Crashes & Game speed

[Tinkerbell]

I just thought about something I have not seen in the threads about SCS crashing for some players.

Are you using speeds above Normal?

[FomarTHain]

I do sometimes at the beginning waiting for some cash to come in but I find I rarely need to change the speed in this game vs other CBers. I don't remember getting a crash or anything at fast speed though I am sure I did but as I said I don't play on fast speed 99% of the time.

Also I never get crashes at the beginning. Never. Its when the city gets big that I get crashes and sometimes even trying to open those cities causes crashes.

For instance in the small town I made in the screenshot thread (http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14266&page=6) I never had any crashes. In my ultimate SCS city of 35,000+ it crashes a good bit. Though it seems to crash less with my secret sauce found in my last post in this thread (http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14463).

[Tinkerbell]

Population number is a meaningless metric to me, FomarTHain. What is large is the number of buildings & workers.

Some Homes put a HUGE number into the population counter, but only like 20 max workers. Venues & Workplaces spawn Special sims also. The population metric is kinda bogus to me; they do not exist!

I can have a population of 20K on some cities that are not large & 5K on other cities with that are larger. We appear to only get kids with Homes that have two workers, for example.

I can understand larger cities that crash ~ too many walkers. In a game with building & more building as a goal, we will probably always reach a crash point.

Just trying to help! :o

[LadyCrimson]

Maybe a better indication of 'city size' re: crashes or performance would be 'worker-count' rather than population.

Population size does seem a bit misleading.

[Tinkerbell]

SCS is amazing to me, LadyCrimson. I am constantly amazed that the game even works at all on my minimum computer. Every building does something & that adds to the performance mix.

Last night I even notice that the lowly BBQ Pit, a decoration that I use to fill in gaps & cheat the game (+1 Prosperity ;) ) on zoom shows hot dogs & steak on the grill. All of a sudden, a guy with a spatula appeared for a few seconds! :eek:

This is only a decoration!

As far as comparing TM game progression, it has been a steady up from COTN. SCS performs much more superiorly than C4 does for me.

I believe another patch is coming. The game has only been out two weeks. While others appear to be very impatient, we don't want a half-a-loaf patch.

[FomarTHain]

I believe another patch is coming. The game has only been out two weeks. While others appear to be very impatient, we don't want a half-a-loaf patch.

I confess I fall into the impatient crowd.:eek: ;) I just wanna play. I shouldn't have to worry about my ultimate city not opening. And I do find it somewhat hard to believe Q&A didn't have the same problems.

But...:) that aside...:)

I think we are saying the same thing about population. A high population means that you have more houses and thus more citizens that need to go to work. Which in turn means you have to build more work places for them to goto in order for there to be low unemployment which leads to more walkers. So to me the population count is not a bad indicator. It's a good indication that your city is on the small side or the large side.

If you have a high population you have more people that need to go to work. At least that is way I see it.

Just the way I see it.:eek: :p ;)

[majortom1981]

Their is a slow memory leak. With the game windowed and taks manager up and just having the game sitting there the memory usage keeps slowly increasing.

[Tinkerbell]

I have had two crashes, both are larger cities for me. I blamed the first on being online with security. I only play C4 and COTN offline (dialup). No more SCs online for me & this is how it goes for C4 also. Small cities are fine online.

The second was on a 850 worker 22K pop authoritarian city with a ton of Venues & I thought the addition of Happy Sim button & a few other buttons was what did it.

My crashes are screen freeze & nothing works. However, I can move the mouse around & it is a game cursor, except when I had managed to (what I guess) is the Task Manager in the background behind the game playfield & the cursor changes to a Windows cursor for that imaginary rectangle. Windows key would not take me to the Desktop (C4 is almost as bad, by the way for the Windows key).

C4 doesn't crash on me, I just get terrible lag with large cities on large Empire maps. That's when I stop building bigger. SCS is different. I haven't noticed terrible lag yet.

Crash #2 was VERY ugly. I pulled the power plug. Two nights ago. Or perhaps older than that. Up to 4 nights ago?

Immediately reloaded the game & played for 4 hours (Happy icons on). I've played the same city since, numerous times & never had another crash yet.

I don't understand what memory leak is or does, but when I close down the game, my desktop is totally messed up graphically for about a minute & fixes itself. It is like every pixel line is shifted horizontally & garbled. I can cursor paint some of it back to normal before my computer fixes itself. Perhaps this is the memory leak? I get it every time. SCS is my only game that does this.

Again, P4@1.8, Radeon 9800 Pro with original installed drives never changed in Dec 2004, 1/2g RAM. Most graphics settings on game default (low or off) except for Free Camera & 12XX x 10XX resolution to match my flatscreen & the rest of my games. Apparently, I am very lucky.

I really feel for those of you who are pissed cuz of crashes. Patience, my friends. TM will do it!

[majortom1981]

I have had two crashes, both are larger cities for me. I blamed the first on being online with security. I only play C4 and COTN offline (dialup). No more SCs online for me & this is how it goes for C4 also. Small cities are fine online.

The second was on a 850 worker 22K pop authoritarian city with a ton of Venues & I thought the addition of Happy Sim button & a few other buttons was what did it.

My crashes are screen freeze & nothing works. However, I can move the mouse around & it is a game cursor, except when I had managed to (what I guess) is the Task Manager in the background behind the game playfield & the cursor changes to a Windows cursor for that imaginary rectangle. Windows key would not take me to the Desktop (C4 is almost as bad, by the way for the Windows key).

C4 doesn't crash on me, I just get terrible lag with large cities on large Empire maps. That's when I stop building bigger. SCS is different. I haven't noticed terrible lag yet.

Crash #2 was VERY ugly. I pulled the power plug. Two nights ago. Or perhaps older than that. Up to 4 nights ago?

Immediately reloaded the game & played for 4 hours (Happy icons on). I've played the same city since, numerous times & never had another crash yet.

I don't understand what memory leak is or does, but when I close down the game, my desktop is totally messed up graphically for about a minute & fixes itself. It is like every pixel line is shifted horizontally & garbled. I can cursor paint some of it back to normal before my computer fixes itself. Perhaps this is the memory leak? I get it every time. SCS is my only game that does this.

Again, P4@1.8, Radeon 9800 Pro with original installed drives never changed in Dec 2004, 1/2g RAM. Most graphics settings on game default (low or off) except for Free Camera & 12XX x 10XX resolution to match my flatscreen & the rest of my games. Apparently, I am very lucky.

I really feel for those of you who are pissed cuz of crashes. Patience, my friends. TM will do it!

From What I understand it to be is that a memory leak is when I program keeps taking up the computers ram and doesnt release any of it. So eventually the program is using all the ram up and their is none for anything else. These crashes could be due to the memory leak plus the big cities.

These big cities could be using a lot of memory by themselves then add the memory leak into it (the game slowly using up all the ram for no reason) and boom the game crashes.