This error is occuring on the startup of the engine (all Versions 6.40.5 to 7.06): "Not enough memory (50 MB required)!".

This really screws up our distribution. We got over a thousand complaints from customers so far and already raised this issue a couple of months back but got now suffienct answer here on the board.

Our products need 500 MB nexus - WED allows to set the nexus this high, so why does the engine not run on all target machines?

We compiled a list of possible solutions for the FAQ sections of our websites. None of this is helping.




How can such severe bugs occur when rolling out a product? This at least should be documented in the manual!

Would a update to the most recent version solve this problem?

To answer your rhetorical question: No, rolling out a product with such severe bugs is certainly not the brightest idea.

I don't want to criticize your organization, but if I had to distribute a game to thousands of customers, I'd consider testing it before, on several PCs. And when changing an essential setting such as the nexus, better read before what the manual says and recommends about it.

Ok, what can we do now that the damage is done? Your FAQ list is ok at least. But you can't distribute a game with a nexus 500 setting. An update would help, but not much. Using A7 instead of A6 reduces the nexus requirement by maybe 20%, if at all. That's probably not enough to fix your game. Another advantage of A7 is that if the nexus is too small, the memory is automatically allocated from the heap. This does not reduce the overall memory requirement, but prevents "nexus too small" warnings.

The real fix is reducing the textures or whatever it is that fills your 500 MB. Or else, distribute a RAM expansion together with your game.

you should have to save some of them, then, it's the problem of too much space EATEN by your pretty textures and all. you know coding makes em small, has nuthin' to do with thaT!!

You missunderstood me. The problem is not, that the game does not run on PCs that do not have enough RAM or that the requirements are to high. No, that works fine so far. Our Problem is, that even though a PC has 1024 MB or 2048 MB or even more RAM and a sufficient enough swap file, the game does not start but instead throws the Not Enough Memory Error.

Anyway, we managed to reduce Nexus size to 200MB. Will this solve the problem?

Again, please understand: machines on which this error occurs have sufficient RAM, but the error appears despite of that.

Yes, nexus 200 will solve the problem, at least on machines of the standard of the last years, with a default virtual memory setting of about 2000 MB.

When you however think the error message is erroneous, don't blame the engine - it's only the bearer of the bad news. Complain here: bill@microsoft.com. He's written the memory allocation functions and will certainly take your complain serious.