More Awesome Than You!

I've read in several different threads that Bon Voyage has a bad memory leak. What exactly is a memory leak and how does it affect one's computer in terms of performance and gameplay? Can something like this be fixed with a patch?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak

Google is your friend.

Thanks for the info. Although reading all of that gave me a headache, I'll just have to guess that it is'nt safe to play for extended periods until this issue is adressed by EAxis.(Hopefully).

Even on a High Performance machine, with all updated BV hacks, all awesome and a few non-awesome, I have mini second lags constant on any community lot until I leave.(never had that issue before with all options and smooth on high. I have since then turned down the res and smooth edges off, it's still the same.I have no problem with anything else glitches or otherwise. I am assuming this is due to to this.
Apreciate the feedback by the way.

There are certainly some lag issues, but how much of this is due to a 'memory leak' situation seems to be unclear, as is the question of how serious this is. 

For example, in my game there are occasional lags, normally due to lot loading, visiting sims arriving and departing from a lot, spawining of necessary NPCs etc.  However, I have run the game for periods exceeding 6 hours at a stretch and have not noticed that lags increase in frequency or duration, and I have never had the game crash.

It may help that I disable all non-essential processes on the computer before running the game, turn shadows down to medium, and never play with the computer online.  Lag has been reported to be worse if the game is trying to phone home.  Bypassing the launcher also helps.

Hmmm....I had thought the few seconds lag was due to the new "phone home feature" with BV. It's almost enough to make me uninstall it and I just may, after the "newness" of vacations wears off.

Bypassing the launcher when loading the game stops some, if not all, the phone home activity, I believe.  Create a shortcut on your desktop pointing to the SIMS2EP6.EXE file in your Sims2 program files directory and use that to start the game.  Presto, no more launcher.

I'm starting to suspect a bad memory leak in BV. That's actually why I got online this morning, to poke around and see if anyone else thought so. I can play the game fine with Awesome hacks and CC, with minimal lag. But as time goes on, the little bouts of random lag (which oddly enough seems to occur more often when EAxis stuff gets clicked on than CC) get more frequent and eventually the game just quits responding. It gets stuck in that blue-screen-hourglass cycle.

Bypassing the launcher does help, but in my game, the SIMS2EP6.EXE file itself tries to dial home 10 *&#%$! times before the game seriously starts loading. (Yes, I actually messed with my firewall and counted the number of times.) I'd like to know WHY this EP is so damned determined to phone home...

To watch for a memory leak, look at Task Manager under Performance to see how much of your memory the game is sucking up after you've started it, leave it running, and then look again after an hour or two of playing. Seasons would take up extraordinary amounts of memory as the game went on. I haven't looked at BV, but I have had my computer start crashing again somewhat regularly while playing, which could be a sign, even if I'm not noticing the lag first.

I'd also make sure you have Pes's antiredundancy hack in. All those damn tour guides generating, if you are lot hopping, will slow you down.

I recently put my firewall on tight security, so that it notifies me before every attempt a program makes to dial out. I removed all permissions for my Sims programs. I also finally figured out that I'd been a dunce and was putting my no-CD hack (I have the EALink version, and the dial out to verify that I purchased the game every time annoys me) in the wrong place, so now I'm bypassing launcher and EALink. Last night, I clicked on the shortcut to Sims2EP6.exe and immediately got the message that the program was attempting to dial out. So the bypass isn't stopping everything. Tell firewall to smack it down. Play last night was a lot better...I'd been having slight lag issues on my beach lot, which has a lot of traffic, at max everything.

Not allowing the game to connect to the net, putting in anti-redundancy, and putting in a 'no water balloons' hack (essential for me, that was causing all kinds of problems) - that fixed most lag problems for me. I can play for long periods without issues, but haven't been playing that many vacations that long - so if there's still a memory leak, it'd have to be vacation lot specific I think. Is that even possible?

I still haven't figured out my issue with the witch dr's hut (which was totally unplayable) but I haven't been back there so dunno if the above helped.

Oh and  I also have to remember to generate all at once or not allow strays and stupid pet furs/collars to generate or I lag out while the game tries to make them. Worse'n the change appearance wait...

I suppose one of the reasons my game isn't having some of these problems is that I'm on dial-up and disable all connections before playing, including all processes that run the modem.  There is no way for the game to phone home.

