Exactly the kind of glitch I was reproducing when fiddling with the Far clipping
plane value. I think a few other values having to do with the replacement
thresholds for the low/high poly terrain meshes have to be tweaked also but
couldnt find a proper balance for higher/lower values…

It does that some times even with the Default ini settings AND with DOF on.
But it is momentary (if you take a step forward the missing part of the terrain
is loaded). Perhaps moving the Clipping plane even closer might solve this in
your case ?

Hum, I did what you suggested and the problem went away. The weird thing is, I can't reproduce it now when turning the clipping plane settings back to where they were. Now I don't get the glitch at any settings (Low, Medium, High). Nice frame rate, though, so I'm not complaining. Go figure.

I may have made the SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage tweak after trying this, though, so it's conceivable that there's a relation there.

I just wish I could figure out what's causing the freezing. If I could get rid of that, I would be a happy panda.

Yeah, there seems to be some inconcistency with the ini settings in general.
i.e I had shaders 3 set in the menu and the ini had 2_0 saved…
I dont think we can be 100% sure which values are actually working and when.
I still get the glitch in preciselly one spot (havent see all that much of the
world though) and have set the absolutely necessary (Hell it Must be a
bug) SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage fix too…

Do you have an X2 perhaps ? I think I heard there were some issue there.
Other than that and assuming that all your drivers are up to snuff my mind
goest to a mem leak (there were already suspisions placing the root of the
save bug there)

P.S Heh, Friend of mine just reminded me That in several early videos they
demonstrated "Full" HDR it seems that one is a goner too eh ? Oh well I am
pretty pleased as it is now… I would just like the Balancing + AI to be fixed so
I can start playing… Wouldnt mind to get AA working though…

Yup, I have an X2. I did install the latest CPU driver and video optimizer (before them the game froze, like, every 30 seconds.)

I am starting to suspect it's something like a memory leak as well. It seems to happen most commonly just when finishing a battle.

Noticed a new video glitch, though -- when moving the camera up, I get a white flashing screen. I'll play with the clipping settings a bit to see if I can get that to go away…

No, everybody gets that white flashing from time to time
even with the original settings in the INI. It is a side effect (bug) from
turning off all the post-processing like depth of field.

It doesn't happen often but when it does it is annoying.

That one is a known issue I think. Do you have postprocessing completely off
or on Glow only ? try moving it to Glow if you have it off or to Glow and DOF
if just on glow… Also What is your Gfx Card ? HiddenX has that issue Covered
above for ATI cards If I recall correctly (Disable Catalyst AI and do not Force
settings from the Driver ?)… But I think The postprocessing switch will work…

P.S Oups Elkston Beat me to it :)

Thanks, I actually managed to figure that out myself. Good to know it's not just me. Also nice that Glow doesn't appear to affect frame rate noticeably. I've got the game running quite nicely now, other than that freezing thing. (May be coincidence, but I managed to play for nearly an hour straight without freezes, after switching on Glow.)

this tweak worked wonders for me, dense areas around Montera don't lag me out anymore after this single tweak

@JonNik
I have tried it

@Melvil
the "tweak"

ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=1000000

is more an error correction - PB simply missed the last "0" in the default ge3.ini

I'm aware of that :lol:

but I also "tweaked" my image cache and installed a mod ini file for image quality perks

What mod ini file?

someone on the Jowood boards posted a fully modified g3.ini file that included all the stuff in this thread plus some other modifications to draw distance, cache size etc. It was just a combination of all the stuff people have been doing independantly. Made my performance a tad worse though, so keep in mind the trade off as always.

Anyone know of a way to turn off Speedtree completly for testing purposes?

Thanks.

Edit

Has anyone tried setting Gothic3.exe to Higher Piority yet?
I know how to do it in the Task Manager for Services but an exe is a little more complicated and I can't remember how to atm.

Also is there a way to turn off Music, not because I don't like it but for testing.

One thing I have tried with a little success is preventing the Lockup/Freezes in dialogue, at least I think atm, is if I do a full 360 to make sure the surrounding area is loaded in to memory before I talk to an NPC so far has worked.
It seems that in dialogue there was/is a problem with Lockup?Freeze when the camera started panning in dialogue.

