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Memory leakage (increasing use of memory during play)

DeletedUser653

  • World: Beta/EN1 and i suspect every single other world since they are copies
  • Browser and Version: Windows 10, firefox 48.0
  • Overview of the bug: Memory leakage, especially after PVP fights which means slowly you are using up more and more memory and thus the game gets slower and slower.
  • Screenshots: see mail below for test results
  • How often this occurs: All the time you are playing
  • Urgency: Massive big bug effecting every single player
  • Preventative Actions: get a big PC with 16GB ram
  • Summary: Flash will slowly increase its use of your memory over time until you clear the cache or refresh, most players will get a locked screen eventually (may be because of memory leakage, may not be) which will cause a refresh anyway.
  • I have performed a quicksearch of the forums using a select few keywords relating to my bug to see if it has already been reported: Yes in Beta, cannot find anything in EN1.
https://forum.beta.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/memory-leak-o-rama.4810/
  • Have you tried fixing it by using these methods?: Yes but refreshing game every 20 mins is not a good solution
As posted today in Beta Server
Hi Darkstar,
unable to understand why no mod can every see what every player already knows so thought i would take an hour to do a decent test for you to prove if there is a memory problem.

PC: i7 3820 @ 3.60GHz
GPU: GeForce GTX680
Memory: 16.00 GB Ram
Windows 10 Pro
Test on Beta server, with animations on for my city off for others and smoke off. unattached are highlighted.
Cleared cache twice, rebooted pc and opened task manager, memory reading taken about 20 secs after action finished. Bold numbers all relate to memory use when back at city

Start firefox go to login page Flash = 132mb
log in and in city Flash = 610mb
Into army management and back to city Flash= 767mb
into Artic GVG and do 10 fights and back to city Flash=727mb
into PVP review page and go to artic Flash= 673mb
back to review and into PME LOCKED OUT (very common and considered almost normal today) Flash 673mb
Refresh and back to city Flash 650mb
Ten aids to guild Flash 665mb
Ten aids to friends and back to city Flash 670mb
into army management swop troops and back to city Flash 730mb
into army management again swop troops and back to city Flash 743mb
fight hood player and in fight Flash 594mb
plunder player Flash600mb
back to city Flash785mb
visit another player Flash664mb
Return to city Flash 879mb
move a few buildings in city Flash 862mb
go into guild profile Flash 887mb
Back to city Flash 889mb
into Trading Flash 917
back to city Flash 919mb
vist forum via another tab Flash 922mb
goto pvp map (FE age) Flash949mb
open province Flash 962mb
doing 1 fight Flash 1087mb
win fight and at results Flash 1129mb
back to city Flash 1050
into PVP do fight Flash 1167mb
at results screen Flash 1188mb
back to city Flash 1129mb
into PVP do fight Flash 1120mb
at results screen Flash 1140mb
back to city Flash 1152mb
did 2 mails and back to city Flash 1271mb
into PVP do fight Flash 1340mb
back to city Flash 1301mb
into pvp battle Flash 1392mb
back to city Flash 1361mb

So flash use of memory is always going up, I agree that they is a reduction in memory from fighting in PVP to when you return to your city but its never as low as when you started the fight, basically memory use is always going up and only a clean cache can reduce it or a refresh. Refreshing at this point the memory use came down to 761mb for flash.

There is a big issue with memory leakage. Hope this helps everyone and we can officially get this recorded at long last as a bug and thus get someone at INNO to work on it
 

DeletedUser653

Guys, every player here complains about lag, crashing and game freezing - all symptoms of memory leakage. I proved above that the game does not release used memory and over time and normal play the memory use just increases and increases, but unless other players post to say this is a bug and they want fixed it will be forgotten about.
thanks for the likes king Dael and bigbeard, but for this to be accepted as a bug i need other players to post and say they agree its a bug.
thanks - Mark
 

DeletedUser109385

Sorry but I am a little bit against your bug, memory doesn't matter in my computer or maybe I haven't really understood your bug.
 

DeletedUser653

Soldatos, you obviously do not understand memory leakage or you would not have said it does not matter in your machine. Memory leakage (and its a good question if you had asked what is it) is where a program uses a bit of memory but does not let it go when its finished, your machine memory is leaking away.

So lets imagine you have a massive 16GB memory and as you say no worries over memory use. FOE takes 610mb on starting the game but after 10 mins of average game activity the memory usage has increased to 1361mb, another 10 mins its up to 2.6GB (ignoring the 1024 conversion rate), after 40 mins it could be up to 5,2Gb, but after 2 hour play it could have reached 15.6 Gb memory use. Now you pc will have frozen/crashed long before you get there but the issue with FOE is that it uses you memory and should release it after its used it, but FOE does not. They did put a correction in a few releases back where they improved the memory being released after exiting the GVG map but it never releases all the new memory it took when entering the map, hence over time and play memory use is always being increased by FOE. You can see this from the numbers posted above, carry on the test for long enough and your memory would be consumed and you will crash/freeze etc.
It will effect 4GB ram players quicker then 16GB ram players but all players will be effected on leakage, it may differ depending on browser but I suspect it will effect all browser and players.