According to my taskmanager, BV Sims2 starts at using 13 percent of my 700-something ram, 3% after loading completely, 48% while loading lots, and during normal lot play, 3% again(normal being generally smooth gameplay).  After 5 hours of playing, BV Sims2 goes to 93% while loading lots, and 48% during normal gameplay (normal in this instance being very slow, with fits and starts).  Crash happens around 6 to 6 1/2 hours of continuous play.  Suspicions of a memory leak may not be unfounded.  I am now limiting gameplay to a maximum of 2 hours per itineration of BV.  I hope Maxis makes a patch that un-borks BV as much as possible SOON.

Mitchellcjs

Is this with or without CC? With or without hacks (Awesome or Not)? I don't think you even have to be "playing" per se, for this to occur. The first thing I did when testing out BV was to load Veronaville, Monty and remodel the suck EAxis had created. I started getting odd bouts of lag and random blue screen in the process of replacing light fixtures, furniture, walls and floors. It didn't make a difference if all the visual options were turned up high or all the way down. I hadn't even "played" the family or even selected a vacation 'hood yet. This was with CC and Awesomeness.

I use the shortcut as well to bypass the launcher and disable my DSL connection, it still freezes while loading neighborhoods and has little moments of lag that as I said, I assumed meant the game was trying to phone home.  Oddly enough I had installed Zone Alarm to throw up a firewall to stop it but after I had it installed, TS2 wouldn't load at all so I had to remove it in order to play the game.

The memory leak varies from time to time.  I've been bypassing the launcher since day one, it doesn't help a whole hell of a lot.  Sometimes it can go hours without the dark blue screen and then the crash.. sometimes it happens after 30 minutes.  A few things that really include lowering the resolution.. using 1024x768 since bv came out.. used to use 1280x1024.. setting shadows to medium.. lowering audio quality (in game) to low and playing on lots with fewer sims/objects.  One sim has real estate on one of the vacation lots, if I only send one sim to that lot.. it's totally lag free for a loong time.  If I go to a lot where sims keep piling up.. trouble.  I'm using very few hacks.  I'm using seethem 2.. the anti spawn hack and I believe perfect plants.  That's it though as far as hacks.. the rest is just meshes.

I'm also using the beta drivers from nvidia.. it helped quite a bit in regards to the gpu cutting the signal off to the monitor.  Same damn issue Seasons had until either their patch fixed it or the July nvidia drivers did.. hard to say.

I get the odd black screen lag while loading the hood (may mean that the game is trying to find a way to call out, but I have really not checked) and the odd bit of stutter/lag/slowdown while playing, but nothing that did not exist previously with large complex lots or lots with a high number of visitors (I enable a fair number of visiting sims, because I don't like comm lots with nobody at them).  In all cases, lag is temporary in my game and smooth running resumes after a few seconds.  I may try monitorying CPU usage to see if the memory leakage thing is happening to me.

I have only awsomeness in my downloads folder, the MATY Director's Cut (the most recent version, I check twice a day).  No other cc or hacks.  I have all EPs and all SPs at the moment.  I was not complaining, merely offering stats I had noticed that may support the as-yet-unconfirmed-by-EAXIS memory leak.

Mitchellcjs

CPU= Processor
RAM=MEMORY

Watching your CPU usage won't tell you if there is a memory leak.  ;) It will tell you that TS2 is a resource hog, in general, but that's not the question at hand. LOL

True enough - then again, my brain has been suffering memory leakage all day, so I'm not surprised I'm making terminology errors.  I may print your correction just so I remember it later this evening when I can finally get to my game machine.  :P

My deepest apologies as well.  When running BV, pagefile usage goes through the roof, though.  Under the performance tab, "Physical Memory (K)" lists Available as dwindling rapidly. How do I monitor actual memory usage in real time?

Look in Task Manager under the Processes tab.  You will see a column for "Mem Usage".  The amounts given (in kilobytes) refer to how much of your RAM a given application is accessing.  If it keeps climbing after your game is fully loaded, a memory leak might be the culprit.

Check out Cacheman.

http://www.outertech.com/

Thank You.

Interesting.  McAfee was set to allow EP2 and EP5 access to the Internet, but had no setting for EP6 (BV).  I just blocked EP2 and EP5 and started the game, and the first thing that happened was McAfee reported that EP6 was requesting access to the Internet.  Ain't gonna happen, guys.

Cute bastards.  If you can't get there through the current EP, you try previous ones.

Hook

.
There's another nice feature BV added: SecuROM which you can NOT uninstall. And once the game is uninstalled you may not be able to reinstal lit again because of the SecuROM. SecuROM has quite the reputation........Thanks for that EAXis.

