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LogicalKarma

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Registered: 2024-05-19

Posts: 13

Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

Good day!

Some system information(if more is required, please ask): Arch + KDE + Wayland with an RTX 2080s running on nvidia-beta 560.28.03-1 (I have tried other nvidia drivers, but nvidia 555.58.02-8 has more issues that I could only fix by downgrading or upgrading to beta)

I have been trying to get Castle Crashers(running through proton on steam) to work on my system for a few days now. In windowed mode it has graphical glitches that make the game unrecognizable, so I assumed it has something to do with nvidia. While monitoring my resources, I have noticed that the RAM usage steadily increases until there is none left, then it crashes, freezing KDE at times and requiring a forceful power off. Until then, the game runs fine. RAM usage does not increase unless the game window is active.

Last edited by LogicalKarma (2024-07-24 08:33:14)

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 1,073

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

steam: first step of troubleshooting should always be verifying game files - or in cases verify keeps failing complete uninstall and reinstall
when steam verifies the game files sucessfully try different proton versions - sometimes an older proton version works better with older games than the most recent one
you could also try non-valve builds like proton-ge
then I would try to reach out to the game devs if they got others reporting issues similar to what you experience
only when this ends up nothing I would start to tinker with my system
I own the game, too and although my main gpu is an amd 7700 xt I also have a gtx 1650 on hand - I may give it a try when I'm home and remember to do so

LogicalKarma

Member

Registered: 2024-05-19

Posts: 13

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

Verifying did not help and reaching out to the game devs would take a while. I will try proton-ge later as I have tried almost every proton version available in the steam GUI(older versions actually have another issue that does not allow the game to launch at all). Let me know how running the game goes for you. Thanks!

LogicalKarma

Member

Registered: 2024-05-19

Posts: 13

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

No luck with proton-ge either.

LogicalKarma

Member

Registered: 2024-05-19

Posts: 13

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

Here is an update on what I have tried:

Running in X11 failed to even launch

(On Wayland) While monitoring the logs with PROTON_LOG=1, I have notice they were getting flooded with the following error:
err:   D3D9SwapChainEx: Failed to recreate swap chain: -13
info:  Presenter: Actual swap chain properties:
info:    Format:       VK_FORMAT_B8G8R8A8_UNORM
info:    Color space:  VK_COLOR_SPACE_SRGB_NONLINEAR_KHR
info:    Present mode: VK_PRESENT_MODE_IMMEDIATE_KHR (dynamic: no)
info:    Buffer size:  1280x720
info:    Image count:  3
info:    Exclusive FS: 0

I could get the game to stop consuming my ram until a crash by reducing my monitor's resolution and game's resolution in ~/.local/share/Steam/userdata/292086210/204360/local/settings.ini to 720p, however the graphical glitches came back, making it unplayable.

If anybody wants to dig through the logs, you can find them here here.

Last edited by LogicalKarma (2024-07-24 17:49:03)

xerxes_

Member

Registered: 2018-04-29

Posts: 815

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

UPDATE:

It might be related to this:
https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/n … ers/260304

If yes, then:
- switch to open nvidia drivers?
- switch to AMD card?
- switch to nouveau KMS (+GSP on nvidia 20XX and up)?

Last edited by xerxes_ (2024-07-25 08:27:31)

LogicalKarma

Member

Registered: 2024-05-19

Posts: 13

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

I have been looking into the second option, as for the first, what should I expect from the open nvidia drivers? How much would I be sacrificing? They only started development this year, right?

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 1,073

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

so although I took me some time to get the system up (jeez - I just hate to install nvidia drivers) I wasn't able to confirm your issues neither with X11 nor wayland
on the other hand I got some few lags and slow downs - never happend when I first played the game back with my R9 290x - but the 1650 isn't a good card anyway - bought it as stream-encoding accelerator for my 2nd system - but when using it for playing like gta v or ama3 it just suxx
sorry I'm unable to help here with this one - but I gave it a try

LogicalKarma

Member

Registered: 2024-05-19

Posts: 13

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

Thanks for the try. It should crash somewhere in the beginning of the first mission(as it steadily increases RAM usage). Did you play for at least 5-10 mins? If that does not get it to crash, I will just assume it's an issue with the proprietary drivers that I can not fix without spending my days reverse engineering and modifying the drivers.

