asdagfsdgas memory leaks

[BwdYeti]

Okay, biggest problem that's always plagued FE7x (after reducing system load) is memory leaks. Every few months I have to come up with a bunch of debug code to find out why it's happening and fix things, but I never get everything, and have to come up with a more thorough way next time which still doesn't entirely work.
It's much better than it has been, in the past it could pick up 10MB or more per turn (about 3-10 minutes?), now it's less than 1. But it should be zero.
So I want to know how I can deal with it completely. Places to look for problems, ways to check if specific things are flooding the ram (you had 50 Sprites in memory and now you have 500, SPRITES MIGHT NOT BE GETTING DISPOSED), data types that I wouldn't expect to be the culprit, if any objects that aren't disposed still need to be freed from memory, anything.
Also an explanation of RPG::Cache, and if it can ever be part of the problem.

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

The bitmaps do not have a 4th channel. RMXP can read the 4 channels, but it does not use them, *smart ass*. RMXP uses a magic color key for transparent/ translucent colors and a seperate alpha mask for opacity. The bitmap data itself is only 3 channels.

Show me your code for the test you did.

 

[BwdYeti]

No, the bitmap data is 4 channels. I've manipulated them in C, and checked a memory dump of my game when I was bored.

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

Well, enterbrain is dumb then (which I guess we knew) because they don't use (or use properly) the 4th channel.

In any case, the bitmaps definitely are being leaked. Check to make sure you are disposing every bitmap after you are done using it, however, only delete them if you are not going to use that bitmap again, because if you dispose a bitmap and then ask for the same one from the cache, you will have 2 copies, because the first one won't get released right away.

 

[Neo-Bahamut]

Show me your code for the test you did.

It's nearly the same as yours. Something like this:

p 'check RAM'

5000.times {Bitmap.new(100, 100)}

GC.start

p 'check again'

And as I said, yeah, Bitmap probably leaks memory but only some bytes for each instance.

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

Any memory leak is unacceptable. There are situations where you can permanently lose that memory, and you won't get it back when the program exits, it depends on how it's coded in the back end. If he leaks 1 bitmap per frame, that only takes a few minutes before it's leaked a few hundred megabytes.