I had fish swimming in my street today...happened not long after the game ate my sim into never never land stuck between vacation and home forevermore--thanks for that too EAxis.

This might be helpful for removing securom...

Anandtech - SecuROM Discussion Thread
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=80&threadid=2088930&enterthread=y (http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=80&threadid=2088930&enterthread=y)

When I first heard about the complaints about choppy and lagging gameplay in Bon Voyage, the first thing I thought of was Rollercoaster Tycoon 3.  When Atari released the Wild expansion for this game, they used Securom 7, and there was a huge issue with framerates at night in the game (FPS would drop to almost nothing).  It was an issue with the securom 7 and they released a patch to fix the problem.

-- 2nd message in the thread -- Re: RCT3: Wild! Patch #1 Released -- http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=514212

I wonder if this is the same thing happening with Bon Voyage?

I didn't think you were complaining, I was just curious as to whether a lot of CC was adding to the problem or not. It doesn't appear to be the case, as I was running with CC and Awesomeness and get similar results as you. I took out CC and left Awesomeness in yesterday and am still getting the same results. I'm guessing that running vanilla game wouldn't make much difference either, other than to maybe buy a bit more time before the game went up in flames. :P

Running a vanilla game will not deal with lag issues.  Some of the awesome hacks may help, and they do not contribute to lag, in any case.  Running with the puter disconnected from the internet, running without the launcher, turning down some graphics settings (i.e. shadows), and closing nonessential processes on the task manager before starting also help to deal with lag.  If the issue is related to memory leakage or securom, these may be stopgap measures, but they certainly don't hurt.

Running without awesome hacks (such as antiredundancy) may (will?) contribute to lag as the game will continually try to spawn unnecessary NPCs in vacation hoods (i.e. tour guides, charlatans, etc.), and will lag every time it does so.

My comp is getting a little old but it still rocks and I have never had a lag when I was running a new neighborhood with no CC"s before--something is definately wrong.  Ever since the new NVidea driver I had never had a crash and my neighborhood is 1.3 gig and I have 7.1 gigs of downloads, so crashing in a new neighborhood is definately EAaxis's fault.  I also have crashing because of audio errors, this weekend I was going to reinstall fresh, but now I'm afraid to.

I have noticed more audio errors, especially while hoods and lots are loading -- the sound skips, or 'hiccups' while the loading screen is visible. Fortunately it doesn't crash, but it's annoying.

(I have an ATI card, FYI, and a Audigy 4 sound card.)

Mine didn't either till last night.  The stereo had a skip(Downtown lot-so I lost everything)and the screen immediately went to desk top without even a message.  I went back and muted all sound except for voices and it helped-at least I don't hear the hiccups.

Just thought I'd share this informaton.  I haven't had any of these problems because I have been using a no-cd crack from this website

http://www.gameburnworld.com/pcgamefixess.shtml

I use a shortcut to the cracked exec on my desktop, it bypasses the launcher and doesn't try to "phone home", also I believe this crack disables SecuRom.

My understanding is that you can not uninstall the SecuRom or the game won't run, but with it disabled it can't do anything anyway.

To all the sage advice above, (for OS Win 9x - XP) RAMBOOSTER (http://www.sci.fi/~borg/rambooster/) is a cute little utility which generally pays for its own relatively meagre resource use with memory freeing power.

Aren't 3rd party memory managers virtually worthless in NT? I know over at anandtech it's highly not recommended.

I outright crashed the other night because it ran out of memory, only 32mb (either 32mb or 64mb) left out of 2 Gigabytes  :-\  I was trying to get all the townies to show up on the lot though, but it's never crashed like that in previous expansions.  Perhaps that particular option on the npc & townie maker (which looks like the repo mans gun now) is bugged.

I thought it was my grampa of a computer that was at fault. EA has us well brainwashed, have they not? I have the same problem to the point that I keep thinking the game will crash to desktop any second now. I have an ATI Radeon 9600 - nothing to brag about, but no slouch either.

What if someone installed BV onto a peripheral hard-drive? One that gets plugged into a bus-port. Would that still sneak the SecuRom malware into the main CPU?

Once you run bon voyage or any app that contains securom, it'll have access to windows registery, at which point it'll do whatever it wants to do. Theres also a good chance that it uses  window environment variables %program files% ??? to install it's stuff.  The only way I know offhand to stop this is install it with a limited accounted and i'm sure they know how to cheat around that.  >:(

BTW you mean main hard drive?