Over time the game has become unplayable

[Fracturedorb]

I'm not sure what has happened to Forge but over time the games gone from one of my favorite programs that I would run every day to something that I can't even run at all. As more and more cards were added to the game the load times started to creep up and up and sometime a few months ago when the new UI was implemented the game just basically became useless.

35 seconds to load the main game screen
1:15 to go from main menu to deck editor
3 seconds from click on card to display the card in the editor
15 seconds to go from deck editor back to main menu
1:30 to go from main menu to game mode.

Once in game mode, the program becomes so unresponsive that I couldn't click anything and getting it to even close at this point was a challenge. It actually started to hang my system and other applications in the background (google chrome) were also unresponsive. In the end I had to crash my Java engine entirely to even get forge to close.

I'm running a laptop that has no problem running photoshop, World of Warcraft, Magic the gathering Online, and Duels of the Planeswalkers. I have 4 gigs of memory and I'm running Vista. Are other people having issues as well, or am I experiencing something else?

[Chris H.]

I'm not sure what has happened to Forge but over time the games gone from one of my favorite programs that I would run every day to something that I can't even run at all. As more and more cards were added to the game the load times started to creep up and up and sometime a few months ago when the new UI was implemented the game just basically became useless.

35 seconds to load the main game screen
1:15 to go from main menu to deck editor
3 seconds from click on card to display the card in the editor
15 seconds to go from deck editor back to main menu
1:30 to go from main menu to game mode.

Once in game mode, the program becomes so unresponsive that I couldn't click anything and getting it to even close at this point was a challenge. It actually started to hang my system and other applications in the background (google chrome) were also unresponsive. In the end I had to crash my Java engine entirely to even get forge to close.

`
If you launch forge by double clicking on the "run-forge.jar" file you will get errors. This could lead to the problems that you have noticed.

The readme file found in the forge archive states:

In the past, some people noticed java heap space errors and lengthy pauses. The memory requirements for Forge have increased over time. The default setting on your computer for the java heap space may not be enough to prevent the above problems.

The technically proficient can launch the forge jar with an argument from the CLI. The argument "-Xmx512m" may work for computers with 1 Gig of memory. Computers with 2 Gigs or more of memory should be able to use "-Xmx1024m" as an argument.

We have created several scripts that will launch the Forge jar with "-Xmx1024m" as an argument. People using Windows OS should double click the "forge.exe" file. People using Apple's Mac OS X should double click the "forge.command" file. People using one of the other *nix OS should double click the "forge.sh" file.

The script file must be located in the same folder as the "run-forge.jar" file and the "run-forge.jar" file name can not be changed. Otherwise, the scripts will not work.

If you have a low end machine you may find that the scripts above will prevent java heap space errors but will find that forge still runs very slowly at times.

In this case you can try the following. Remove the background jpg picture from /res/images/ui/ folder. You can try using LQ pictures rather than the high quality pictures. Or you can try removing all of the jpg pictures from the pics folder. You can also try using the old style battlefield UI rather than the newer battlefield UI.

We have changed the archiving format to ".tar.bz2" since this may help to store the file permissions for the Mac OS X launcher. The Windows launcher in this version does not require you to rename the forge JAR file to work properly. Please keep the forge JAR file name set to "run-forge.jar".

`

I'm running a laptop that has no problem running photoshop, World of Warcraft, Magic the gathering Online, and Duels of the Planeswalkers. I have 4 gigs of memory and I'm running Vista. Are other people having issues as well, or am I experiencing something else?

`
Everyone trying to run the forge JAR without increasing their java heap space is likely to be facing the same types of problems. The solution is to increase the java heap space when you launch the JAR.

[Hellfish]

I'm thinking this has something to do with Chris' suggestion.My rig is not exactly top-of-the-line (2.6 GHz Dual-Core Pentium, 2 GB RAM, XP SP3) and it runs Forge fine, even with HQ pictures. Are you using the launcher exe or running the jar file directly?

[Chris H.]

Yeah, until recently, I always ran forge without increasing the java heap space. In recent months, forge went from being playable to a state where it was very slow and then I started to get the java heap space errors.

I suspect that when forge starts up it builds card objects for all of the cards in forge. With the large number of new cards recently added this could help to explain what we are seeing. Granted, I have almost no experience in memory management or in programming, so I could be mistaken.