[S2G/CP1.6/EE2.1/SS,C] Sacred 2, Memory Leaks and Crashes, The Workaround

[Charon117 50]

Build:
Vanilla 2.65.2
Community Patch 1.60
Enhanced Edition 2.1
EE:SuperSpawn
EE:Challenge Mode

or for short [S2G/CP1.6/EE.2.1/SS,C]

 

 

Lets start at the beginning.

I played most of my time on 2.43 before the Ice and Blood expansion. I graduated with a Seraphim, and then took an Inquisitor deathless to Niob. Then a crash rendered my niob campaign unplayable. I decided it was time to upgrade to the Gold Edition and move on to the CP. That was also partially in hopes of a more stable game. I quickly discovered that my current build is x3 times as unstable as .43 was. And so the Odysee began. The Odysee for a stable game.

 

Win 7 x64
Amd FX 4300 Quadcore 4GHz
GTX 970
Sacred 2 Gold on Steam

 

This is a glosar of most googleable solutions:

1. Change your animMem to 0 in the options,txt in your %APPDATA% folder.

if not manager then 
manager = {
    animMem = 0,
    grannyMem = 0,
    pmsMem = 0,
    secMem = 0,
    sptMem = 0,
    texMem = 209715200,

https://steamcommunity.com/app/225640/discussions/0/864956554687300470/?l=russian
 

2. Add -skipopenal -nocpubinding to your launcher
https://steamcommunity.com/app/225640/discussions/0/828935269281676179/
 

3. Change/ Update your driver to X
General advice.
 

4. Force PhysX and AA over the Nvidia graphic card.
 

5. Install Memory Cleaner
https://www.koshyjohn.com/software/memclean/
 

6.Rename/Delete your LaptopGaming_xp.dll and LaptopGaming_vista.dll
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=166938930
 

7. Set your exe to run in XP/Vista Compability mode.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/225640/discussions/0/2765630416821318551/
 

8. Change the .e to the .g (included in CM 1.60 AFAIK)
http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/22409-sacred-2-memory-leak-fix/&do=findComment&comment=6991649
 

9. Lower your ingame graphic settings (sure!not!)
 

Update
10. Trimmed Elite Textures [proper decrease in instability]
http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/23091-trimmed-elite-textures/
The trimmed elite textures take up less data space and thuse effectively reduce the crashes to an immeasureable low.
 

11. I think theres more, anyway ...

 

Most things *maybe* helped, some things made it better some worse. There wasnt a definite "solution" just "how to gain 5 more minutes or gameplay". I think looking through the messed up relationship between Sacred 2 and each individual PC beyond the first 2 steps is a waste of time.
Memory cleaner made my PC laggy and unstable. First it seemed to help, then it didnt, then it made it worse.

In the end I made a completely fresh reinstall of everything, changed the animmem lines to this

if not manager then 
manager = {
    animMem = 0,
    grannyMem = 0,
    pmsMem = 0,
    secMem = 0,
    sptMem = 0,
    texMem = 209715200,

and added -skipopenal -nocpubinding to my launcher. Thats all. And ofcourse listpoint 8 is included in the CP.

 

Now the memory leak issue has been discussed at lenght already, so I won´t go into it. What I want to point out is that the stability of Sacred 2 is heavily depending on the playstyle of the player.

A vanilla, melee Seraphim with   SpeedMax = 1500, and no added mobs will "never" crash your game.
A CP Inquisitor with   SpeedMax = 4500, maining Inexorable Subjugation and a magic staff will crash your game as fast as possible, giving you around 20 minutes of gameplay. Yes, SpeedMax has an influence on the stability, as faster Speed means faster animation, means a more taxed system. But the main point is how much graphical content you produce, with Subjugation doubling and tripling the count ofcourse + all the projectiles flying around from being a ranged main.

Im pointing this to let you know that you might wanna think about it as playstyle vs stability, and find your sweet spot.

 

However, all of this doesnt help you with the lost time every time the game crashes. Which is what I have the solution for.

Simply let a script press your autosave key every 30 seconds. I have a Black Widow Ultimate keyboard and with Synapse I can simulate a F7 press every 30 seconds pretty easily. But you can write a quick script like this one
http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/21231-autohotkey-script-for-a-movement-or-attack-key/
for your Qicksave key very easily as well.

This is it. The ultimate solution. No more lost time, forever. No anxiously thinking when you last saved. Just playing.