But may i say a special thanks for posting as I really expected more players to support this bug, so maybe your post is good as i have to explain it in more detail.
 

DeletedUser109385

Thanks for explaining it to me, now I completely understand your bug, yes I think this is a bug and should be sent to the FoE to have a look at it.
 

DeletedUser

It is clearly a bug, I've never known anything to sap memory so consistently like FoE. However, they'll never do anything about it.
Wasn't it designated as 'Not a Bug' on Beta for months (years?) because one moderator couldn't replicate it on their machine? You have more chance pursuing it as a bug on beta with Darkstar though, support don't appear to give a toss about bugs here so people aren't really reading/responding like they used to.
 

DeletedUser109268

HRC,

this is a bug, and it happens also by using Chrome. I am forced to refresh way too often by now. Especially after fightings. Terrible bug!
 

DeletedUser100065

Unfortunately i am at work most of today and can't close other pages down for an hour or two to run tests of my own (will try when i get home but can't guarantee it'll be possible with RL for next few days) however if more people would like to do similar tests as HRCs then it would be helpful to gather as much data as possible.

Memory leakage and cache can be unique and vary from one person to another. So the more reports we can gather the more likely we are to find a common theme causing the issues and hopefully work towards improvement. Make sure cache is cleared before starting and stick to the one window open and one world if possible as this gives the most accurate data.

If you are unsure how to check memory usage on your system then a quick search of wikihow or similar, I am sure you will find the method for your systems.
 

DeletedUser653

Bump, really important issue which must impact 90% of players. really needs more support if we are to get this hot and included as a bug to be fixed.
 

DeletedUser108047

Kudos to HRC for actually reporting some stats... Anecdotally everyone in my guild on N suffers from the same problems on a daily basis
The biggest problems for me are the browser/flash player becoming non-responsive (and requiring a cache clear and reboot/relogin when:
  1. trying to log into GvG and or moving from one GvG map to another
  2. entering and exiting battles.
In my case, this is despite using decent grade machines with more than sufficient memory on the Australian NBN and the latest versions of Flash and Firefox
 

DeletedUser653

come on Guild leaders get your players to post here and lets get this red hot and then INNO will take it as a bug and try to fix it
 
This is a given; it has been happening for a long time. Most notable when doing battle after battle in GvG; eventually memory is consumed to the point where A giant explanation point pops in place where flash player image was. This is the tell-tail sign of consumed memory thru leakage.

Many players may have seen it but didn't know what that was. They refresh the screen and "most" of the memory is released and they go on their merry way of game play. If you monitor memory consumtion thru the task manager(windows machine), you will note that memory slowly gets consumed as you play the game, usually thru the switching of many different windows, such battle after battle as mentioned above, or thru many city visits. As HRC mentioned, the magnitude of this problem is directly proportional to the amount of ram installed in a machine; the more RAM the less apparent. This occurs when objects are not properly disposed when no longer needed and the GC (known as the garbage collector) has not yet made it's way to the unused object to reclaim memory. There can be a significant lag between the time an undisposed object goes out of scope and the time the GC gets around to reclaiming that memory held by that object!

Also, as noted above, refreshing the browser window does not always release all unused RAM. I have noticed that after so many refreshes, the game won't have enough available memory to load. Closing the browser and reloading is the only way to completely release memory being held by the game.
 

Vesiger

Monarch
Is this related to the issue where a city picture flashes momentarily up on the screen on the mobile app after completing a battle in the guild expedition?
 

DeletedUser653

As your memory gets more and more used up your pc will find it harder to quickly present new graphics so you will get that laggy feeling and finally it will start freezing and this gets worse and worse till you need to refresh the Foe page. Regarding the issue on phones and tablets I tested on a 16Gb ram pc so I cannot be 100% sure but see no reason that Foes programers are any better when doing the phone /tablet program as against the PC.
 
Also noted is that with windows machines as explorer.exe (Not Iexplore.exe) consumes more memory, your machine will also slow down. This occurs when doing various things with your pc such as coping files. typically this should use about 23k of ram but can grow to a vary large number.

This can be checked by opening your task manager an observing the memory column of the explorer.exe image name.
To clear the consumed ram, highlight explorer.exe and then click end process.
Next, click the File/New Task (Run...) and type in explorer.exe and click OK.

After performing this little trick, your machine will again have quick, responsive action.
 

DeletedUser653

bump to post since referring to it in current posting and hence players can find it easier,

perhaps a mod can merge the new thread above into this thread?
 
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