ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I just ran t-engine with the --flush-stdout option in an effort to track down where the huge, system-freezing memory allocations started... And to my surprise the game did not freeze, and runs ridiculously faster. Everything works. Everything is playable. But only if I use --flush-stdout, otherwise it it allocates 3 GB of RAM and triggers the OOM killer.

What's going on here?

Really ? now that's quite interresting ... Thanks!

You're welcome.

Can you try with --no-debug instead ?

I believe I spoke too soon...

On Ubuntu 10.04 (with a 3.2.0 kernel) --flush-stdout works fine. On Slackware 13.37 derived distros, not so much. --flush-stdout prevents the system from crashing completely, but T4 still attempts to allocate ~3GB of memory, server latency goes through the roof, and the game stops rendering anything. Strangely the Intel driver version involved is exactly the same, 2.15.0.

I will try --no-debug as you suggested...

--no-debug does not help at all on the Slackware derivatives. Will try on *buntu.

Okay, I am officially an idiot. --no-debug works fine on *buntu because, like --flush-stdout, it has no effect...

This is some kind of distro bug. Possibly in the kernel, possibly elsewhere, I really have no idea - all I know is that the huge memory allocations happen on Slackware and don't happen on *buntu, even though the Intel driver is the same version.

Maybe *buntu patches something that Slackware doesn't. Again, no idea.

*sigh* Sorry for wasting your time.

At least you can finally play the game. I felt bad that you were having such issues with it. :-/

Unfortunately *buntu's grotesque lack of stability keeps me from using it as a main OS. Maybe I'll upgrade the kernel on Slack and see how that works, dunno.

Anyway I shouldn't be playing T4 too much, it might eat up too much of my time for important things (like eating, sleeping, and learning useful programming stuff). Have to commend DG for creating an interesting and addictive game though. Even if the OpenGL interface leaves something to be desired.

P.S. Is it just me or are worm masses *brutal* in this game?

Lord Estraven wrote:P.S. Is it just me or are worm masses *brutal* in this game?

I think Brittle Clear Oozes are the really bad multipliers. I've had entire maps just get completely clogged with the bastards.

Upgraded the kernel on Slack to Liquorix 3.3.0 -> ToME4 plays fine, albeit a tad sluggish (no duh I have an Intel GPU). This is definitely some kind of kernel bug. Go figure.