Eufloria Demo Level 5 crash

[Major Cooke]

Hello. When I'm attempting to play on level 5, at random times throughout the course of the level, the game will spontaneously give me an error and say it must close.

The specs on my laptop:
Windows Vista SP2
Dell XPS M1530
2GB RAM DDR2
Intel 2.2ghz Core 2 Duo
Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT

I don't know what else to include. I will say this though, before the crash, I noticed it was taking up to 88% of my RAM. That should be checked immediately, as not even games such as Half-Life 2 do that on full settings, though it comes close at times... This is when I ran the demo alone, by itself without anything else running in the background. Also, it happens as random as starting the map and two minutes later, to even after capturing the defense planet, it will sometimes crash the game. I haven't been able to defeat the level since it keeps crashing. It's very strange...

Thank you.

[Alex]

Perhaps the game is running out of memory... I'll have a think.

We actually decompress the entire music track that is currently playing into memory which is a bit harsh as they end up being large, so I'll look into some kind of buffer for that.

Thanks for the report!

[Vanger]

Could not recreate.

Euploria was about ~250 Mb in memory in the end of level 5

[Rudolf]

Vanger does this happen on other levels too? And do you use Vista on your laptop?

[Major Cooke]

Perhaps the game is running out of memory... I'll have a think.

We actually decompress the entire music track that is currently playing into memory which is a bit harsh as they end up being large, so I'll look into some kind of buffer for that.

Thanks for the report!

No problem. That could be a potential problem. It keeps taking up more and more memory as I play so I think that something should be done with the music... Even if the music is set to off.

[Alex]

Does the amount of memory go up and then down, fluctuating fairly rapidly? Rudolf was experiencing a bug where the game increased the memory it used until it got to a large amount and slowed the game down, and then the memory all disappeared and it went back down to 100 or so. Sound familiar?

[Major Cooke]

Hmm, I haven't been able to check it properly. However I just know that the game will often slow to ~10 fps or less on the last level, catch up, go down again, etc. and then die on me with a "Eufloria has encountered an error and needs to close. We're sorry for the inconvenience." So I think that may be it...

Give me a moment to see the detailed log and I'll post it.

-----

Okay... After looking through the game, I noticed that yes the memory is fluxuating like crazy. Not only is it locking up windows, but when it goes "Eufloria demo has stopped working blahblahblah" and you hit "close program", it shows the game is STILL RUNNING in the background, right before Vista closes it! So something is wrong compatability-wise between vista and Eufloria, or something along with the RAM problem.

[Alex]

Nasty business. I may be able to look into it on Rudolf's machine...

[Major Cooke]

Makes me wonder if I should try running in XP compatibility... I've done that a few times with games like Darwinia but I don't know. Hopefully this can get fixed soon, because the game (full) is about to be unlocked in 22 hours. Good luck!

[EcoMaster21]

Um... same thing here. I'm assuming the Demo is just the first few levels of the full thing, right? If so, then I'm totally experiencing the same bug with the beta.

No idea what could have caused it. As soon as I hit okay on the completion message, it crashed.

EDIT: Here's a guess. Perhaps this only works upon first completion of the level? When I re-loaded Eufloria, the level was marked as finished, and I was able to complete the stage without a crash.

[Major Cooke]

I haven't even been able to complete the level at all. Period.

[Major Cooke]

Okay. I managed to play through the entire demo by doing on thing: Hitting the music toggle button. When I did that, the game ran much smoother, didn't crash at all, and with better FPS! So yes, the music is to blame. Even if the volume was at 0%, it would still cause crashes unless you toggle the music off with the actual button.

[EcoMaster21]

Perhaps my assumption that the demo and the beta are the same, is incorrect!

Off to the demo I go!

[Preachieved]

I had a similar problem. I set the process to high priority and told the game to stop playing the music just in case. Have not had the problem since. It was peaking at around 500m memory though

[Alex]

Okay. I managed to play through the entire demo by doing on thing: Hitting the music toggle button. When I did that, the game ran much smoother, didn't crash at all, and with better FPS! So yes, the music is to blame. Even if the volume was at 0%, it would still cause crashes unless you toggle the music off with the actual button.

That's good news - both that you've managed to play through it and also that now I know what's to blame. Thank you!

[Major Cooke]

Two hours until release! GO GO GO!