MISERY Memory Leak Thread - MISERY mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

I love the Misery mod to death. I've been playing it ever since I first found out about it through a friend. But there is one thing that frustrates me beyond anything else...

THE MEMORY LEAK!!!

I have 16 GB of RAM, clocked at 1866 MHz and it's dual channel DDR3 RAM. I have a beast of a computer that I built, with a Intel i7 4770K clocked at turbo at 4 GHz. This paired with my Nvidia GTX 770. I run every other game on the market fine on Ultra. This game is no exception. However, after about 30 minutes in-game, my game progressively gets worse and worse FPS until it gets to about 25 fps at the 30 minute mark. I did not experience this with the default game, or with any other mods I installed other than MISERY.

My only question is this: Will this memory leak ever be fixed? Will the code ever be cleaned up?

I've never experienced any memory leak. Your system is not as crazy as mine, but you should have zero problems running maxed out indefinitely. Since you built your own, I'm sure you have adequate cooling. I also never had any problems with my Nvidia cards; I was just playing on an older system with my GTX 660. Maybe you have some driver that is leaking, if memory leak is the issue. I've used AMD and Intel CPU's and AMD/Nvidia GPU's. I run Windows 7 X64 Pro, what OS are you using?

I noticed this too. It seems performance erodes slowly the more you're playing uninterrupted. Then I quit and restart the game and its fine again. I even had some crashes after playing for long times nonstop, where the log said not enough memory (I've got 16 GB here).

Edited by: lessavini

The team used to leave the game running full out at 900+ switch distance overnight to test for stability. I think someone said the record was 20 hours. If there was a memory leak it would probably have been noticed. Eventually some freak logic loop will cause too high a demand on resources as 3 cats chase a couple bloodsuckers in circles forever and when you exceed the amount of memory the engine can use it crashes.

If not a memory leak, then there has to be some stability issues that haven't been fixed thus far. I'm running Windows 8 X64 Pro, with my system specs that I posted above. My problem is this: I'll start the game, load a chapter, and begin to play. For the first 10 minutes, I have about a 150 fps average. As I play on, the fps gets worse and worse. Eventually, the fps gets to a 30 crawl. Never gone below 30 as I just restart the game and load my chapter. When I restart the game and load a chapter, the fps is restored to its speeds that it was last time I restarted the game and loaded the chapter. Loading a chapter in-game does not restore the fps. Both my friend and I have experienced this on both of our computers. He has an Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU like me. My specs are pretty high compared to his. Nevertheless, we both get this same problem. It kills me, because this mod is the best mod I have ever played, ever seen, and it makes me sad to see performance issues like this hinder such a masterpiece

First I would use a frame limiter at no more than your monitors specs. 2nd The game runs perfectly on Windows 7, so I would try a windows 7 compatibility mode if there is one. I don't think there is a Windows 8 Thread, you might want to start one. Maybe someone else with your OS has already figured it out. I'm years away from spending a dime on anything with windows 8 on it. Hey, did you play the original vanilla game on your windows 8 build without problems? The mod increases the load, and puts more demand on hardware, but except for heat buildup, and my fans never run above 20%, there are no real differences. I would bet it's OS related. Maybe a driver not really ready for Windows 8.

Edited by: jasper34

jasper34 wrote: First I would use a frame limiter at no more than your monitors specs. 2nd The game runs perfectly on Windows 7, so I would try a windows 7 compatibility mode if there is one. I don't think there is a Windows 8 Thread, you might want to start one. Maybe someone else with your OS has already figured it out. I'm years away from spending a dime on anything with windows 8 on it. Hey, did you play the original vanilla game on your windows 8 build without problems? The mod increases the load, and puts more demand on hardware, but except for heat buildup, and my fans never run above 20%, there are no real differences. I would bet it's OS related. Maybe a driver not really ready for Windows 8.

You may be right. I hated Windows 8 from the start anyways, and have been having many issues with other games on it. I'll try Windows 7 compatibility mode and see if that fixes the issue. It would make sense if it were the issue, I just never thought that it could be the issue. I'll let you know if it works.

Even with windows 7, sometimes installing the base game as well as any mods as administrator makes a world of difference. I never used Vista or Millenium either. Microsoft lays as many eggs as they hit home runs ... Please post your results and what you tried for others to benefit from. You can always ad a separate partition or hard drive and run windows 7 for as little as $79... You don't overclock you "K" series processor? Even if you never have before, a decent motherboard will allow you to bump the multiplier and get at least .3 to .5 more Ghz without even touching any voltage settings. I assume you have your internal GPU disabled so you can usually get a lot more out of CPU without even breaking the rated TDW. I just clocked a lesser 2-core APU to 4.6GHZ with only a tiny voltage increase. Since COP only uses one core, higher core CPU speed makes a world of difference in performance. GPU's aren't worth overclocking because the manufacturers already tweak them as high as they are stable. K series are meant to be bumped up.

I did a quick search on Windows 8 and people are having trouble with it and this game. Search the forum using Windows 8 under posts and you will see. The guy switched back to 7 ... Maybe you will figure out how to make it work.

