Performance! Memory leak?

[msxyz]

This game has some serious memory leaks problems:

My system is a P4 2.66GHz 1 Gb of RAM and a 5700U. I can play Half Life 2 at 1024x768 AA2x with aniso filtering. Aside from the fact that even at 1024x768 with no eye candy the performance is far worse than any other game I've tried so far, memory usage increase rapidly over time to the point it starts swapping considerably all the time. You can check with system monitor. Memory allocation for Vampires Bloodlines is about 600-700Mb with one large area loaded, but within an half hour of gameplay, it may grow up to 1.5-1.8 Gb! This is what I call a serious memory leak.

[LiftedNevermore]

Originally Posted by msxyz

This game has some serious memory leaks problems:

My system is a P4 2.66GHz 1 Gb of RAM and a 5700U. I can play Half Life 2 at 1024x768 AA2x with aniso filtering. Aside from the fact that even at 1024x768 with no eye candy the performance is far worse than any other game I've tried so far, memory usage increase rapidly over time to the point it starts swapping considerably all the time. You can check with system monitor. Memory allocation for Vampires Bloodlines is about 600-700Mb with one large area loaded, but within an half hour of gameplay, it may grow up to 1.5-1.8 Gb! This is what I call a serious memory leak.

I have roughly the same specs as you... and checking performance using the Task Manager, I saw that the game just eats up more and more memory, until it's using ALL of it. Memory leak, memory leak, MEMORY LEAK.

[Tratei]

cl_detaildist 0
This will turn off some unimportant details like litter on the streets etc. For me it improved my average fps in Downtown to 5-7 (my system is far below even minimal requirements: PII-733, 256 RAM, GeForce4 MX 440) what feels just great after 1-2 fps which I had before.

[Maxinion]

Maximum PC has this HL2 tip (though it should work for Bloodlines, tell me if it doesn't): "Geforce4 owners will get big performance benefits if they open the console and type r_fastzreject 1." A lot of you have Geforce4's, I've noticed, so I hope this helps!

[Tratei]

Originally Posted by Maxinion

Maximum PC has this HL2 tip (though it should work for Bloodlines, tell me if it doesn't): "Geforce4 owners will get big performance benefits if they open the console and type r_fastzreject 1." A lot of you have Geforce4's, I've noticed, so I hope this helps!

There is no such command in Bloodlines so it doen't work. Alas.

[Tratei]

One more hint. In areas with a big number of inactive npcs (like Downtown etc.) you may use console command "ai_disable" to"freeze" all npcs. This will sufficiently increase framerate and reduce lags (at least for me it does). It's handy to bind this command to a key to easy disable/enable AI when necessary.

[PassingThrough]

Originally Posted by Gauda

Well, I can only say that troikas thoughts are inscrutable, why they would ever want to release a game with so evident, and enourmous performance problems is beyond me. Especially since they had all the time in the world improving it, since it was finished half a year ago, but couldn't be released because valve wouldn't let them.

Most of the performance problems is probably adressed in the patch though, which should be in the work now.

Sorry, this is going kind of off topic but I feel I need to comment on that a little bit. I work as a designer at a games company in the U.K, and I just need to say that there are soooooo many reasons why a game ships with issues/bugs. To assume that it is by choice can be a mistake.

First off, don't forget that Activion is the publisher. They pay the bills and they call the shots. If they say "release the game now" then it will get released, and there is little Troika can do about it. Also, Troika may have finished work on the game a year ago, but that doesn't mean they will have had the time or money to continue to work on the project once it was "finished". They will get some funding to work on patches after release, but this is a variable factor. We may see another patch sorting all of this, we may not (I hope we do as the performance probs are marring an otherwise quality title).

If any of the Troika guys happen to read this thread I feel pretty sure that they will be saying "yes, we knew about that issue. If only we had the time to do "this", or the money to implement "that", or the source engine support to do "the other" then the performance glitches would have been fine". Actually, I am sure their support from Valve was top notch, I just using that as an example of another unknown factor.

Sorry to pick on your post Gauda. You just happened to be the guy that said what a lot of people are thinking. I really just want to say that when you see an issue in a game, try to remember that the games industry is a business driven by cash (same as any other business). The best intentions and abilities of the dev team won't necessarily guarantee a great final result "if there are other more powerful forces at play" (had to get that little cliche in at the end ).

Thanks for listening.

[Hucklebarry]

To further help the memory leak theory I finished my first time with lots o lag! Especially in certain high traffice areas like the cities and the zombie areas.

My system specs are below, but the more peculiar thing was how the game handled as I played through. I did not start using quick save until the last few levels. When I hit F9, the game screen froze for several seconds (10 - 20) and then jerked back into motion finally displaying the save game message. My wife started playing a new game and the quick saves were instant with no stutter. the sound did not even stop playing. It was a smooth, fluid sequence. I was shocked. Then she completed a quest or two, still along ways away from leaving santa monica, but she has put an hour or two under her belt. The saves are starting to take longer. each save seems to take longer than the one before. Now the game stutters and even freezes a second or two before displaying the message and resuming play. Sounds like the memory is going somewhere the more the game is played.

P4 3.2 (800MHZ)
1024MB @ PC2700 RAM
2X80GB 7200RPM HD w/8MB cache
Geforce 6800GT 256MB
Audigy2

Patched to 1.2 and still experiencing tons of lag.