same testing next chance I get and see if the game ever releases the memory it grabs.

Once somehow I was able to actually get inside one of those black areas but I dropped below the earth and couldn't get out. Had to relog

 

[Old Man of UO]

I KNOW Hawkeye_Pike has posted about this before. But it was always playable for me before, now it's not worth the effort if I have to reboot the client every 15 minutes.

I hope some Developer has a modicum of compassion to at least say "we are looking into this."

 

[Meat Elemental]

I think the devs are having their own memory leak forgetting about fixing the ec...

 

[Old Man of UO]

I guess the point went right over your head. Whether it's 800K or 2,500K doesn't really matter. The game is grabbing RAM and not letting it go. It's taking a performance hit until the client finally crashes.

I'd say that's a serious issue.

Size DOES matter. When the client has consumed somewhere near the limits of your physical ram that is a memory leak. I see no signs of a memory leak.

Edit: I emphasize "I". I am used to this problem from the old classic client so I am sensitive to this issue, I just don't see it happening at all and 800k or 2500k doesnt mean anything. 1 gig? Yea, thats an issue.

*SNORTS*

I dropped a few zeros there... that should have been 800,000 KB as reported by Task Manager, so ya... almost 1 GB.

 

[Nimuaq]

At login screen: 150mbs. Immediately after login, New Haven: 300 mbs. From New Haven to Luna Moongate: 500mbs. A quick Luna tour and back to the moongate: 750 mbs. Minoc (under Bane attack in Europa): 1 gbs.

While it is using about 1 gbs of memory at the moment and I'm not having any performance issues. I will post the memory usage when the performance starts to deteriorate.

Update: Poor performance issues started at 1.3 gbs.

 

[covert]

Make the run to Navery some time in the EC. I've tested it on two separate machines and both crash either during the run or shortly after entering her lair and subsequently random crashes thereafter. You start to get a slowdown about a screen or two away from her entrance.

The Abyss and Underworld are pretty much impossible to play in for my when I'm in the EC without friends, because I know I will crash - it's just an inevitability.

 

[Cear Dallben Dragon]

I just bought more ram, should be here tomorrow, so i can do more champs back to back before having to restart the neighborhood.
800k is nothing. After doing one primeval lich i'm well over a million. By then FPS drops significantly and I get the same black screen issue.

It would be really helpful if we could just have a purge memory hotkey. Or a full sized publish to address the many many things wrong with this nice client.

 

[Old Man of UO]

... 800k is nothing. ...

Like I said earlier, I dropped a few zeros. Task Manger reports in Kbytes, so I should have said 800kk or 0.8 MB.

I have 8 GB RAM on Windows7x64, Client cache set at 1024mb, and it doesn't help with this problem. This is internal to the Client. Still, would love to hear if you see a difference.

 

[Kas Althume]

Like I said earlier, I dropped a few zeros.. ..or 0.8 MB.

You did it again.^^

 

[Klapauc]

Same issues here. At navrey, if running to fast from pillar to pillar, almost guaranted crash. One crash every tokuno spawn. Black areas Ter Mur overland. And so on. It has been a bit better since last patch, was even worse before .
Atm i do not try doing peerless with this situation.

 

[Old Man of UO]

You did it again.^^

AARRGGHHHH! DANG IT... where's that coffee...

 

[[JD]]

I have 4gb in my machine and I still crash to desktop ever since that stupid performance patch. I would prolly quit UO if I couldn't use EC, can't stand the CC.

Died last night to Navery due to sudden crash to desktop. And not fun in PVP when faction oranges are around to suddenly be looking at your desktop either.

I wonder if we'll even get visibility on this, given they ignored an entire shard posting about problems for a month.

 

[Meat Elemental]

Kinda sad we don't even get a "were looking into this" I love using the ec and the latest mods are awesome, but the modders cant fix these crippling bugs..

 

[Old Man of UO]

HEY DEVS!

Something broke in the last patch! We, your loyal paying customers, just want to know if you are aware of the problem? PLEASE!

 

[Pinco]

I know they are aware of the problem, but we don't know if they're working on it

I sent the report of this problem directly to cal not much time ago and he sent it to supreem, what happen later still unknow

 

[MalagAste]

HEY DEVS!

Something broke in the last patch! We, your loyal paying customers, just want to know if you are aware of the problem? PLEASE!

I agree and it's super annoying. I thought you all were kidding but trying to do the Bane spawn this morning in Glow was hell..... and then later all I wanted to do was deco my house... god that was bad. The lag was so intense I had to wait forever just to open the moving crate and every box in there took JUST as long.


