Just been watching the video and it's impressive looking. 😎

Any plans for a cockpit view?

Just been watching the video and it's impressive looking. 😎

 

Any plans for a cockpit view?

I haven't really looked into it with all the other problems I've had to solve. I haven't touched the camera code in months.

If I do it I'd want to do a detailed cockpit with working displays and stuff, not just a static cockpit with the normal game UI ontop of it. I don't like non-functional cockpits.

Is this game's supposed to be 64 bit only? It seems that every time I try to start a new game it always crashes with Out of Memory error (my PC only have 2 gigs RAM). Never happened on High Albedo though.

Is this game's supposed to be 64 bit only? It seems that every time I try to start a new game it always crashes with Out of Memory error (my PC only have 2 gigs RAM). Never happened on High Albedo though.

What operating system are you running? What version of Java?

I just tested it on a Windows 8 machine and a Linux machine. The Windows 8 machine's Java required at minimum 2.5GB of RAM and started to leak, reaching 9GB before the garbage collector kicked in and it dropped back down to 2.5GB. However, on the Linux machine it started with about 500MB of RAM and capped out at 1GB of RAM and did not increase beyond that. I'm not sure if this is a Windows or Java issue.

I can't do more testing until I get home to my main machine (~8 hours from now) but I'll look into it more then. In case anyone is curious, the development environment is running Fedora Linux with 12GB RAM, AMD Phenom II x6 (3.2GHz 6 cores) and has an NVidia 560 TI graphics card.

Thanks for reporting this, I'll investigate this anomaly and get back to you!

My OS is Win7 x86, Java version 7.0.450.18. From my observation from task manager, I think the crash happened when the java process hits about 800MB -1GB memory usage.

My OS is Win7 x86, Java version 7.0.450.18. From my observation from task manager, I think the crash happened when the java process hits about 800MB -1GB memory usage.

I took a look and there's no getting around that Outlier is going to have a larger memory footprint than High Albedo. On my development machine it wants about 3GB of RAM. The amount requested seems to vary greatly by the system. For Alpha 3 I will look at the memory usage and see where I might be able to trim it down. 2GB isn't a lot to work with these days (really it needs to be more like ~1.5 because other stuff is going to be running too).

I'm going to also closely investigate the garbage collection process for any memory leaks, but that will take time. I think the main problem is that the DDS Skybox textures are 100MB each and there are no graphics settings, I probably need to add graphics options to reduce the texture size (high, medium, low, etc).

However, there are (maybe) some ways around that for the time being 😎

java -Xmx256M -XX:MaxDirectMemorySize=512m -jar "Outlier Open Skies.jar"

That command lets you fine tune the amount of max memory you allocate to the game. It comes in 2 parts

-Xmx256M limits the Java heap to 256MB. The heap is where all the game objects are stored.

-XX:MaxDirectMemorySize=512m limits the direct buffer to 512MB. This is the memory space used by the native libraries (aka much of the game's graphics).

You can try to fine tune these numbers to get it to launch. The command I gave you should use about 1.3-1.5GB of RAM. However, by making the available memory small, you risk random crashes if it happens to run out. If you're going to do this I'd save often. For example, if you set the memory too small you won't be able to load a save once you've started flying around, you'd have to restart the game and load that save from the main menu. Eventually you could reduce the memory allocated so much that it can't even start.

I'd start low and increase the direct memory size as needed until it works. You might need 768MB+ for the direct memory buffer. I think the heap size can stay small, only raise that if it complains about heap space. You might even be able to get it a little smaller.

The reason the amount of RAM used varies so much per system is that the JVM is now using a formula to basically guess the amount of memory it needs to allocate. For example, it gives you by default a maximum of 1/4 * your total RAM as a heap, up to 1GB. It probably has other formulas for guessing other memory pools. I think that's why different systems are performing differently, the JVM running the game on each has different ideas about what to allocate because the machines and operating systems are different.

Sorry I can't get you a better answer right now, I wasn't expecting anyone with less than 4GB of RAM. I'll be working on it and see if it's feasible to reduce it, but it's going to take time for me to get something working. I'll let you know when I have a new build to try if you want.

If you're the hacker type you could download the source code and try reducing texture sizes (repacking textures) or decreasing the number of NPCs / Asteroids that spawn in the universe.

EDIT: I forgot that you could also try the latest Java version and see if it helps with memory utilization.

Finally Alpha 2. Time to sink my teeth into it 😀

Updated for Alpha 3 release.

Unfortunately after looking into it and consulting some other developers I don't think I can get this game running reliably on a system with 2GB of RAM. I am reccomending 4GB of system RAM to comfortably run the game, the game wants just over 2GB of RAM.

The reason the 2D one didn't use as much RAM is because 2D graphics required less memory.

Unfortunately after looking into it and consulting some other developers I don't think I can get this game running reliably on a system with 2GB of RAM. I am reccomending 4GB of system RAM to comfortably run the game, the game wants just over 2GB of RAM.

I wouldn't worry that much about not being able to play on 2GB memory machines. I would make a guess in that 90%+ of all games released today have a minimum requirement of 4GB and that is fading fast to 6-8GB since memory is so cheap and the devs can do more wonderful things with more memory and with PC's making a comeback over consoles as a gaming platform specs for games will probably only get higher as devs push the hardware limits.

Oh and feel free to upload a version of Outlier to the download area, the more people seeing the work the better exposure and feedback you will receive. If you want I can upload a copy as well.

Now on Steam Greenlight (but not yet Greenlit). The goal is to be early access and continue development post Greenlight.

EDIT: I am dedicated to keeping the game open source. I believe it's important to be able to tinker with the inner workings of software you use. If I have to one day choose between open source and commercial success, I will choose open source. But I don't believe these things are mutually exclusive.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=453010738

Now MIT Licensed:  https://github.com/masternerdguy/Open-Skies

Told you, I'm committed to open source!