Edit
Is there anyway to turn off the Dump file in the Save folder as it is 5x larger than Save files @ about 10 meg, plus you get one every crash and they default the Save folder to WinXP Admin folder which cause totally unnecessary fragmentation on your Proccessing Partition if you use Multiplule Partitions.
I do have my Swap file on a different drive but still that is just bad judgment, most people have there Swap file, Admin and Window directories on the same Partitiion which is not good planning or design by ms, well imo. ;)
So add to the list is there a way to change the Save Folder location also. :)

Some new ge2.ini tweaks for 2GB systems
(as always: make a backup for this file, before you change something)

;optimize memory usage (all systems):
;use these cache settings (25% more):

Cache.SizeImage=160000000
Cache.SizeMaterial=80000000
Cache.SizeMesh=87500000
Cache.SizeSound=100000000
Cache.SizeCollisionMesh=50000000
Cache.SizeAnimation=50000000
Cache.SizeSpeedTree=12500000


; the maximum settings for 2GB Systems (ResourceCache on Medium)
; settings tweaked towards high

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Medium=96000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=60000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Medium=20000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Medium=21000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=1 7000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Medium=35000 000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Medium=80000 0

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_TextureQualityHi gh=0

EDIT: optimized
Play on Resource Cache and Texture Detail <Medium>

These settings minimize the "smartheap-out of memory error",
the performance should be better than on un-tweaked <medium> settings.

Isn't this going to cause some heavy performance problems on smaller systems? At least the .ini says it will.

@Sem
I have tested it with 2GB only - but over at WoG some guys say it works with 1GB, too.

my current Settings (ge3.ini):

Cache.SizeImage=160000000
Cache.SizeMaterial=60000000
Cache.SizeMesh=90000000
Cache.SizeSound=100000000
Cache.SizeCollisionMesh=50000000
Cache.SizeAnimation=50000000
Cache.SizeSpeedTree=12000000

ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=1000000 ; old value 100000
Render.GlobalVisualLoDFactor=1.00 ; ol value 0.01

Gothic-Detail-Settings - Savegame-folder (UserOptions.ini):

[Options.Details]
Performance=Custom
[Options.Custom]
DistanceHigh=3
DistanceLow=3
ResourceCache=3
ObjectDetails=3
ShaderQuality=2_0
TextureQuality=2
TextureFilter=1
VegetationQuality=1
ShadowQuality=0
PostProcessing=0

this settings are working with my older system
AMD XP 2600 / 2GB Ram / ATI x850 PRO AGP / Catalyst 6.9

- > good performance and graphic quality

for ATI-User only:
catalyst A.I. off
Anti-Aliasing - Application managed / off
Anisotropic filtering - Application managed
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing - off
Mipmap Detail Level - performance
geometry instacing - actvated
support DXT Texture formats - on

I can verifiy it was a huge help to my medium system, thanks HiddenX. :)
I was worried about increases to those sizes, but was shocked when it was huge help.
I had even decided to give up graphic quality, trying Shad 1.4 and all graphic settings to low to increase stablity and prevent crashes.
It was quite ugly, worst part is if you set everthing to low it looks worst than G2. :(
Now I have medium quality and its smooth as it has been. ;)

The only thing I can suggest is if you intend to free a city I would highly suggest turning down both the Distance draws one notch for the huge fights with the active AI.

You seem to know alot about ATI, is there a fix for the flicking and garbbled charaters on the Console yet?
I have lost some NPCs and would like to use the goto feature.

One other thing HiddenX your links to your Swapfile Optimizations were very helpful, though I noticed if I read correctly they were orgianlly talking about older Win OSs do they apply equally to XP, at least for the most part?
More specificly I am refering to total Swapfile size, thanks. :)

I see that there are a lot of tweaks here, but it seems that none of them have stopped these out of memory crashes, at least for me. These crashes occur every 5-20 minutes, which leads to my question:
Which of these tweaks help reduce the number of crashes and in which combination should I use them?
System:
Athlon 2600+
2x 512 MB RAM
Geforce 6600GT with latest forceware

Thanks in advance…

@Aposthrophe

I have 2GB so I can only tell you, what other gamers have said:

Play on resource cache and textures on medium.
Optional for speed you can use these settings:

;optimize memory usage (all systems):
Cache.SizeImage=160000000
Cache.SizeMaterial=60000000
Cache.SizeMesh=90000000
Cache.SizeSound=100000000
Cache.SizeCollisionMesh=50000000
Cache.SizeAnimation=50000000
Cache.SizeSpeedTree=12000000

; the maximum settings for 1GB Systems
ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Medium=96000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=40000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Medium=20000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Medium=21000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=1 7000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Medium=35000 000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Medium=75000 0

Use Shirons Tool to bypass the "smartheap - out of memory"-bug completely.
This tools is a Gothic Starter and it reserves some memory (choose 100 MB).
When the error occurs, you can change to the desktop, release the 100 MB
and the push the retry button on the smartheap requester. Gothic can finish the save game process.
Then close gothic and start again.

Description (german)
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum…7&#post2507867

short:
Unpack "G3Starter.exe" and "memTool.dll" in your Gothic 3 folder and make desktop link to "G3Starter.exe" then start it.

Download:
http://rapidshare.com/files/32446515/Shiron.zip

PS:
make sure that no unnessary processes are running on your computer - the msconfig.exe - tool can help.

Speed up your NTFS-drive:

http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/…TFS_Hacks.html


Not verified:

Running in a window should help with memory problems:
ge3.ini:
Fullscreen=false