A question in regard to "memory-leak" related crashes

I've seen this thread in regard to EB II's stability http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...her-large-mods, and while it makes a valid point, it still seems as if EB II crashes far more often than mods of equivalent size or larger. I've applied a solution to the kingdoms.exe (An EB II team member may PM me if they would like to ask me what this solution is in particular), which allows an executable to use more RAM. Despite the application of this solution, which has worked for other .exes, EB II still crashes around 5 times every session at seemingly random points. I know for a fact the problem does not exist with my installation, since I followed install instructions to the letter, and installed EB II in a separate installation of M2:TW on my desktop. No crash occurs before I choose a faction. Afterward, during gameplay, and during time on the stratmap, crashes occur. A crash occurred once immediately upon choosing a faction at the faction selection screen.


I am curious to know if there are other things that can be done to mitigate these crashes besides tampering with the kingdoms.exe, for example, if the crashes related to graphics, game settings or the like. EB II is not graphically intensive and I experience no lag while playing it, but I've heard elsewhere certain graphics settings can cause problems. It's also possible the kingdoms.exe's properties has an effect on the mod's stability (although it seems unlikely if it can even run). I am currently using the latest version, which is 2.2r.

I can upload an EB system log or other log if needed, although as I mentioned, the crashes aren't anywhere specific.


Thanks in advance for all help.

What level is your log set at in ebii.cfg? There are two lines, one says trace and the other says error. The one with the # in front of it is commented out and does not apply. If 'trace' is currently active, i.e. lacks a # in front of it, that can tend to consume a lot of memory and should be changed to error by moving which line has the #.

My log is set to trace as demanded by the install instructions. I'll try setting it to error and will reply with results. If that seems to be a solution to these crashes, it might be a very good idea to update that in the installation instructions.

You only need to turn it back to trace when you're preparing a bug report for submission. Running it all the time will just result in more crashes from the tens of thousands of lines of text buffering and writing to disk all the time.

I think the concern was lots of useless error log reports because not enough debugging is on if you start at 'error' not 'trace', and that has to be balanced against players getting CTDs more often due to this. It might be switching to default 'error' in 2.3.

There's still a few crashes, but the situation has definitely improved. Thanks for your help, Myarta.

You're welcome. When do you tend to see crashes? The other trick, if you've already explored the memory limit thing, is giving it a good 15-30 seconds before hitting the end battle button that loads you back to the campaign. Let the battle finish, read the stats or something or take a bio break, then end it, if it was a big battle. It seems to need a moment to settle before trying to load the campaign resources as well.

Originally Posted by Celtic Magister

.. it still seems as if EB II crashes far more often than mods of equivalent size or larger. I've applied a solution to the kingdoms.exe (An EB II team member may PM me if they would like to ask me what this solution is in particular), which allows an executable to use more RAM. Despite the application of this solution, which has worked for other .exes, EB II still crashes around 5 times every session at seemingly random points. I know for a fact the problem does not exist with my installation, since I followed install instructions to the letter, and installed EB II in a separate installation of M2:TW on my desktop. No crash occurs before I choose a faction. Afterward, during gameplay, and during time on the stratmap, crashes occur. A crash occurred once immediately upon choosing a faction at the faction selection screen.

I experience multiple crashes in the game, in various mods. It started to happen like 7-8 weeks ago. Before that time most of the mods were stable, but late in August submods to Stainless Steel (I was looking at the Titanium at that time) and also Deus lo Vult, strated to crash, especially during the choice of the factions. I've checked with the other mods I've used to use with any CTD (SS- BftB, BGRIV and even SSHIP) and surprisingly, I've also experienced similar crashes as well. My conclusion - and a few other players of these mods - is that Microsoft has changed something in Windows 10 what prompts problems.For the moment I'm waiting for the Win10 Fall update next Tuesday to see how the mods would react.

Originally Posted by Jurand of Cracow

I experience multiple crashes in the game, in various mods. It started to happen like 7-8 weeks ago. Before that time most of the mods were stable, but late in August submods to Stainless Steel (I was looking at the Titanium at that time) and also Deus lo Vult, strated to crash, especially during the choice of the factions. I've checked with the other mods I've used to use with any CTD (SS- BftB, BGRIV and even SSHIP) and surprisingly, I've also experienced similar crashes as well. My conclusion - and a few other players of these mods - is that Microsoft has changed something in Windows 10 what prompts problems.For the moment I'm waiting for the Win10 Fall update next Tuesday to see how the mods would react.

Interesting comment. My primary dev rig is a Win7 machine, and it's phenomenally stable. Literally hundred of turns between restarts, not using a patched exe, and no CTDs. I also have a Win10 system which is periodically used for testing, and it's not uncommon to get a random CTD after 40-50 turns. Identical EB2 builds, the only difference is the O/S.

Originally Posted by Kull

Interesting comment. My primary dev rig is a Win7 machine, and it's phenomenally stable. Literally hundred of turns between restarts, not using a patched exe, and no CTDs. I also have a Win10 system which is periodically used for testing, and it's not uncommon to get a random CTD after 40-50 turns. Identical EB2 builds, the only difference is the O/S.

My experience with Win7 is the same, it's rock-solid and rarely crashes. I haven't bothered with Win10.

The following information might help: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?755286