I've got my game down to using around 16 to 20 MB of video memory. At least, that's what shows up when I hit F11 or display the d3d_tex variables. However, it's using 330MB of system memory!

I think (hope) that a large part of the problem is that my .ogg music files are ballooning back up to their full file size for some reason, but is there a clear summary of what will suck up system RAM? Has anyone found some great pointers on how to limit the amount of system RAM necessary? It seems as though it's decompressing and loading every single asset or level the game's ever going to use into RAM--and then tripling it . Is that right?

OK. If I remove about 13 minutes of music files completely from the game, it knocks it WAY down to around 170MBs. Why does the game load EVERY sound file I'm ever going to play into RAM? Is there a different way to access these files so that they're not preloaded into RAM? (Some of them aren't even being played anywhere yet--why's it loading them, and how do I make it stop?)

Also, if I watch the system resources, it's pushing my RAM up about 170MBs, but for Acknex.exe it's only showing 132MBs. What's using up those extra 40MBs?

I'm really trying to get this thing down to 128MBs because I think my target market will need 128MB for XP and won't (typically) have more than 256MBs total. Any advice?

Maybe a solution is to download an independant musicplayer

So maybe an independent music player would be a lot more efficient with the music files? Any recommendations? How hard is that to integrate with 3DGS?

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It seems as though it's decompressing and loading every single asset or level the game's ever going to use into RAM--and then tripling it .

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i find this interestin as i heard this before aboyt gamestudio mem blout so bad it not good for anything other then small games

i did some tests on games tonight to check mem on them
heres a small list

tribes vengence beta 32 players online huge world - 173 meg sys ram
changed to smalled values on smaller maps as it should - mem managment
ut2004 32 player game huge map - 240 megs
changed to smalled values on smaller maps as it should - mem managment
painkiller single play varied from diffrent map size 150 - 300 meg

now these are massiv AAA games and they dont use as much ram as GS does
i dont know how large your game is but i think it probably not as big as any i listed

i went and spoke to some guys tonight in GG chat that had there previous project half done in GS then switched it and memory management was 1 of there reason exact same thing you have happen
it was not just music they had issue with was alot more thing including music
the game was showin near half gig in size when ran because gs was loadin every asset in mem that had been define in script

since gs does not give user any access to manage such thing as memory i think your stuck
by trying to shield all users from such thing as mem mangment they hurt more advance user that want to make larger game

there reasons
1)performance
2)render quality
3)memory management/ lack of source to fix it

now mabey these guys not know what they talkin about but they sure sound like they did
and since you got no answers around here i thought i look into it abit myself

heres example from the beta.txt

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- Structs can be allocated and initialized with default values the same
easy way as with the old C-Script language, without using malloc() or
mfree(). Example:

MATERIAL* my_mtl = {
alpha = 50;
emissive_blue = 128;
emissive_green = 128;
emissive_red = 128;
flags = ENABLE_RENDER + ENABLE_VIEW;
}

This allocates a MATERIAL struct and initializes it with the given
values. It also defines a global MATERIAL* pointer named my_mtl, and
sets it the the address of the struct. The struct is automatically
deallocated upon exiting the program.

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read this carful malloc() and mfree() are c function to dynamicaly alocate memory and free it in c language but it sound like user wont have access to this notice how mem can be alocated but not deallocated until exiting the program this == bad memory management and bad design i think
user should be able to free mem when it not needed anymore not load every asset from an entire game all at once this method games like UT would take 2 gigs sys ram lol

conitec should really clear this up because it would show why so many teams leave there product for other engines when trying to make a real sized game

wish i could help more
good luck

I allready saw one before, I only don't know where but I'll try to find out 4U
Cant make any promisses!

Hi,
Are u using snd_play command????? because i have the same problem that you and i discover that the snd_play command when you use it, it´s allocated to memory ...doesn´t matter it´s playing or not. The better you can do is use media_play (don´t have this problem) but media play you can not put the sound in the resource.

My game when i start begins with 170 in memory and when i finished it´s have more than 500 mb of ram. If you discover a way to take of the memory say because i want to now.

Tks

I guess that you have basicaly two choices:

A) either you want / need to have your sounds packed in the resource file or B) you don't

if it's A) I don't think there's anything you can do about the memory that it consumes after it's unpacked

if it's B) you can simply leave the sound files in your game's root folder or else and play them directly from there ( then you must not declare them inside <> but inside "" instead ). This way they shouldn't take up any memory at all until they're being played.I have not tested it but i guess it should work.

what have you set the nexus size to?

I set a nexus of 100 for my current project and it runs fine. It says that acknex.exe is using about 150mb and thats a very large project but it does not use any .ogg sound files

In theory that should help to reduce the amount of memory thats being used but im not 100% sure of it

Those are all very helpful comments. Thanks! It seems like we're all fumbling for answers in this area quite a bit, so I linked this thread to a post in Ask Conitec. Hopefully they'll come in and clarify some of these mysteries for us

Here's the link. By the way, I couldn't find any Audio Engines on the net for less than $1K or so--let alone one that integrates easily with 3DGS.