 

 

This is

• a glossar of fixes, so people dont have to look them up all seperately
• a workaround for no more lost gameplay time

 

Cheers,
Charon

Edited October 20, 2019 by Charon117

[Flix 5,116]

My top two guesses would be the increased number of spawns (extra models and textures which must be rendered) combined with the player's significantly increased run speed, which means all those creatures and landscape must be rendered much faster in order to keep up.

Though I am surprised that you have so many issues as we appear to have almost the exact same rig.

[Charon117 50]

1 hour ago, Flix said:

My top two guesses would be the increased number of spawns (extra models and textures which must be rendered) combined with the player's significantly increased run speed, which means all those creatures and landscape must be rendered much faster in order to keep up.

Indeed. The faster you kill, the more graphical content, gore, corpses, animations and reanimations must be created.

Im not sure how relevant that is, but my first seraphim with 264% Attack Speed could crush the game reliably by starting in the desert and running into the jungle in 5 minutes max. She was just too fast. She was so fast that the jump animation was 50% faster than SpeedMax=1500 and she still cut 15% of animation time at the end in order to trigger Pelting Strikes earlier, which again had 30% of its animation cut at the end to trigger the next attack earlier. At the second soulstone my game usually gives up trying to keep up with all the deathsounds and death animations. 1 second audio loop crash.

The problem is propably the system as its been worked hard in the last years. Run time is propably 365 x 3 x 9 hours total. Im sure Sacred 2 would run better if I buy a new rig. Than again no other game does that to me. And the workaround is not only for people with frequent or infrequent crashes. In the long run every crash makes you less likely to continue playing Sacred 2. With the game saving every 30 seconds you loose ZERO progress. I also think the game runs better because it empties "Data to save till next save" more frequently. The most important point of this is no more anxiety, and thinking about saving EVER again.

 

I also got a question in the next thread coming up, and would kindly ask you to take a look at it.

[Charon117 50]

My seraphim was so fast that it made the 360 degree Staff Lore Glitch look like a toddler exploit. She was so fast that the camera even had problems keeping up with the char model as she killed everything on screen. Also AggroRange=4000

Im still waiting for the right to edit my posts.

[Charon117 50]

@dimitrius154 @Flix Update

My playstyle reversed to using magic staff CAs mostly, so without Inexorable Subjugation, and so far there hasnt been a single crash.

Right now, I also had a 50 minutes pure Inexorable Subjugation run, where the game would conjure and destroy a ghost every 4 seconds out of a corpse. Went also crashless. And the loot is pretty good. It was in the orc region, where a lot of different models are present. You could visually see that the PC had a lot to do, especially when switching to a new region, like thrusting into the goblin rider domain, but it didnt crash.

The only 2 things I changed in the meantime was installing the dimitrius trimmed textures, and putting the soundlevel for soundeffects and units speech to 0. I dont assume the sound level change made the difference, so it must have been the trimmed textures.

While saving every 30 seconds with a script takes out all the frustration from crashes, @dimitrius154 trimmed textures keep the game from crashing in the first place. My heartfelt thanks to you. You make the game so much more enjoyable.

I will append the trimmed textures as a solution in the OP.

Edited October 20, 2019 by Charon117

[Flix 5,116]

2 minutes ago, Charon117 said:

@dimitrius154 @Flix Update

My playstyle reversed to using magic staff CAs mostly, so without Inexorable Subjugation, and so far there hasnt been a single crash.

Right now, I also had a 50 minutes pure Inexorable Subjugation run, where the game would conjure and destroy a ghost every 4 second out of a corpse. Went also crashless. And the loot is pretty good. It was in the orc region, where a lot of different models are present. You could visually see that the PC had a lot to do, especially when switching to a new region, like thrusting into the goblin rider domain, but it didnt crash.

The only 2 things I changed in the meantime was installing the dimitrius trimmed textures, and putting the soundlevel for soundeffects and units speech to 0. I dont assume the sound level change made the difference, so it must have been the trimmed textures.

While saving every 30 seconds with a script takes out all the frustration from crashes, @dimitrius154 trimmed textures keep the game from crashing in the first place. My heartfelt thanks to you. You make the game so much more enjoyable.

I will append the trimmed textures as a solution in the OP.

Ah, that would be the key difference between our setups then. I found the game nigh-unplayable with the default elite textures.  The trimmed version contains just the diffuse maps with the (gigantic) normal maps removed, so there's really no visible difference but a tremendous boost to performance.