FIX IT PLEASE! I've crashed so many times I think you all owe me a good 100k in insurance! Freaking tired of it.

 

[4th3ist]

FIX IT PLEASE! I've crashed so many times I think you all owe me a good 100k in insurance! Freaking tired of it.

I think that was half the reason they gave us insurance you know... People die and can't recover their things because of crashes that couldn't be fixed. Thus, insurance So, ya pay it, or ya don't... At least thats how I look at it ahaha *cacklecough*

 

[Kojak]

this thread just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside

 

[MalagAste]

I think that was half the reason they gave us insurance you know... People die and can't recover their things because of crashes that couldn't be fixed. Thus, insurance So, ya pay it, or ya don't... At least thats how I look at it ahaha *cacklecough*

Yes well it was working just fine before they "fixed" it.

Now it's all messed up.... and I'm seeing about 2to5 ghost images of dead monsters now.... they show up and everything but can't target them... because hey... they aren't there...... but they look like they are.... they act like it..... you can pull a bar for them and everything but they are NOT there.... not so cool when your trying to attack something that's attacking you and there are a few ghost images about hard to tell what is active and what isn't.

If it helps fix things any I'll say this..... often I crash when I try to do a 180.... It just closes the client completely.

 

[lucitus]

Iam also boored to post it over and over again, the client has this memory leak now over 2 years and nobody fixed it, so why should the fix it now?

Also the the performance went down with the SA client in general, i think they are simply not able to fix it, maybe if they want they cant because they have to redesign it i dont know.

 

[Pinco]

For what I know in the latest months the EC users number is increased so this means that people want to play with a new client. The wind of change is blowing so it's time to focus seriously on EC, even if this means to stop new events for 1 month or 2... because without events we can live, but we can't without a working client

And seriously the 2d client is not an option for playing in 2011, it's time to make the EC graphically acceptable and stable for everyone and retire 2d once and for all, in this manner we have:
- No more cheat
- The dev team takes half time to develop and test new things
- No need to PAY 3rd party app for basic functions
- The fall of the free shards
Sure, we can lose some scripter by taking this path, but who like UO will keep playing and surely new players will arrives

UO still a great game, much better than WoW and many others, need only some love and passion to became the best

 

[Storm]

agreed/

 

[Thav12]

For what I know in the latest months the EC users number is increased so this means that people want to play with a new client. The wind of change is blowing so it's time to focus seriously on EC, even if this means to stop new events for 1 month or 2... because without events we can live, but we can't without a working client

And seriously the 2d client is not an option for playing in 2011, it's time to make the EC graphically acceptable and stable for everyone and retire 2d once and for all, in this manner we have:
- No more cheat
- The dev team takes half time to develop and test new things
- No need to PAY 3rd party app for basic functions
- The fall of the free shards
Sure, we can lose some scripter by taking this path, but who like UO will keep playing and surely new players will arrives

UO still a great game, much better than WoW and many others, need only some love and passion to became the best

So true, and well said!

 

[Basara]

I wonder if some of the people having EC lag/memory leaks are also having the problem that someone is reporting on the Tech forum - of one of the EC files (normally 150 MB) ballooning to 30 GB.....

 

[Pinco]

So true, and well said!

a word of truth is just wasted breath if no one is going to listen it...

 

[Old Man of UO]

a word of truth is just wasted breath if no one is going to listen it...

Maybe they hope we will just shut up and go away? Unfortunately, for most of us EC users that will mean going-away permanently.

 

[Nenime]

And I thought I was just me or my computer. So I bought a brandnew machine with 12 GB RAM and still the same. Since last month much worse. Size of UO folder is normal. It's a little bit better since I turned off the cache. But still I have to log out / log in after finishing a spawn in the Abyss otherwise the client crashes. Navrey e.g. is impossible to me, EC crashed after a few minutes. Everytime. Found not trigger point though.

 

[Ellistan]

Had to dust off my Stratics account to join the list of reports. Our accounts (we have four) seemed fine until a few days ago. I'm not sure if it was server changes, or the patch, but the game is now nearly unplayable. You certainly wouldn't risk a visit to any monster populated areas.

I have the same slow down as others have reported, with several of the crashes to desktop as well. I know others are reporting long term issues, but that is not the case for me. It started just a few days past. Running through housing areas causes huge lag (full stop) as it tries to draw the buildings.

Please fix this issue as soon as possible. You've got a loyal, twelve year player... who can't play.

Thanks for reading

E