nUI -- A full feature standalone UI replacement - Page 115

Tehryn · 01-08-09, 05:34 AM

Originally Posted by neuralassassin

its a blizz bug as far as I know the portrait thing

In that case I'll just /sigh and /shrug and continue on regardless

Petrah · 01-08-09, 05:42 AM

Originally Posted by Marthisdil

And dangling a carrot in front of the horse to try and get something you want for yourself with something like this doesn't make him a "poor guy" either.

if the "poor guy" would have read even half the posts in this thread, he would have seen that his comments about changing the basis of some of the design that Scott has said wouldn't change, he would have known better than to ask.

I'll stand by what I said. None of what he said, weather you agreed with it or not, warranted being attacked like that.

spiel2001 · 01-08-09, 05:57 AM

Originally Posted by Tehryn

Lately my portrait, or that of my 'ghoul' (I'm a DK) won't show up in the frames. Actually, at some stage they may show again, no idea why.

Yeah... this appears to be a bug I introduced with the FPS leak fix. I'm working on resolving it. In the meantime, switching unit frame panels and back again seems to resolve it.

spiel2001 · 01-08-09, 06:04 AM

Okay... the thread about the donation thing... I'd like to step in here and ask everyone to let it go, please. It's kind of way off topic and is only going to serve to get people upset.

The simple fact is that nUI has developed a huge user base now and the one thing you can be certain of is that with this many people there will be no avoiding a wide range of tastes, personalities and differences of opinion. In and among the group is everything from hardcore users to blithering idiots in a full spectrum and, just a surely, there's going to be everything from the truly kind and gentle to raging a-holes. It just comes with the territory.

KiwiiDawn · 01-08-09, 08:29 AM

Hello I don't say much in here unless , it a bug thing lol.

But now I have to speak up, and say I love nUI the way it is. Ya there's a few things I would not mine having but it no biggy to me. Plus some of them little things have been add as plug-in's so we all can decide for are self's if we want em.

So far nUI has replaced at lest 7 mods for me, not counting having to configure them all each time there updates. This has save me lots of frustration.

Secondly were all very lucky spiel has add any thing we have asked, it his baby and his desktop ui made to fit his play style.
But he has heard our needs and has had to look and see which one's fit the hole group with out killing the UI.
Take a look at mazzy and how big and bloated it got and when 3.0 came out it blow up! Yes people try and re do it but it still is way to big and you have to download tons of mods, but hey go for it if your wanting 1000 of different option. Just please stop BSing here if it does not fit your wants and full needs, its lame and child like.

I come here to read on how nUI is growing and if there is stuff that need noted on it having to read all your "ooo mommy him will not give me this or that" junk take to much time. I vote ya clean out the thread and start new, but hat up to you.

well had my long say now keep up the great work spiel, and keep your self happy frist.

neuralassassin · 01-08-09, 10:10 AM

hmm sorry thought i remebered someone saying the portrait thing was blizz related..... but i dont see the post anywhere maybe it was on another forum

Alarra · 01-08-09, 10:21 AM

So I see from reading a bit that you all think there is a fps leak somewhere. I see that spiel thinks it is the servers not the ui. My issue is is that it appears nui has a memory leak not a fps problem. ever since the version came out at the last patch I have a real memory leak from nui. If i watch the mb for all my addons, after about 30 minutes in game my nui is at about 17 steady and 30+ added in. so nui is at like 50 mb within 30 minutes. Then I get a wow ctd and it tells me a memory error. So what I am seeing is a memory leak with ctd's not a fps hit. When I get the next one today i will post the message log and see if it really is nui or something else causing it.

And btw, thank you much for the in combat tooltip change. Very much appreciated.

spiel2001 · 01-08-09, 10:24 AM

Alarra -- if you are running nUI v4.10.00 I cannot see its memory usage being much over 9meg unless you are in a raid in which case it may climb to 10-15meg. But even at 50 meg that's a trivial amount of memory by game standards and should have very little impact and certainly should not be throwing errors unless there's something else very wrong in your system.

Originally Posted by Alarra

So I see from reading a bit that you all think there is a fps leak somewhere. I see that spiel thinks it is the servers not the ui. My issue is is that it appears nui has a memory leak not a fps problem. ever since the version came out at the last patch I have a real memory leak from nui. If i watch the mb for all my addons, after about 30 minutes in game my nui is at about 17 steady and 30+ added in. so nui is at like 50 mb within 30 minutes. Then I get a wow ctd and it tells me a memory error. So what I am seeing is a memory leak with ctd's not a fps hit. When I get the next one today i will post the message log and see if it really is nui or something else causing it.

And btw, thank you much for the in combat tooltip change. Very much appreciated.

