Memory leak?

[ScoobyDoo]

This might be helpful for removing securom...

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

[Kralore]

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?

[lemonfresh]

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

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.

[jolrei]

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.

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.

[Process Denied]

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.

[jsalemi]

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.)

[Process Denied]

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.

[Celestard]

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.

[Mirelly]

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.

[ScoobyDoo]

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

[miramis]

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.

[veilchen]

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.)

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?

[ScoobyDoo]

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.)

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?