[Elhoim]

This was posted by amar1234 in the Gamespot forums. Hope it helps!

Hi. Up until recently I did not get any out of memory crashes. Until yesterday that is. I was very confused since I have a powerful 2gig ,dual core, X1900 crossfire PC. The crash usually ocurred when I tried to save the game. I also had everything in game set to max , including resource cache.

There in lies the problem. The resource cache high setting is bugged. You have to use medium. This is not the solution however. For that I would like to direct everyone attention to the Ge3.ini file...

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_High=96000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_High=96000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_High=20000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_High=21000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_High=18000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_High=40000000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=100000

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Medium=70000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=40000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Medium=15000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Medium=20000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=16000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Medium=30000000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Medium=750000

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Low=32000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Low=30000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Low=10000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Low=18000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Low=13000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Low=25000000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Low=500000

Notice anything weird? This is how everyones ini looks. Don't see what I see? Okay have a look at:

ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=100000

Now do you see the problem? The game has reduced the resource to speedtree. This is why I would get crashes near or in forest areas.

Basically it's missing a 0 at the end. that missing 0 has mad the game uses less resources than setting the game at low resources. Most people have the detail setting set to high when they use resource cache high and so are guaranteed to get an out of memory crash.

It's not that you have run out of physical memory. It's that the speed tree renderer has used up all of it's alotted memory before completing the scene. This is what causes the memory leak, crashes and stuttering after extended play.

I highly suggest everyone who uses high settings to fix this now and look through the ini for any more mistakes. Change:

ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=100000 , should be 1000000.

All of the above lines are from the Programs Files/Gothic III/Ini/ge3.ini file. That is where to make changes. Remember to save afterwards or else nothing will work. Also make a backup of the file, just in case you meddle with anything else.

[chucksteak]

i understand what you are saying. yes it appears to be a bug.

but please put spaces in between the high/medium and low settings.

at the moment they all roll into one big paragraph.

[Raargh]

Nice! I'll go try it right away.

Thanks for sharing this

[Elhoim]

i understand what you are saying. yes it appears to be a bug.

but please put spaces in between the high/medium and low settings.

at the moment they all roll into one big paragraph.

Done!

[Crag Hack]

Absolutely splendid !
For the first time, the game´s running like a "normal" game i.e doesn´t crash 4 times per h.
Thx
/Crag

[kage]

After a great deal of tweaking I've got a great combination of graphics v performance - getting about 40fps (using fraps) in the wild.

Here's my findings.

Biggest things that affect FPS:
Resolution - 10-15 fps drop from 1024x768 to 1280x1024. I play on 1280x1024 'cos it's just too jaggy otherwise
Shader model - 10fps+ drop from 1.4 to 2.0. I use 2.0 because there are bugs in 1.4 (sky doesn't wrap properly)
Depth of field - a good 10 fps drop when enabled - I love it but play with it off
Filtering - 5ps drop from linear to ansitropic. I can't tell the difference so I use linear.
Vegetation - 5 to 10 fps drop if you switch it on - I play with it off.

My settings:
Dist (high) - medium
Dist (low) - medium
Res cache - medium
Obj details - medium
Shader - 2.0
Tex quality - medium
Filtering - Linear
Vegetation - off
Shadows - off
Post proc - overglow - would love to switch it off but it's bugged.

From browsing the Jowood forums I found some .ini tweaks that seem to add a few fps:

Changed:
Cache.SizeSound=80000000
To:
Cache.SizeSound=40000000

Changed:
Shader.EnableTreeShadows=true
To:
Shader.EnableTreeShadows=false

Changed:
Shader.EnableStaticShadows=true
To:
Shader.EnableStaticShadows=false

Changed:
Shader.EnableDetailShadows=true
To:
Shader.EnableDetailShadows=false

Changed:
Cache.SizeImage=128000000
To:
Cache.SizeImage=256000000

Changed
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=100000
to
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=1000000

My machine spec (by no means great)
Pentium 3.4
2gb Ram (bought an extra 1gb just for gothic)
Nvidia 6800 GTO (GT but with only 12 pipes)
Play at 1280x1024

Hope all this helps others

[Aiji.ma]

Many thanks for your advice. I have tweaked the sound buffer size to see if that makes any difference at all.