Morcha · 01-08-09, 11:14 AM

i am having an issue, when you get on a mount that you need to attack with (aka The Oculus dragons) a saddle looking box covers my entire parties information, is there a way to disable this?

havoxx · 01-08-09, 11:25 AM

Originally Posted by spiel2001

Alarra -- if you are running nUI v4.10.00 I cannot see its memory usage being much over 9meg unless you are in a raid in which case it may climb to 10-15meg. But even at 50 meg that's a trivial amount of memory by game standards and should have very little impact and certainly should not be throwing errors unless there's something else very wrong in your system.

I have that memory leak he speaks of, the issue isn't the memory, but it seems when it starts increasing it will start lagging, on another note however, it only does it on my rogue, not sure if that makes a difference.

spiel2001 · 01-08-09, 12:02 PM

Originally Posted by Morcha

i am having an issue, when you get on a mount that you need to attack with (aka The Oculus dragons) a saddle looking box covers my entire parties information, is there a way to disable this?

This has been addressed quite a few times on the thread here.

nUI does not yet fully implement all of the features of the new vehicle frame and, therefore, does not automatically hide the one that's built into Bliz's UI. However, if you do not need those extra features, you can hide the vehicle frame at any time yourself using the slash command '/script VehicleMenuBar:Hide()' providing you are not in combat at the time (you cannot show or hide frames while in combat, Bliz doesn't allow it).

Most nUI users have created a macro to do this and then just put the macro button on the left end of the far bottom left action bar... that way anytime you mount a vehicle that you do not need the vehicle bar frame for, you can immediately hide it by clicking the button.

spiel2001 · 01-08-09, 12:16 PM

Originally Posted by havoxx

I have that memory leak he speaks of, the issue isn't the memory, but it seems when it starts increasing it will start lagging, on another note however, it only does it on my rogue, not sure if that makes a difference.

Is it nUI's memory that's increasing when that happens? Or is it another mod? Are you sure you don't see the same memory increases on other toons, it just doesn't lag? How much memory are we talking about?

I need to state this emphatically so it is crystal clear, the amount of memory a mod uses has *NO* bearing what-so-ever on lag. This is a fallacy that is forever perpetuated by people who don't understand how the mechanics of all this works. Perhaps if your memory usage starts to climb into the many hundreds of megs then it might have some impact on lag when the garbage collector runs, but aside from that, memory size alone does not impact performance... how the memory is being used can.

Petrah · 01-08-09, 01:18 PM

Originally Posted by Alarra

=Then I get a wow ctd and it tells me a memory error.

Not sure what a "ctd" is..... What type of memory error are you getting? Does that error appear in the games Error folder? (The error folder located in the root directory of the game.)

spiel2001 · 01-08-09, 05:09 PM

Okay...

There are quite a few people reporting issues with sudden FPS drops, screen tearing on a regular interval and "memory leaks" -- it's important to note that there are thousands of people reporting this problem on the Bliz boards who are NOT using nUI -- I've spent a good deal of time testing this evening and I've pinned the problem down to the source.

The issue is, quite simply put, the garbage collector in WoW is broken. This seems to have happened within the last patch or two. I'm not sure exactly when.

In any event, I can force the problem to reproduce itself by putting the garbage collector on a regular interval. For testing purposes, I set up an update timer to run the garbage collector twice a second.

The theory here is that by running the collector on short intervals, there should never be much if any garbage to collect which, in turn, would result in an inperceptable delay when the garbage collector fires (since there's so very little "work" to be done when it does).

So much for theory.

What is happening instead is that the garbage collector tears the screen when it fires causing a very noticeable hiccup in the graphics engine on the exact same interval as the garbage collector is running. Furthermore, if you purposely load the system with a lot of garbage, the garbage collector freezes the entire WoW screen when it fires and until it completes the collection process.

The conclusion is, first, if you have any mods installed that run a garbage collector on a regular schedule, you're going to see screen tearing on an interval that matches their collection frequency... if you have more than one mod that runs garbage collection in an update loop, you're going to see screen tearing on a modulated frequency based on their individual timers.

If you do not have any mods that are collecting garbage on an interval and you get into a situation where garbage collection is not occurring due to game load or whatever other reason, you're going to take a HUGE hit in frame rate and may well experience complete game freeze when the garbage collection finally does take place.

The severity of the frame tearing and duration of FPS hits/screen freezes is going to be directly related to the power of your computer, CPU load and how much garbage needs to be collected.

That said, I have *no* clue as to a solution to the problem at this time. I'm playing with it, but I have very low expectations of being able to resolve it. This bug is at the core of WoW's game engine and if you have the bug, I'm afraid you have the bug, period.

If anyone has any ideas or comes across any information, please feel free to pass it along!

KiwiiDawn · 01-08-09, 06:54 PM

Umm is the "garbage collector" a mod or is it part of wow it self? I kinda got lost there.

And what is this garbage anyway?

Tamsiel · 01-08-09, 07:16 PM

The garbage collector is part of WoW; it cleans up the memory used by WoW and addons.

spiel2001 · 01-08-09, 07:18 PM

Originally Posted by KiwiiDawn

Umm is the "garbage collector" a mod or is it part of wow it self? I kinda got lost there.

