Sudden Crash To Desktop

[Laerrus]

Hello, I am about to release my standalone title; and have encountered an issue. When I do my test playthrough, about 20 minutes in GZDOOM quits to the desktop with no error message, but does produce a crash log. I think the issue is my old video card is simply running out of VRAM to deal with everything, but I would like confirmation, or clarification on this. Is there anyway to unload textures between levels? Crash report is included. I have no idea how to read it. I also understand I am using the last version of GZDOOM not the most recent; this is because the new lighting system changed my entire game's look, and I don't really have time to rebuild all the lighting in time for release. So for now I am locking it in at 4.10 or whatever it is there.

Thanks in advance. Also thanks for keeping the GZDoom engine going.

[Laerrus]

It looks like it was trilinear filtering or the 8x aniostropic filtering. Turning it down to linear and 2x fixed the problem.

[yum13241]

That means it is in fact, yet-another-not-enough-VRAM-issue.

[Laerrus]

yum13241 wrote:
> That means it is in fact, yet-another-not-enough-VRAM-issue.
Yeah aboslutely. I got a 1 gig GDDR3 ATI card. That's why I was wondering if there was a way to flush the texture memory, I can't find anything via google about it.

[Rachael]

Currently GZDoom has no way to evict unused textures from VRAM or even system RAM for that matter. That's one of the long-term to-do's that just hasn't been addressed yet.

[wildweasel]

In the meantime, the best things I can suggest to mitigate the problem under such restrictions:
- Disable all anti-aliasing/multisampling.
- If there is any post-processing enabled, turn that off.
- Don't use the texture upscalers.
- Try to limit the use of high resolution textures and sprites in your assets (as a last resort).

[Laerrus]

wildweasel wrote:
> In the meantime, the best things I can suggest to mitigate the problem
> under such restrictions:
> - Disable all anti-aliasing/multisampling.
> - If there is any post-processing enabled, turn that off.
> - Don't use the texture upscalers.
> - Try to limit the use of high resolution textures and sprites in your
> assets (as a last resort).

Okay thanks; I reduced the settings for texture filtering and that cleared up the issue; and set that as my game's default configuration to ensure max out of the box compatibility. I intentionally use old hardware to make sure my game can run on older stuff. I am considering reducing texture sizes, but it's an art gallery exploring game. Many of the textures are scaled down however, so it might not make too much visual impact to reduce the actual file resolutions. Most are 1024px wide sort of thing, maxing out around 2048. And there are hundreds of them lol

[wildweasel]

Most are 1024px wide sort of thing, maxing out around 2048. And there are hundreds of them lol

That's the kind of thing that GZDoom can possibly choke on, with your kind of hardware config. It does not have any kind of smart texture management, so once a texture is loaded, it is effectively loaded "forever" and doesn't leave VRAM once it's no longer visible or in the map. With "hundreds" of such images decompressed and in memory, that's going to add up very quickly.

[Laerrus]

Most are 1024px wide sort of thing, maxing out around 2048. And there are hundreds of them lol

That's the kind of thing that GZDoom can possibly choke on, with your kind of hardware config. It does not have any kind of smart texture management, so once a texture is loaded, it is effectively loaded "forever" and doesn't leave VRAM once it's no longer visible or in the map. With "hundreds" of such images decompressed and in memory, that's going to add up very quickly.

Okay, with that in mind I might put in the effort to reduce some texture sizes a bit more, since there will be more future content added. I am going to have to figure out a way to make sure it can all be loaded then on an older card. Thanks for your help it is greatly appreciated.