Cyteen out

[Gomorragh]

actually if you look right at the start of the ini, and compare animation cache to the speed tree cache, animation is 40meg while speedtree is 10meg, your addition makes the speedtree allocation 1meg.

I am going to try it out with 2 zeros added to the speedtree (making it 10meg) and additional 1 zero added to low and medium, this might get things closer to what it should be, that or kill my system :P - will edit with results

Edit:

To complete my testing, i have only occasional jitters and stutters in the game now (normally when i am luring creatures into guards and the like)

Ive had no save crashes, only at 1 point do i lose floor graphics, and the corpses are being removed properly now, very strange if this is the cause of most of the crashes.

here are the values that i changed the cache from and to -

High - from 100000 to 10000000 (from 100kb to 10meg)
Med - from 750000 to 7500000 (from 750kb to 7.5meg)
Low - from 500000 to 5000000 (from 500kb to 5meg)

these are more inkeeping with the testing values mentioned at the beginning of the g3.ini file, maybe the ini was rewritten in a rush or late on a friday ..... dunno but a few of the other numbers have been reduced by half from thier original testing values.

Maybe these testing values lead to memory use of over 2gig and were reduced on purpose, but so far, with constant playing the saves have been stable and fast (used to take a minute to save in busy areas, now its no more than 15 secs or so) gameplay has improved, and scenery doesnt dissapear a lot like it did (though i have found a load of floating trees)

Seems to me that this may hel;p even on lower spec machines since even for that type of system 5 meg wont make much difference if a plugin cant do its job due to lack of cache allocation etc.

[theirlaw]

hey glad you liked the ini tweaks
i'd be surprised though if lowering the sound cache does help you with 2gb ram. those settings are the most sensitive I've found. try inching them all up a little, you may get to your peak performance before it dies a death. recommend keeping sound cache low though. what on earth would we need 800000000 for!!!??? that's a hell of a lot of sound..

[theirlaw]

oh and the best tweak I found you missed out, I did it a little later..

after doing this

Changed:
Cache.SizeSound=80000000
To:
Cache.SizeSound=40000000

I increased the mesh size Cache.SizeMesh (?) by changing the first number to a 9! I tried higher but it stalled. Made a huige difference to me! People with more than a gb may be able to push these settings higher!

[Elhoim]

Interesting, I´ll try them too. Thanks!

[DarkUncle]

This is great info guys! thanx! shurely going to give it a go once i get my new graphics card!

[Gomorragh]

for additional ideas look in this thread

http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum...d.php?t=152228

[Gomorragh]

Just had a crash, but its was caused by the same thing it usually is, alternating ai`s some not wanting to attack others wanting to and corspes, the more corpses around the worse it gets.

Just had to kill a whole herd of bison (my summon attacked one and they all joined in!) and after killing all 20 my system locked, i still have a lot of beast corpses littered between Geldern and Silden, over 20 to 30 lurkers 5 to 10 shadowbeasts, 10 or more bloodflies, 10 or more trolls the silverwolves, lizards strange lurkers and undead/gargoyles/minecrawlers/minecrawler warriors, plus dead demon summons all over the place, and a load of wolves too, i really think the way corpses are handled should be improved.

also not this, while checking each cahce comment in the ini i noticed this difference :-

DEFAULT CACHE SIZES FOR GLOBAL CACHEADMIN

Cache.SizeMaterial=40000000

from the actual ini part and not what was used for testing -

ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_High=21000

maybe this is another additional ini file bork up! Maybe we could have a tester or someone who helped write this to explain why these cache comments at the start which were the default test ones are so different from the actual ones being used by the game

the more i look the more differences i see from the test to the actual in game here are the examples of test sizes and current high setting sizes:-

