theHunter Launcher and so much memory use

[HD_Artworks]

Hi everyone.
Tonight I noticed that theHunter Launcher is using so much memory.


You can see it's using about 350 MB memory. I know the game engine is old and it's not well optimized. But, the launcher is separate from the game engine and it's kind of new.
I played other online games with very complicated launcher and they are using less than 100 MB.

theHunter team are trying their best to keep the game playable on older PCs, but, 350 MB memory using is not so good IMO! The launcher is open all the time while we are hunting and it can cause some memory eating and performance issues.

IMO, EW should recreate the launcher or optimize it. The current launcher is not that complicated. It's just a simple web browser with thehunter.com default webpage! So, it shouldn't use 350 MB memory! Even firefox and other browsers using less memory than the current launcher!

I would like to know what you guys thinking about this.

Regards,
Hossein

[Fletchette]

Hi everyone.
Tonight I noticed that theHunter Launcher is using so much memory.


You can see it's using about 350 MB memory. I know the game engine is old and it's not well optimized. But, the launcher is separate from the game engine and it's kind of new.
I played other online games with very complicated launcher and they are using less than 100 MB.

theHunter team are trying their best to keep the game playable on older PCs, but, 350 MB memory using is not so good IMO! The launcher is open all the time while we are hunting and it can cause some memory eating and performance issues.

IMO, EW should recreate the launcher or optimize it. The current launcher is not that complicated. It's just a simple web browser with thehunter.com default webpage! So, it shouldn't use 350 MB memory! Even firefox and other browsers using less memory than the current launcher!

I would like to know what you guys thinking about this.

Regards,
Hossein

Well, I just checked and for me (Windows 10), Firefox with only one tab open is uses over 1GB of RAM, and the Launcher is only using 137MB. Not sure why we'd be seeing such differences. That said, it really shouldn't matter much since Windows will swap the inactive apps to virtual memory, and each 32-bit app gets it's own isolated memory allocation to run in.

[HD_Artworks]

Thanks for the answer buddy.
Well, I'm using firefox quantum right now and with 3 tabs it using only 360 MB! Yeah, there are so much differences!
I checked the launcher while the game was running and I was hunting. Maybe that cause launcher to use that much of memory.

...each 32-bit app gets it's own isolated memory allocation to run in.

So, you say it really doesn't make any changes? For example, if the launcher using 50 MB, doesn't make the PC and the game work better?

[Fletchette]

Thanks for the answer buddy.
Well, I'm using firefox quantum right now and with 3 tabs it using only 360 MB! Yeah, there are so much differences!
I checked the launcher while the game was running and I was hunting. Maybe that cause launcher to use that much of memory.

...each 32-bit app gets it's own isolated memory allocation to run in.

So, you say it really doesn't make any changes? For example, if the launcher using 50 MB, doesn't make the PC and the game work better?

Yeah, I'm using FireFox Quantum v60.0.1 (64-bit)....I do have a few add-ons running, but I wouldn't think they would make that much difference. Even when I launch a game, the Launcher is still only using about 130MB, in fact it drops a bit to about 114 MB sometimes. Task manager reports that the game itself is using about 1.7GB.

Windows memory management is really complicated, but all applications run in Virtual Memory, which is a combination of real RAM and disk space which the OS treats like RAM. This is why you can have 10-20GB of programs running at the same time, even if you only have 4-8GB of RAM.

Applications don't know whether they are using RAM or disk memory, only that Windows manages it for them. In theory, Windows is constantly swapping applications (or parts of applications), from RAM to disk, and back again in an attempt to keep the active programs in RAM, and less active ones on disk. So if Windows is doing it's job, it shouldn't matter MUCH if the launcher or other programs are using a lot of memory while you're playing a game, because it would be swapping those inactive programs to disk so the active game can use as much of the real RAM as possible.

[HD_Artworks]

So, you say it really doesn't make any changes? For example, if the launcher using 50 MB, doesn't make the PC and the game work better?

Yeah, I'm using FireFox Quantum v60.0.1 (64-bit)....I do have a few add-ons running, but I wouldn't think they would make that much difference. Even when I launch a game, the Launcher is still only using about 130MB, in fact it drops a bit to about 114 MB sometimes. Task manager reports that the game itself is using about 1.7GB.

Windows memory management is really complicated, but all applications run in Virtual Memory, which is a combination of real RAM and disk space which the OS treats like RAM. This is why you can have 10-20GB of programs running at the same time, even if you only have 4-8GB of RAM.

Applications don't know whether they are using RAM or disk memory, only that Windows manages it for them. In theory, Windows is constantly swapping applications (or parts of applications), from RAM to disk, and back again in an attempt to keep the active programs in RAM, and less active ones on disk. So if Windows is doing it's job, it shouldn't matter MUCH if the launcher or other programs are using a lot of memory while you're playing a game, because it would be swapping those inactive programs to disk so the active game can use as much of the real RAM as possible.[/quote]
Thank you so much for the explanation, Fletchette.
I'm using Win 7 64-bit, maybe that's the reason? I'm not so sure though! I can't have win 10 because my PC is not so powerful! Only 4 GB of ram. As you said the game using only about 1.7GB but still I have more FPS drops in win 10!