(I feel you with the driver install)

LogicalKarma

Member

Registered: 2024-05-19

Posts: 13

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

nvidia-open driver did not fix the issue

Last edited by LogicalKarma (2024-07-24 21:51:58)

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 1,073

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

yes, I payed the first chapter all the way to the first boss - took me quite some time but was fun tho - according to steam the session was at least half an hour
I used nvidia-open on the current 6.10 - haven't tested the regular non-open or beta - but I don't think they will make any difference
one thing I'd like to add: on wayland when running furmark it had some issues - switcging to x11 fixed them - but this had no impact on the game
as for proton I tested tge current experimental and the latest 9.x stable - haven't tested any 8.x or 7.x or proton-ge - but if the issue takes some time to occur and I not got it with current stable of the drivers and proton I doubt changing any will make any difference - as I wasn't able to reproduce the issues you encountered like no game start on X11

LogicalKarma

Member

Registered: 2024-05-19

Posts: 13

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

(while using nvidia-open)
I have just noticed that Castle Crashers uses both of my GPUs? My integrated AMD GPU is at 100% with 175/512 MB VRAM and my dedicated nvidia GPU is at 40% with 1.5/8 GB VRAM. Out of curiosity, I have started BattleBlock Theater and it just throws a popup saying it ran out of memory.

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 1,073

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

I have BattleBlock Theater as well
on my system I had disabled the iGPU - but the bios has settings to both enforce it enabled even if a dGPU is dedected and to set the primary gpu when both are active
the cpu is a A10-7800 apu with an R7 class iGPU - which by itself is just powerful enough as a stream encoder for 1080p60 with about 6mbit/s quality - but I've never tested its gaming performance - but I do know it defaults to the radeon driver and has to be forced to use amdgpu - so it seems to be an R7 200/300 equivalent architecture
although my components not match exactly the overall setup seems at least equivalent to provide some tests

LogicalKarma

Member

Registered: 2024-05-19

Posts: 13

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

I ended up looking through the BIOS and disabled my iGPU. Now the game does not launch. It seems to really like AMD GPUs xD

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 1,073

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

It seems to really like AMD GPUs xD

I would word it this way: It just doesn't like anything else but AMD
but I'll test it anyway - challenge accepted

Last edited by cryptearth (2024-07-25 11:50:02)

LogicalKarma

Member

Registered: 2024-05-19

Posts: 13

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

Thanks a bunch! Let me know how it goes

LogicalKarma

Member

Registered: 2024-05-19

Posts: 13

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

Good news!

It's fixed! I think I was missing lib32-nvidia-utils and I also had amdvlk and lib32-amdvlk installed. Installing the first and removing the latter seems to have fixed it!

For anyone facing similar issues here is what I suspect: either I had the amd vulkan drivers set up incorrectly or they simply do not work with the game. I disabled my integrated graphics and swapped to nvidia open drivers, though I am not sure if these changes were necessary.

Thanks for the comments!

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 1,073

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

Well, ok, I not expected that, although it seems plausible that the missing lib32-nvidia-utils combined with (lib32-)amdvlk installed forced the game to run on the iGPU with the output streamed thru the dGPU.
Also: for amd I recommend installibg (lib32-)vulkan-radeon - which is the open mesa radv driver while amdvlk is the amd driver
Only a few applications require the amd driver and if they do they need the proprietary amdgpu-pro one.
But I'll give it a try anyway when I'm home - maybe I can then reproduce the issues.

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 1,073

Re: Castle Crashers consume all available RAM and dies

So I gave the iGPU a shot after converting from nvidia to amd (which is a story in itself) - and although the iGPU had a bit better performance on x11 than on wayland its performance just suxx - although it's able to run both games smoothly (and without those slowdowns/laggs I had with the nvid card)
then I tried to re-create your setup - but wasn't able to get it working - so I guess the conclusion is as you posted: if possible disable the iGPU and install both 64bit and 32bit
although the iGPU works with the amdgpu driver the amd drivers (both amdvlk and amd-pro) are too new and don't support that old chip anymore
also furmark complaint about radv - but I guess it's just the old gpu no longer really supported - as for the score: it hardly kept up to 10fps