yah I got a pc that is SEVEN years old, is running XP, and is on a gpu from at LEAST 2005. Buy a new pc.

Every 5 years you need to upgrade pc parts.

A huge loading time is caused by a slow/busy hard drive. It is especially notable on low power laptop drives.

The game "hogs" no more memory than any other 3D game I play. Just because a program uses a lot of memory does not mean it's wasting it.

Over the course of the entire Preview Event the game never ran in browser. The web browser is more a tool to kickstart the initial download and installation tasks, For those liking a custom install path the stand alone app as been always available.

(Though there were three other Previews that I cannot comment on since I wasn't involved)

Other 3D games stop heating up the laptop when minimized. This one doesn't. It keeps on using up all the memory even when it runs in the background.

I know this because we had issues with the RAM overheating in World of Warcraft-- downloaded a temperature sensor app to keep track of it and minimized the game periodically before the RAM hits 140 Farenheit. Less memory was used while minimized, and the heat had a chance to dissipate.

Spiral Knights, though, doesn't calm down when minimized. We get frequent overheating problems with this.

We also get overheat problems just using a stinking Java-based Oekaki (multi-user paint-chat).

Or Java-based 2D games, even simple ones like Breakout.

Or anything Java-based.

Java hogs RAM. It may be putting it to good use, but there's no denying that it uses a lot.

(Flash also overheats it quickly but that's not the point.)

I think I found it. It sounds pretty effective. I'll give it a try when I get home. Thanks.

(And, yes, I do hear that Java and Flash are... difficult... from a programming perspective...)

junky585, why don't you post some specs about your computer (like manufacturer or model)? While the problem might be old hardware, it could also be that you have too many other things running in the background. You might (stress: MIGHT) also have something like malware running on your computer that could be eating up all of your resources.
This game is fairly lightweight as far as modern games go, so the problem is likely something on your end. If you like, I can link some good resources for cleaning up your computer a bit.

Yah I'm pretty sure that is it, just set up as a task to run every 15 min or 10 min and you should be fine. Just be wary those security programs love to block things lol.

my game cilent wont even open up! i've had it for 2 weeks and it worked fine untill this morning!

This is the only game I've ever played on my laptop that consistently causes it to overheat. When starting up again, I see a BIOS message that the computer overheated and was hibernated to avoid further damage. When playing spiral knights, I prop up the front about 1/2" and the back by 2" which allows more airflow and avoids overheating. At first I tried just doing the back about 1" and that wasn't sufficient.

I feel sorry for developers stuck in Java, but there isn't a good alternative if you want to have one downloadable client work on Windows, Mac and Linux. The only good alternative is purely browser-based games. Maybe in another 10 years the standard browser will be at the point that a game like Spiral Knights can be based purely in the browser.

Laptops have... heat venting issues. Differs between machines, of course. But if the DIMM hit 69C, my laptop would already have gone into "OH GOD STOP DROP AND ROLL" mode where everything goes at... 0.3 to 0.5 frames per second (i.e. one frame every 2-3 seconds, or often much worse). The components of a laptop are simply much closer together than in a desktop, meaning they can also heat each other up by proximity. This machine's about 5-7 years old-- good enough to run most things, but it's not exactly cutting edge technology.

By the way, CleanMem greatly reduced load times for the laptop in question. Didn't prevent overheating at all, but it's a pretty useful improvement. Thanks again!