Edited by: jasper34

I tried compatibility mode, and I never got to play long enough to get a clear result. In Windows 7 compatibility mode, pressing escape and pausing the game or going to the pause menu, freezes the game for a good 30 seconds, until the menu finally comes up. When it does come up, everything is normal, and un-pausing is immediate and without delay. The loading screens are longer than they were before I turned on Windows 7 compatibility mode. Attempting to run the game fullscreen without DX11 enhanced lighting enabled freezes the game permanently until ending it in task manager. Other than that, I cannot confirm nor deny the progressive fps loss issue as of now, due to the bugs I have listed above. Any fixes?

The game does do that pregnant pause on some systems. I always thought it was something to do with hard drive speed. I've run on SSD's and SSD's and RAM drive for 5-6 builds now. Will the game run not in full screen? There are a few things I would try. Backup your old user.ltx from the _appdata_ directory. If there is one in the main Call of Pripyat directory delete it. Delete the tmp.ltx from your _appdata_ directory. See if it will load stable enough to manage the configuration menu. If it will, select all the options you want to run. I suggest the highest preset, apply. Go back to advanced video options and select HBAO and low level and reduce anything else to what you used before. Apply again and exit. Verify there is no user.ltx in main directory. Delete the tmp.ltx in _appdata_ directory. Copy user.ltx into same directory and rename the second copy tmp. You need to do this for each set of video options you attempt in order to be sure they are actually being applied properly. If it won't load stable, you can edit user.ltx manually in notepad or better yet notepad++ (free). If you want to just try the default basic low quality settings, delete user and tmp.ltx from _appdata_ directory. This will cause the default settings to be applied and new user.ltx created. That will be static lighting. Static lighting will load much faster. Again if you can now access the configuration menu follow the procedures above to find a stable running batch of video settings. You could also try deleting all those files and XP compatibility mode. You may have to try loading and task manager closing out of the game more than once with each option. That's the xray engine breaking our balls. It happens maybe 20% of the time I start it. Also, if it does it more than 2x in a row, I go into steam and right click on game in libray. Click on properties, the local files tab and verify integrity of game cache button. Sometimes when it crashes it corrupts a few files. I know I had that pregnant pause problem before and fixed it but I can't remember what I did. I know it involved deleting user.ltx. A shortcut would be asking someone on the main comments screen if the are successfully running on a GTX 770 with or without Windows 8 get a copy of their user.ltx for a startup point that's known to work with that GPU. The full screen setting is near the bottom of user.ltx you can try toggling it by turning it on/off. I would still use a frame limiter unless you are using a monitor that is displaying your FPS on screen. The main menus can run 7500 FPS and overload your power supply, GPU, etc. If it's displaying 60 FPS in main menus you're ok. If you do the steam verify thing, it will create a bogus copy of user.ltx in your main COP directory which will cause problems if you don't delete it :-(

Edited by: jasper34

I have actually had the 7500 fps problem on the main screen and pause screens, but ended up fixing that by enabling Vsync in the Nvidia control panel with a custom graphics profile for S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call Of Pripyat. You misread my last reply a bit. The game starts for me just fine on Windows 7 compatibility mode. Changing settings isn't a problem on Windows 7 compatibility mode either. I just did a fresh install of the game, installed MISERY V2.1.1 again, and ran it and started to do all the settings again. I max all of them out. But I noticed that if you enable DX11 and set the highest resolution and apply them, before you restart the game, it freezes and needs to be shut down in task manager. But setting max resolution, restarting, then setting DX11 works fine. Anyways, that is besides the point. I maxed all the graphics settings (including in advanced settings) and ran the game after a restart to apply said settings. Now, without Windows 7 compatibility mode on, the game starts loading immediately after pressing "enter the zone" on any of the profiles (Recon, Sniper, or Assaulter). On Windows 7 compatibility mode, pressing "enter the zone" inhibits a 30 second freeze until the loading screen even comes up, similarly to pressing the escape key in-game to go to the pause menu, and getting the 30 second freeze as well. Same goes for loading a chapter. So, for some reason, on Windows 7 compatibility mode, going to the pause menu, loading a chapter (loading a game), or entering the zone (starting a game), all inhibit roughly a 30 second freeze. It isn't always 30 seconds. It varies. Nevertheless, without Windows 7 compatibility mode on, none of that happens. I've even tried to run it on Windows 7 compatibility mode, and had it start as administrator, with the same results. Very confusing, I must say

Still haven't been able to conclude if Windows 7 compatibility mode fixes the progressive fps loss issue, as all of these other bugs I listed above are worse than that is (in my opinion) and therefore, until there is a fix for those, isn't really worth going through the bugs and hassle to find out. I'm sure there is some sort of simple fix though. I'm going to try to delete the user.itx and stuff you mentioned to see if it yields different results.

I just went through testing out my old GTX 660 and it works fine in windows 7. Deleting user.ltx is key to applying any video changes. I also discovered it is verifying the game cache that creates bogus user.ltx in the main directory. So if you ever need to do it, look for that file and delete it as it causes major problems.

What about the freezes i've been experiencing from loading and starting games? Even after running in compatability, and deleting user.itx, and following your directions, I still have a 30 second freeze when pausing, starting, or loading the game.

I get that you are having long pauses while it does those. Can you play it? If Playing it in windows 7 compatibility mode doesn't fix your shrinking FPS problem those are not worth figuring out.

Got it. Thx.