Cache.SizeImage=128000000
Cache.SizeMaterial=40000000
Cache.SizeMesh=70000000
Cache.SizeSound=40000000
Cache.SizeCollisionMesh=40000000
Cache.SizeAnimation=40000000
Cache.SizeSpeedTree=10000000

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_High=96000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_High=96000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_High=20000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_High=21000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_High=18000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_High=40000000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=10000000

notice mesh uses a higher amount of memory than in the test while the rest are smaller, some by stupid amounts, and note also this is from my already modded ini where i modded the max speed tree to 10meg like i mentioned previously. Note also that it says in the ini :-

DEFAULT CACHE SIZES FOR GLOBAL CACHEADMIN
Use with care: greater values can cause heavy performance problem on smaller systems

maybe the alteration to the test mesh size is also part of the problems?

[theirlaw]

for additional ideas look in this thread

http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum...d.php?t=152228

thanks dude, adds to what I got bored doing above. There must be a way to mao allocated cache to the exact memory availability of each PC. IF only we truly knew what each of the cache's controled "Mesh" for example I haev no idea about..

[Silon]

I noticed that at least on my comp the shaders were set to UltraHigh... the comments read that UltraHigh is for graphic cards with 512Mb of memory, which I do not have... I set them to High and the game started running a bit better. Also i changed the Shader Model from 3.0 to 2.0 and at least for now I can't see much difference in the looks. The game runs much smoother though. Also I've done all the beforementioned tweaks with the caches etc. Seems that with these tweaks the game gets more playable. Let's hope they fix more on the next patch.

[themiracle]

Well, I edited this, because I was wrong about deleting the Ini folder, I just moved it one level down, and rename it, but it was still reading, so here is my own tweaked ge3.ini

VegetationAdmin.ViewRange=6500.0

Camera.ZFar=130000.0
Camera.ZFarLowPoly=80000.0
Camera.ZBias=0.002

Render.EnableDOF=true
Render.DOFStart=5000.0
Render.DOFEnd=10000.0

fRelaxCamera=70.0
fRelaxPlayer=30.0
fRelaxYAxis=20.0
fRelaxXAxis=20.0
fRelaxDist=150.0
fRelaxFOV=75.0
fMaxDistToPlayer=600.0f

DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_High=14000.0
DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_Medium=8000.0
DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_Low=6000.0

DistanceLow.fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_High=140000.0
DistanceLow.fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_Medium=45000.0
DistanceLow.fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_Low=20000.0

ObjectDetails.fScreenObjectDistanceCulling_High=0.002
ObjectDetails.fProcessingRangeFadeOutRange_High=300.0
ObjectDetails.fRangedBaseLoDOffset_High=800.0

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_TextureQualityHigh=250000000

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_High=96000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_High=96000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_High=20000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_High=21000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_High=18000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_High=40000000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=1000000

My Specs!
AMD 3800X2 @ 2.6
7800GTX SLI @ 500/1300
320 WD SE 16 X2
2 GB Ram with 2Gb Page File

[Vanz]

Im no software genius, but arent the ini suppose to be there for a reason, like to hold the game together?.

OP i.e
I changed my ini settings as suggested by many here to get out of the save & crash combo.
Still no dice, i still crash with "out of memory" popups while i try to save (also, the chances of a save crash increase aswell the further into the game i get).

p.s it did however improve the overall fps, stutter & load times between tree lines ect.

[themiracle]

Im no software genius, but arent the ini suppose to be there for a reason, like to hold the game together?.

Well Vanz, Im no software genius either, but arent the games supposed to work right out of the 50 Euros Box?, like to play the game?

just try that solution, and let us know what happen, the worst thing it could, is that the game crash twice in a row, and if thats the case, put the folder, back in its place

I-ve been playing the last 3 days, instead of tweaking the system, I think is a good trade!

Thanks!

[Vanz]

Nope! Think ill let someone else be the test dummy.