And what is this garbage anyway?

The garbage collector is part of WoW and the "garbage" is the memory that the WoW UI and your mods have used and discarded because they didn't need it anymore. It's the garbage collector's job to gather up all of the discarded memory blocks that are no longer in use and make them available to the UI or other mods that may need them.

Alarra · 01-09-09, 12:10 AM

Ok, since it seems my post was a bit hard to understand I'll try to do better this time.

I dont seem to have any problem at all solo. I only get the problem when grouped or in a raid. What happens is this.

My memory usage climbs exponentially while the game runs. Its just a matter of time before niu and recount in the nui hit about 50mb. I start using around 65 total when I start WoW. When I crash I'm at about 160. I force garbage collection but it doest help. I usually get the crash when I leave the raid. Doesnt really happen until then. I have the error log but it is so long I dont think I can send it here. I would agree it seems to be a garbage problem. This started around the last little patch and all the mods had to be updated.

I am wondering if its the stat mod for nui that switches between omen and recount? Thats when my problem started really when I updated to that. I will remove that part and see if the problem stops.

Again, I have no issues with NUI at all and I love it, just seemed that whe looking at the garbage and mb increase that nui was were it was coming from.

spiel2001 · 01-09-09, 05:58 AM

Alarra --

Let me start by drawing your attention to this post from last night: http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/s...postcount=2294

Now let me expand on that a bit... in the world of LUA (the language used by WoW for its user interface and mods) there is *NO* such thing as a memory leak. LUA does not use memory allocation and deletion in the classical sense [ such as malloc() and free() or new() and delete() ] -- this is a trend in modern languages I frankly don't care for.

What LUA does is it assumes the programmer is not capable of accurately tracking their memory allocations and, therefore, will always code memory leaks such as you are referring to. So, in LUA when you need a variable or a table, you just declare it and the language takes care of allocating the memory for it and assumes responsibility for deleting it for you when it's no longer needed... and without your knowledge.

Likewise, LUA tracks all of the references to the variable and its scope and when it goes out of scope or no longer has any references it is deemed eligable for garbage collection. However, until the garbage collection takes place, that memory is considered to still be used by the application and unless the application specifically chooses to execute the garbage collector, there is no predicting when it will happen.

So, what you are seeing in nUI when you are in a raid is that there is a lot happening... spells being cast, lots of health and mana updates, (de)buffs coming and going at a furious rate, etc. As a result, nUI is working very hard to track and display it all and that produces trash.

For example, every time there is an (de)buff update for any raid member or target, because of the way WoW's aura engine works, nUI has to build a list of all of the auras on the unit, calculate when they expire, sort the list and update the display... that's a lot of "garbage" being produced for the garbage collector to manage at some point.

Now, if I had control of it, I would be allocating and deleting memory on the fly and you would never see the memory usage climb. But I'm not, so until the garbage collector runs, you see nUI's memory usage increasing in accordance with how much "stuff" it was doing in the interim. As soon as the garbage collector does run, the memory usage will drop down to what nUI is really using sans the trash: typically between 5meg and 20meg tops in a 40 man raid... everything else is garbage I have no control over.

It's not being leaked, it's just not being collected.

Now, it looks like nUI is the problem because nUI is the one that's producing the trash and is almost certainly the most active mod in your interface directory as nUI is monitoring pretty much everything that happens in the game given that it is a complete UI replacement. However, nUI is not the problem, the garbage collector is.

Let me make this perfectly clear, yet again, there are many thousands of people who do not use nUI but are reporting the problem with "memory leaks" and the FPS hits that occur when the memory gets cleaned up. In the meantime, I'm looking for ways I can rework some of nUI's logic to reduce the amount of garbage it produces which will help alleviate the symptoms of this new WoW bug.

Originally Posted by Alarra

Ok, since it seems my post was a bit hard to understand I'll try to do better this time.

I dont seem to have any problem at all solo. I only get the problem when grouped or in a raid. What happens is this.

My memory usage climbs exponentially while the game runs. Its just a matter of time before niu and recount in the nui hit about 50mb. I start using around 65 total when I start WoW. When I crash I'm at about 160. I force garbage collection but it doest help. I usually get the crash when I leave the raid. Doesnt really happen until then. I have the error log but it is so long I dont think I can send it here. I would agree it seems to be a garbage problem. This started around the last little patch and all the mods had to be updated.

I am wondering if its the stat mod for nui that switches between omen and recount? Thats when my problem started really when I updated to that. I will remove that part and see if the problem stops.

Again, I have no issues with NUI at all and I love it, just seemed that whe looking at the garbage and mb increase that nui was were it was coming from.

Gremriel · 01-09-09, 07:41 AM

Thanks for that detailed explanation on the inner workings of WoW and Lua Scott.