Crash mitigation using Large Address Aware patch - details inside. [resolved]

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DEV: The LAA support is now added on client 390.25 . You will not need to download the tools on this thread to take advantage of Large Address Aware
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If you have a good computer with at least 4GB of system memory (though more would be preferred), preliminary experimentation of the Large Address Aware tool (created by a fellow tech forum member years ago) has shown extremely promising results so far concerning game stability. The longstanding problem with Istaria is that it is capped at 2047MB total allowed process memory, and when it hits this memory limit very easily, the application hangs. Even though Task Manager usually reports a total of around 1400MB +/- 150MB of memory usage for Istaria.exe, this does not include video memory which DirectX 8 and other legacy APIs have to keep a copy of in system memory, significantly handicapping the game's available memory especially with our commonplace high-resolution displays.

The good news is that this 2GB limitation can be circumvented in Windows with the LAA tool. This allows x86 (32-bit) applications, when patched by the tool, to theoretically utilize up to 4095MB of total memory on systems with sufficient RAM (e.g. 6GB or more). What this means for you is that Istaria can continue running properly when it needs more than 2GB of memory, and you shouldn't crash for reasons related to lack of memory.

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The tool is incredibly easy to use, though you'll have to patch Istaria.exe every time a game update is released, unfortunately. Here's what you need to do (make sure your game is not running):

A) Download the LAA tool here (credit to FordGT90Concept at TechPowerUp for the development of this software): http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/at...0_4-zip.34392/

(Direct link broken? Forum post is here: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/th...-aware.112556/ )

B) If you have an x64 version of Windows (you should if you have 4GB or more installed system memory), please continue to step C. If you're running an x86 operating system newer than Windows XP AND HAVE 4GB RAM INSTALLED, open the command prompt with Administrator rights. To do this, go to Programs, Accessories, right-click on Command Prompt and select "Run as Administrator." Enter the following at the prompt and press enter:

bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVA 3072

and close the prompt and restart the computer.

C) Extract the ZIP file and launch the Large Address Aware application. At Step 1, click the three dots button, navigate to Istaria's main directory and select Istaria.exe (should be about 6MB in size). Then, check the box in Step 2 and press the Save button under step 3.

D) You're done! Go ahead and craft your life away, hopefully with less or no crashes! Be sure to repeat Step C every time the game is updated, and that's it. If you have problems, just go in the Troubleshoot menu on Istaria's launcher and do a full scan/patch to restore an unmodified copy of the game executable.

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Leave any comments or questions below, and I would really like to hear your experiences after using the patch (does your game crash a lot less)? Thanks!

P.S. This does work for other x86 (32-bit) games too! Be sure to check here for a list of confirmed supported games: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/at...0_4-zip.34392/

This is a fantastic discovery! I have yet to test this for more than an hour on my machine, but considering that I am running Istaria on a 1440p display, crashes were very commonplace esp in kion and tazoon.

Initial results are promising :) I did employ a similar method with other games (I.e skyrim before the LAA patch), which never seemed to have any problems, so to see that Istaria seems to be working OK with it is encouraging

If anyone needs any further convincing as to why this is necessary, check out the attached screenshot. The game's system memory usage grew to 2.84GB after several hours of heavy gameplay, and did not crash a single time after the LAA modification was made. Without the LAA modification, the game would have immediately crashed when it reached 2.00GB of system memory usage. I am going to submit a ticket to the Istaria developers and see if we can get the LAA capability applied to the game for the benefit of the silent majority of players.

https://i.imgur.com/5DhPpaM.png

I have just received notification that this has been included in the game starting with today's 390.25 binary which is available as the Blight update, so feel free to patch to Blight to take advantage of LAA support, no need to do anything in this thread.