UP viewable information on screen limit(Dev tracker ticket?)

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Sokon, Mar 25, 2016.

  1. Sokon Augur

    [IMG][IMG]Top picture, bottom right corner. The limit of information eq will show you on one screen is not sufficient. WIth 3908713046531`7450` megs of ram, this shouldnt be a problem. There must simply just be a number somewhere you guys(or myself in an ini file) need to change.

    Dev tracker ticket incoming shortly? Should I write one up? Is there an adjustment I can make in my ini file to increase ram used or something? Don't want to generate a ticket if it's unecessary, thanks

    If you look closely you will see that I am using the viewport command and that every single UI window is actually over blackspace, and not covering any of the actual viewing screen, except for 1 hotbar.

    This problem is probably only noticeable in a ui setup such as mine. The critical issue? I can't open and look at all my bags at once. After a certain limit, whatever is opened last will not show the icons.

    Detailed instructions on how to set this up - with the example of my ui specifically - are written up here: Red Band Brigade - Drinal.
  2. mackal Augur


    EQ can address up to 2 GB of memory. Trying to access address above 2 GB will cause the game to crash. (This is the cause of EQ randomly crash btw)

    The crash is because windows gives 32-bit applications only an address space 2 GB large by default. LAA 32-bit applications can address the full 4 GB address space. 64-bit applications don't have this issue (and EQ probably will never become a 64-bit application)
  3. Fanra https://everquest.fanra.info

    Report and Track Bugs and Suggestions at the Daybreak Community Issue Tracker
    The Daybreak Community Issue Tracker is a community run site. Do NOT use the same user name or password there that you use for EQ (Daybreak services).

    As for RAM, EverQuest is a 32 bit program and Windows limits them to 2 GB of RAM. There are some tricks that Daybreak has used to extend some things beyond that, but in general the 2 GB limit cannot be exceeded with a 32 bit program.
    ------------------------------------------
    Quoted From Microsoft:

    So I broke this up based on these things into the table below, this is the maximum amount of memory available for the process assuming you have that much RAM and Pagefile space.
    32-bit OS 64-bit OS
    32-bit process 2 GB 4 GB
    32-bit process with /3GB 3 GB N/A
    64-bit process N/A 16 TB
    --------------------------------------------
    Now the issue might not be RAM, but I just wanted to mention that it doesn't matter how much RAM you have beyond a point EQ just can't use it.

    Beyond straight RAM, there are various limits of different types of processes, including Heap memory and other limits.

    In the end, the EQ client is a program that was first developed in 1998. There are all kinds of limits that a brand new client would not face.

    Also, how many EQ users reach that limit that you are showing in the screenshot? Less than 1%? I think EQ should have a brand new client for a great many reasons, but bypassing a limit that less than 1% of the players ever hit is not one of them. I think EQ needs a new client for the many other limits and the poor performance and outdated graphics, not this reason.

    Also, a rewrite of the server software would be great. Alas, I don't think any of that is in the cards.
  4. Sokon Augur

    Doh... You'd think that windows would have a compatibility function for any program lower than 64 bit that would be able to unlock these bottlenecks.

    Coding that doesn't exist yet? Increased hardware has the ability to do things that the software designers couldn't code for when originally designing because those limits didn't exist then.

    I don't see why it oculdn't be done. I'd imagine this is a similar problem in a lot of older software, however eq is software that lives on, while many old programs got new versions enitirely.

    I bet there are similar fixes out there for other software. Not arguing how it exists in it's current state. Wild guess - I bet a couple of the playstation people that worked backwards compatibility for ps3/ps2 to run ps2+ps1/ps1 games also could figure it out. Seems like a mere coding issue to me. You can do anything with code nowadays.
  5. mackal Augur

    They could enable LAA, this would cause windows to allocate a 4 GB address space for the client, but that can cause issues and performance problems for computers with less than 4 GB of RAM.

    They could also try 64-bit compiles, but that can be a lot of work.

    Both of these solutions the developers would have to fully audit the code base and make sure no one used some dark voodoo to save space.
  6. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    It's not a memory issue. It's related to the number of icons you are displaying. There is a hard limit to how many you can display that seems to be approximately 1100.

