TTDPatch Error in DOS

[H H Jones]

Greetings,
I have installed the latest version of TTDPatch to run on an Intel
Celeron 500mhz computer with msdos 6.22. I use these (I have 2) to
play two player with my son. We use the original game with no problem
but when I try to use TTDPatch it fails to load stating:

Not enough free memory
Result: [Error!]
Press any key to abort.

The mem command in dos shows 11,357K free total, 648K under the 1MB
and 615K largest executable program.
When running the original game the "about" screen shows memory as
10,828 total and 4976K free.

Any suggestions? I have tried too many options to list here to no
avail. I just wonder if it is the patch or my memory management.

Thanks in advance!

Hunter

[Owen Rudge]

> Greetings,
> I have installed the latest version of TTDPatch to run on an Intel
> Celeron 500mhz computer with msdos 6.22. I use these (I have 2) to
> play two player with my son. We use the original game with no problem
> but when I try to use TTDPatch it fails to load stating:

Do earlier versions of TTDPatch work (eg, 2.0 rev 1)? What if you enable the
"lowmemory" switch
(http://wiki.ttdpatch.net/tiki-index.php?page=LowMemoryVersion)?

--
Owen Rudge
http://www.owenrudge.net/

[H H Jones]

Thanks for the advice!
The lowmemory switch did allow it to run and connect for two player
game.
I know that this switch will limit the use of some features such as
new graphics. Is this due to the limits set by the switch or does it
still use up the resources it can find? I just wonder if it will have
a big effect on performanceof the game.

Hunter

On Sun, 10 Feb 2008 23:58:29 -0000, "Owen Rudge" <nn...@owenrudge.net>
wrote:

[Owen Rudge]

> I know that this switch will limit the use of some features such as
> new graphics. Is this due to the limits set by the switch or does it
> still use up the resources it can find? I just wonder if it will have
> a big effect on performanceof the game.

I'm not sure exactly how lowmemory goes about keeping memory usage down,
although according to the wiki it does this mainly by restricting the
vehicle factor and new graphics. I'm not sure if it'd have much of an effect
on performance, it probably just won't let you use too many custom features.

Regards,

[Marcin Grzegorczyk]

H H Jones wrote:
> Thanks for the advice!
> The lowmemory switch did allow it to run and connect for two player
> game.
> I know that this switch will limit the use of some features such as
> new graphics. Is this due to the limits set by the switch or does it
> still use up the resources it can find? I just wonder if it will have
> a big effect on performanceof the game.

The switch has two effects:

1. It prevents you from loading any game saved with a larger vehicle
array (in other words, the 'morevehicles' switch must be set the same or
higher as it was when the game was saved -- otherwise you get a "Game
load failed" message; normally you would probably get a warning). This
is the primary source of memory savings, since normally TTDPatch
reserves memory for the largest array possible (more than 4 MB).

2. The cache for the ordinary TTD sprites is set to 800 KB instead of
the usual 4 MB. This may mean more frequent disk accesses, which in
turn *may* affect the performance -- but frankly, I doubt you'll notice
it much, unless you have a really slow hard disk.

Note, however, that new graphics are loaded separately, and add to the
memory usage anyway (but on the positive side, they don't require disk
access during the game). Thus, you may get out of memory again if you
add many new graphics sets to newgrf.cfg.

BTW, I've checked the latest sources; the behaviour of the switch hasn't
changed since 2.0.
--
Marcin Grzegorczyk

[H H Jones]

Thanks to all for the help and advice!

Hunter