What i am going to say may disturb some people. I want to make things very clear that i do not want this to de-volve into a "My hardware is better than yours", "My OS is better than yours", "My dick is bigger than yours" pissing contest. Nor do i want it to be a bash session of the Sins developers. GOT IT?! Flames toward the Dev's, and computer "elitist" remarks will not be tolorated.
As you may, or may not already be aware Sins has a very big issue that has existed since its birth. It cant use more than 2 gigs of ram. on ANY system. No matter how powerful it is, Or ANY OS. Regardless if it is 32 bit, or 64 bit. Some peoples milage may vary depending on their system, but the results are usually the same. An out of memory crash dump somewhere when SINS itself uses over 2 gigs of ram. This is not including what your OS, and/or other programs running are using. This is SINS itself. My dumps happen between 2 to 2.5 gigs of SINS ram usage. This is of course on MAX settings, and on two different machines with two different OS's. One a 32 bit, and one a 64 bit. Others have reported similar issues on various hardware, and OS's. Since Diplomacy was released it has become a major problem. Both for the Sins, and the Modding community.
Sins started out as an "indie" game before Stardock helped support Ironclad on this project. Sins has existed since 2006. So naturally Sins was programed in 32 bit. Based on the average hardware, and OS's available in 2006. With a 2 gig memory limit just like any other game at the time. Sins was also designed to run on very low end machines at the time. Which Ironclad did an outstanding job of achieving. When Original Sins was released in 2008 the 2 gig memory limit was not a big issue, because Sins itself at the time (version 1.04 IIRC) rarely if ever went over 2 gigs on max settings. Then came Sins 1.05, and Entrenchment. Some things were changed in the game. The way textures were handled for example. ALL mods had to be re-built from scratch. The SoA 2 0.3E series turned into an abysmal failure due to relentless minidumps, and had to be rebuilt yet again for the 0.4 series. The minidumps happened due to the mod hitting the Sins hard code limits. Which we corrected for the 0.4 series.
Now we have Diplomacy. Now Sins is dumping well enough on its own without the help of any mods at all. The hard code limits have been increased for Meshes, and Textures, but one hard code limit remained the same... The 2 gig memory limit. Which the hard code was put in place just before Entrenchment was released. Original Sins had a 2 gig limit, but there was no hard code. The worst thing that would happen with Original Sins when you went over 2 gigs is the game would slow to a crawl. Now the game just dumps when you go over 2 gigs.
Unlike other games that most of the time load its resources only as needed, Sins loads EVERYTHING into memory at once on startup with maybe the exception of effects, and sounds. This means ALL Meshes, Textures, Entitys, Strings, Maps, Skybox's are all loaded. In developer exe sins will give you an error immedietly if there is an entity, string, mesh, or texture problem. It only gives effect, and sound errors after the game is running. This answers my question that never got answered if Sins loads everything at 1st run, or not. How much ram you use depends on what your effects settings are, How many factions are playing, and how large your maps are. Since Entrenchment, and Diplomacy added much more content than what Original Sins had, Ironclad made the very same mistake we made with the failed 0.3E series, and went over their very own hard code limits. Perhaps without even realizing it. It is also the reason why everyone using mods. Not just SoA 2 are dumping left, and right.
There is no point in putting blame on anyone. It has happened. It is what it is. The question now is.. What can we do about it?
On the SoA 2 Teams end the 0.5 series of the mod is being completely Re-Thought, and Re-Worked yet again. Thank god i didnt get very far into it. The focus will be on reducing the amount of ram the mod itself will use. This will NOT effect the 0.4 series at all. This is only for the 0.5 series, and any future updates from there. What i intend to do is reduce the texture resolutions even more than what they are now, AND reduce the poly counts of models. New poly limits will be set. Structures (of any kind) are not to exceed 5000 tri's, Elite units are not to exceed 3000 tri's, Frigates are not to exceed 2000 tri's (1500 tri's is prime goal). Strike craft not to exceed 700 tris. Texture resolutions will be reduced for elite units from 2048 to 1024. Frigates will not exceed 1024, but prefer 512 if we can get away with it. Structures are not to exceed 2048, but prefer 1024 if possible. Strike craft will not exceed 256. All of this will mean some of the mod ships MUST be re-built, and re-textured to meet these new standards. The Skybox's themselves will be reduced by 1/2. As well as the planet textures. Right now both exceed 4096. Right now the mod as it is uses less ram than Vanila sins does, but it obviously is not enough. More steps must be taken for the mod NOT to exceed the 2 gig limit.
As far as Vanilla Sins itself. I suggest to patch it back to pre- Original Sins v1.04 standard, and remove the hardcode for the 2 gig limit. The game is built on 32 bit. It cant be re-built for 64 bit. It wouldnt be cost effective. Patching it back to pre-Sins 1.04 will remove the dumps, and the worst thing that will happen again is a massive slowdown once you hit the 2 gig mark. We will have to wait for Sins 2 to hope for 64 bit capability.
