What is a “memory leak” in terms of video games?
In: Technology
Your RAM is constantly storing and over-writing data. When a piece of data is no longer needed, it will free up that space so new data can be over-written. So, for example, a game might load the textures you need for a certain piece of the map, and then when you move on it forgets the part of the map you don’t need anymore.
A memory leak is a flaw in the code that writes new memory but never releases it. So going back to my example, the game is loading the portions of the map you need, but never forgets the parts of the map you don’t need. It keeps storing this data in its “active” memory, expecting to put it to use in the near future.
Eventually, like a leak in a boat, the memory is so full of irrelevant data that it no longer has room to write the new data that you actually do need. So all of your processes slow down until it all just crashes.
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