Originally posted by LanceHeart
Originally posted by Abemore
run any other game (no, not solitaire), then come back and tell me how much memory that game uses.
Now PLEASE tell me why the heck is this game continually climbing up in RAM usage making it impossible for me to start playing? I got up to 500 MB RAM usage from this darned game and it still was climbing and I couldn\'t play. I got tired of waiting and shut it off since my 2.4 GHZ P4 was at max speed the whole time...
When programming, in order to use system memory, a programmer/coder needs to \"allocate\" memory to a specific purpose, which tags a section of RAM to be specifically used for the purpose the programmer has designated (like a character\'s name, or even the point and line locations for 3D graphics.
Now, when programming, it is important in every language that you are allowed to allocate memory (except Java, but that\'s a different topic) for the programmer to remember to do something called \"de-allocating\" RAM, which is letting the operating system, and the computer in general know that he/she is done with that piece of RAM, making it available to be used for something else. This is of utmost importance, and is usually something as simple as 1 or 2 lines of programming code.
Unfortunatly, while this sounds simple enough, it\'s rather quite easy to miss one or two lines of code when writing a program. Distractions, absent-mindedness, sleep, (alcohol), and probably dozens of other factors battle against all programmers while they are writing, resulting in what most people call \"bugs\". Bugs that are a result of not deallocating memory are most commonly known as \"memory leaks\". The result is quit frequently that the program takes an ever-increasing amount of RAM while it is running, and even after you shut the program down, it could possibly still have left some RAM as unusable (locked out), which the most effective solution to this is to reboot the computer, to \"flush\" the memory usage roster/system in the computer, resetting it and eliminating the problem.
So, to answer your question, i\'d say that it is because the game is in Pre-Alpha. That means it is chalked FULL of bugs, some of which are possibly memory leaks. And don\'t forget, you asked for it.
FYI: programs that I have found have memory leaks that aren\'t fixed when released include: Age of Empires 2, EverQuest (and the first 4 expansions, however they fixed them in patches), Diablo, Diablo II, Warcraft 3, Heroes of Might and Magic 4 (unless they fixed it in the expansion, it still is there from the latest \"main\" game patch), Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows NT-XP (not as bad), to name a few. It\'s a common enough bug, some are worse than others, but an ever-increasing number of programs are released without getting memory leaks cleaned up.
