#5 Huge memory partion needed to avoid strangge error message

[Jens-Olaf Hemprich]

Starting a game without increasing its memory partition
causes the error message
"The application [app] could not be opened because
3DfxGlideLib2.x could not be found" to appear.

The reason of this (misleading) message ist that the
library cannot be loaded because there isn't enough
memory available.

If the memory partions is just big enough to load the
library, but to small to allocate additional memory, there
might also be other problems, like silently quitting
applications or crashes.

To workaround the problem, the user can increase the
application's memory partion manually.

However, because of the misleading nature of the error
message and to increase the user experience/usability,
it would be far better to decrease the static memory
footprint of the library.

Todo:
Add dynamic memory allocation
Don't use application initial memory partions
Add error handling if necessary

[Loren Petrich]

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Would it be reasonable to try to allocate memory from the System Heap?

[Jens-Olaf Hemprich]

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Hi Loren,

using NewPtrSys works out good. So far I've centralised the
buffer allocations (some of them were previously allocated
statically).

There is some more coding to do on object memory
allocation. There are a lot of new and delete statements in
the texture handling code.

Do you know how memory is allocated in other shared libs like
the OpenGL libraries. Is it possible to do a SetZone
(SystemZone()) to change the default heap of another
library?

[Jens-Olaf Hemprich]

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Hi,

the Classic OpenGL driver ( which actually seems to be a
proxy to the MacOS X driver) doesn't consume any applcation
memory. As a result you can now leave the memory settings
as they are if you play in classic.

In MacOS 9 however, an additional memory of 50000K seems
to be appropriate. With not enough memory, the game might
quit unexpectedly, but the system displays a nice "OpenGL
Low Memory"-message.