Anyways, I understand your explanations. And I know how windows memory management is working.
I learned a new thing in less than 1 hour!

Thanks.

[Reggy]

Only 4 GB of ram.

@Hossein,
With only 4Gb of RAM, re-boot often. Memory gets fragmented from Windows swapping apps in & out. Each time it swaps it leaves a 'hook' or place holder which takes a very small amount of RAM that will not show anywhere. When it tries to swap the app back into memory it tries to use that hook and... and it gets really techy. It could be that swapping is why you show so much memory for the launcher, it (RAM) can only be split into x amount of pieces. Example: If you have 8Mb blocks on a drive and save a 1Mb file, it still uses the entire 8Mb block.
(OS looks for contiguous RAM from that 'hook' which is not available so it swaps out something else near that 'hook' leaving another 'hook' trying for contiguous memory and with only 4gig, it's not gonna happen so you get fragmented memory quickly. Microsoft is not known for a "clean release" of RAM. Please understand this is not an exact spot-on explanation (Fletchette explains it well, better then me) but it's a lot more complicated & dynamic then either of us explained here ).

Anyway re-boot before you start a hunt, that may help and you can close the launcher after you have started a hunt without problems in my experience. ymmv
Also you could use a SD card [128Gb - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XX ... PDKIKX0DER], USB memory thingy, anything like that. Those are much faster than a hard drive as they will swap almost at the speed of electricity. Win7 should use that for Virtual Memory first if available. Should being the operative word. You could load theHunter & launcher on to the SD/Micro card and may get better performance. I would suggest trying that as it's worked for me on low RAM machines. I hope this helps.

[HD_Artworks]

Thank you so much Reggy. Really appreciate it.

Also you could use a SD card [128Gb - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XX ... PDKIKX0DER], USB memory thingy, anything like that.

So, you say should I use a SD card or USB memory and use ReadyBoost feature?!

[Reggy]

Thank you so much Reggy. Really appreciate it.

Also you could use a SD card [128Gb - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XX ... PDKIKX0DER], USB memory thingy, anything like that.

So, you say should I use a SD card or USB memory and use ReadyBoost feature?!

Not sure what I was thinking, using a SD card is NOT going to add RAM nor is it going to change the Virtual Memory location Windows uses. I apologize, must have got into the mushrooms again while hunting. (Recently added that SC card to my wife's dual boot tablet, dealing with Windows and Android makes my brain fuzzy )

I made a lot of assumptions which may not be correct. If you are HARDWARE limited to 4Gb of RAM chances are you are running an IDE/E-IDE/PATA HDD was my thought. Using the SD card to install the game to, could be faster loading times, but that depends on your card reader. Think transfer speed, SATA = 3-6Gb/s vs IDE = 133MB/s . If you have a USB 3.0 port (blue instead of white tab in port) then a USB flash drive would be faster but a 2.0 USB probably will not. Fragmented memory will still cause problems, the less memory you have the more problems with swapping apps. The game, while running, will make calls to the HDD so if it's slow so is the game so the flash drive may work. If you use Steam you can change file location easily. Click on properties, local files, change file location. If you don't use Steam you may have to download everything again to the SD/USB drive.

I would suggest you try shutting down and wait 10-30 seconds, then turn the PC on and boot. Let it load everything like normal, load only the apps you need to play the game, Firefox, Steam, whatever it may be. Then load theHunter and close the launcher after the reserve fully loads. Don't open anything after loading the game, including new tabs in Firefox, can still browse and change sites, just no new tabs. I really don't know about ReadyBoost but it may be worth a try. If you were not having problems running the game just close the launcher if it takes too much RAM. Keep your hard drives de-fragmented and re-boot often and shut down at least once a day. Microsoft needs a re-boot after every change, but a soft boot does not always work, so I got into the habit of hard booting (shut down, wait for capacitors to discharge then power back up). This is on servers but does relate to anything Microsoft IMO. Again YMMV
I hope this helps but if you were only asking and not having problems it may not be necessary. If you would like send me your specs or PM me if you'd like and I'll try and help. This seems more hardware related then software so would need to know which CPU, motherboard, chipset, GPU, and stuff. Dxdiag will display most of this info. Sorry for rambling on but I feel I miss-led you and what I stated in the previous post was not correct.

EDIT: Just read about ReadyBoost and yes it sounds like it could help depending on your hard drive. Depends on how much the following applies to you:

ReadyBoost provides the most significant performance improvement under the following circumstances:

The computer has a slow hard disk drive. Computers with a primary hard disk Windows Experience Index (WEI) subscore lower than 4.0 will see the most significant improvements.
The flash storage provides fast, random, non-sequential reads. Sequential read speed is less important.
The flash storage is connected by a fast bus. Typically, USB memory card readers are not sufficiently fast. However, connecting flash memory to an internal memory card reader might provide sufficient performance.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/lib ... 56869.aspx