Problems running Forge

[timmermac]

I've commented about this before, but my experiences today have prompted me to start a new topic about this issue. I am unable to play more than 2 consecutive matches in quest mode without my computer almost totally locking up. Changing memory settings in the Windows command line has absolutely no effect. Therefore, I now have three questions that I would like everyone to answer.

1: What are your system specs? Please include processor, RAM, video card, OS and anything else that would be relevant in a situation like this.

2: How many consecutive matches are you able to play in Forge quest mode before having to quit the program and reload?

3: If you've noticed a change in how long you are able to run Forge before having to quit and restart, when did you notice that change?

I am asking this because I am starting to get the distinct hint that system requirements should be included with this program, and my system no longer meets those requirements.

So, to answer my own questions.

1: Processor: Pentium 4 519K processor running at 3.06 GHz.
RAM: 1 GB (128 mb shared by video)
video: Intel 910/915 onboard video
OS: Windows XP service pack 3
I am currently running Forge from an external 500 GB USB 2.0 hard drive.
Most recent running of Forge was using -Xmx448m switch
I am using only LQ pics

2: I am currently able to play 2 consecutive matches in quest mode before having to quit the program and restart it. After attempting to play a third match, I get multiple Java error windows and my system performance slows to a complete crawl. I must go into Task Manager and close the javaw.exe process to restore functionality.

3: I noticed a slowdown in late January of 2011.

[Hellfish]

-Xmx1024m has been generally observed to alleviate problems greatly. Of course, that assumes you have more than 1GB of RAM. :/

Myself, I run a 2.6GHZ something or other CPU with 2GB RAM on XP SP3, and it even runs with HQ pictures fine for more matches than I play in a single sitting. Pretty sure video card doesn't factor in.

Running Forge through a JProbe trial or the like to check for memory leaks would probably be a good idea,too.

The slowdown in January is probably due to the introduction of the Trigger system.

[Sloth]

Running Forge through a JProbe trial or the like to check for memory leaks would probably be a good idea,too.

Good idea.
I remember DennisBergkamp mentioning memory leaks in the quest mode. Fnoed hasn't been active for a while so checking manually would be a lot of work for us.

[Hellfish]

Turns out JProbe trials are for companies only. :/
I'm looking at some other things like IRAD and VisualVM,though. I should have web access at home today or tomorrow and will put the latest revision at the time through it's paces then.

[Chris H.]

I've commented about this before, but my experiences today have prompted me to start a new topic about this issue. I am unable to play more than 2 consecutive matches in quest mode without my computer almost totally locking up. Changing memory settings in the Windows command line has absolutely no effect. Therefore, I now have three questions that I would like everyone to answer.

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I have a 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. I use Apple's Mac OS X Snow Leopard version 10.6.7.

I noticed last year that forge would slow down even though I have 4 GB of RAM. Forge became unplayable for anything more than a quick test type of game. I had become accustomed to launching forge by double clicking the jar file and this gave me the default heap space setting. Increasing the java heap space improved my experience tremendously.

Timmermac, can you remove all of the pics in your pics folder and then play a few matches?

[Jaedayr]

1.7 GHz AMD, 1GB RAM, Win XP SP3, NVidia 6800GT. (Yes, I know this is ancient.)

I had problems in the past when I was using a full group of HQ pics. Even after I switched to the LQ Set pics I was still having intermittent problems.

2048 MB Page file.
Forge parameter -Xms1000m -Xmx1000m

Using this parm has made a large difference for me. I can play for two or three hours with no noticeable slowdown. I do see some slowdown when there are a lot of cards on the battlefield, especially when there are some with activate-able abilities. Once the game is over, the next game is back up to normal speed.

The only other thing I can suggest is to make sure your page file is large enough to allocate 1000 MB to Forge when it starts, as well as having some additional room for other processes.

[Hellfish]

Well, I'm learning the ropes of VirtualVM so I can't say that much yet, but to my untrained eye it looks like Forge's ImageCache isn't very good about actually caching the images. Is it even considering caching the resized image that is used for the card display?

[DennisBergkamp]

Laptop i7 with 4 gigs of RAM, and a my desktop is a 2.4 ghz quad core with 6 gigs of RAM.

I play using HQ pics, and I haven't run in any trouble yet (I could easily play 4 - 5 games in a row from what I've tested, probably many more before it will run out of heap space).
It seems strange that it will crash that quickly though in your case, even with 1gb of RAM it should run LQ pics just fine.

Wasn't aware quest mode had memory leaks, but I ran into a lot of issues with the map /Shandalar part of quest mode (which I've been working on - and yes, I am STILL working on it diligently ), the only way I could fix the performance and heap space issues there was to just have my code shutdown the process, and start a new one. The way this works is that you run around on the map, start a battle (at this point the map part of the application forks a new process and then shuts itself down), then after the match is done, that process starts another new process which loads the map up again and kills itself. We could maybe do something like this for the regular quest mode as well as an option for people that are having heap space issues, where we just start new processes every time a match is started, or when the quest menu is loaded back up again.

[timmermac]

1.7 GHz AMD, 1GB RAM, Win XP SP3, NVidia 6800GT. (Yes, I know this is ancient.)

I had problems in the past when I was using a full group of HQ pics. Even after I switched to the LQ Set pics I was still having intermittent problems.

2048 MB Page file.
Forge parameter -Xms1000m -Xmx1000m

Using this parm has made a large difference for me. I can play for two or three hours with no noticeable slowdown. I do see some slowdown when there are a lot of cards on the battlefield, especially when there are some with activate-able abilities. Once the game is over, the next game is back up to normal speed.

The only other thing I can suggest is to make sure your page file is large enough to allocate 1000 MB to Forge when it starts, as well as having some additional room for other processes.

I have a 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. I use Apple's Mac OS X Snow Leopard version 10.6.7.

I noticed last year that forge would slow down even though I have 4 GB of RAM. Forge became unplayable for anything more than a quick test type of game. I had become accustomed to launching forge by double clicking the jar file and this gave me the default heap space setting. Increasing the java heap space improved my experience tremendously.

Timmermac, can you remove all of the pics in your pics folder and then play a few matches?

Chris, trying revision 9890 with no pics, I still have an issue with the third consecutive game, and there are still some slowdowns in places during matches.

Jaedayr, I've played consecutive matches with the parameters you mentioned, and it ran quite smoothly, for the most part. I'm going to start a new quest in 9890 with pics enabled and with your parameters and see how it goes. I'll post in a couple-ish hours.

Can we try packaging the next beta so that Forge.exe is set to run with -Xms1000m -Xmx1000m by default?

Edit: So far, I've been able to play 3 consecutive matches with only a slight slowdown in the third match. I'm about to try a fourth.

[timmermac]

Right now it looks like 3 consecutive matches is the most I can do with pictures and -Xms1000m -Xmx1000m. The fourth match had very definite slowdowns between phases.

Let's make sure I have the Windows command line right for doing this. I go to Start --> Run, then it looks like this: "N:\Forge Revision 9906\forge.jar" -Xms1000m -Xmx1000m

Is this how it should look, or do I need to move the switches inside the quotes?

[DennisBergkamp]

I don't think you'll even need the quotes (unnecessary in Windows 7 anyway).