    I reported this over 2 years ago. They tried to find the cause, but couldn't. It wasn't a big enough deal at the time so they kind of forgot about it.

    It's nice to see others are finally catching up, maybe they will finally put more effort into fixing it.

    If you are just now crossing the limit, you can help by turning off your buff & song windows/spell & melee windows and turning your hotbars to blank pages. Also, make sure your inventory window itself is closed while you are adjusting your inventory. This will free up slots so you can work on your bank.

    Once you have too many slots in total however, nothing will really help anymore. Every bag I have in my bank/inventory is 36+ so at this point it is a guaranteed glitch no matter what. I simply have to close 3-4 of the windows I know I won't use to ensure that I can properly access the ones I want to.
  7. mackal Augur

    I brought up memory because they said they have a lot of memory so they should remove the limit. But the fact that there is a constraint on memory makes the total RAM on their system totally pointless. Modern zones, player models, and cash grab armor really push the client to using it's full address space Windows gives it.
  8. Xanathol Augur

    Umm... no. EQ crashes for many reasons - attempting to access an address outside the addressable range of a 32 bit application because of its growth is probably not very common. Next, large address aware apps cannot address the full range of 4GB virtual address space, as ranges are still reserved - it is closer to ~3GB, hence the '3GB switch'.

    More RAM certainly won't help a 32bit app to go beyond the virtual address space limit, but EQ runs ~1.1GB for me, meaning it still fits comfortably within its space. As someone else noted, this issue is not tied to a memory limitation, but the code itself.
  9. Xanathol Augur

    Windows can't do anything about it because the application's code has no way of knowing about it. 32 bit code means that it assumes an address in memory is limited to 32bit, or 2^32 -1, ie. 4GB. That's the size of the virtual address space itself - it has to be further divided up from there by the OS to reserve address ranges for many purposes (get a copy of Windows Internals or any OS development book for further information).

    If Daybreak wished to, they could build a 64 bit client, but it means reworking a lot of structures, particularly over the wire. Alas, that is not the problem here, so it doesn't matter.
    Iila likes this.
  10. Fanra https://everquest.fanra.info

    Thanks for outlining the problem. Have you added it to the Daybreak Community Issue Tracker?
  11. mackal Augur

    That 3 GB limit doesn't exist when running on 64-bit Windows. Only 32-bit Windows will have the 3 GB limit with LAA. The 3GB switch does nothing when running on 64-bit Windows.

    Most of the crashing I see people complain about are from EQ being a non-LAA 32-bit program. Generally when they get crashing that aren't from it, the devs quickly patch it.
  12. Xanathol Augur

    Was there somewhere that I mentioned 3GB on 64 bit?

    So you've reviewed memory dumps of said number of crashes to reach said conclusion, I presume...
  13. mackal Augur

    That is true, but I was just showing why I was stating 4 GB instead of 3 GB. Just ignoring 32-bit Windows. Unless someone is playing on a really old computer they're gonna be running 64-bit Windows most likely. Even cheap computers now a days are 64-bit.

    I have not. But developers have told others that the "zoning crash" that seems to be the most common crash that people complain about (and doesn't get fixed) is due to how memory stuff works, which I'm sure you can agree is what I stated above. JChan often recommends users to switch their memory model to the least memory used or w/e it's called. I'm sure if you ask them, they can confirm it 100%. The symptoms people often report are also indicate that it's the 2 GB limit form non-LAA programs. (usually people report >1.3GB of memory used when it crashes, which due to memory fragmentation points to them actually getting an address >2GB)
  14. Beimeith Lord of the Game


    It's not currently in the Issue Tracker that I'm aware of, but I've talked to JChan directly about it and she couldn't find what was causing the problem at least as far as the last I heard from her about it.

    I reported it Jan 6, 2014. The last reply I got was Sept 12, 2014 that they still hadn't tracked down the cause yet. No clue if any progress was made since then, but I'm guessing either they stopped looking for a cause, or if they did find it they haven't fixed it for whatever reason. I'm assuming they just stopped looking though.
  15. Iila Augur

    Dude, it's EverQuest. A decent chunk of the players are running low end computer from a decade ago, and won't be able to upgrade because they're on some form of limited fixed income.
    Fanra and Kravitz like this.