Recommended compression

Goolash_ · Post by **Goolash_** » 22 Jan 2007, 18:57

In the mapconv.exe - what values do you use for compression of the map? i used 0.5 in all my maps until now and i noticed that it causes crashes on machines with low RAM (less than 1GB).
The less i compress it the bigger the file is but it's smaller in the RAM - Right or Wrong?
Meaning: if i compress it by 0.2 it will be bigger than 0.5 compression but will take up less space in the ram, right?

I'd appreciate some feedback.
Goolash.

Forboding Angel · Post by **Forboding Angel** » 23 Jan 2007, 03:17

it's probably not crashing because of your compression rates.

I imagine you are using negative sun values in the smd. Change them all to positive numbers and all will be well.

Goolash_ · Post by **Goolash_** » 23 Jan 2007, 04:14

what?! so simple... does everyone know that except me?

Thanks FA, hope this will save some trouble. But regardless - i recently added 1 gb of ram (total of 2 now) to my comp and ever since then maps never crash pre-start due to the famous zoom-in bug which happend to me a lot before i upgraded...

Forboding Angel · Post by **Forboding Angel** » 23 Jan 2007, 06:47

Well, I have tried my best to educate people.

It took a year of me being right before people would actually listen to me. Regardless, don't use negative numbers in your maps. It kinda sucks, but using neg numbers will almost consistently cause 25% - 50% of people to drop out of the game.

God only knows what causes it, and the dev's don't seem to care all that much (probably due to lack of concrete info).

As you have noticed, having lots of ram all of a sudden makes errors in spring happen much less.

Setting multiple 4 gig page files in windows helps a lot as well.

NOiZE · Post by **NOiZE** » 23 Jan 2007, 22:02

well it doesn't crash on all computers, for example they never crash on mine.

Forboding Angel · Post by **Forboding Angel** » 24 Jan 2007, 02:10

NOiZE wrote:well it doesn't crash on all computers, for example they never crash on mine.

Same here. I have never had a map related crash. As you know, no one seems to know why it happens.

Goolash_ · Post by **Goolash_** » 27 Jan 2007, 13:26

FA, i think you're right about the negative sun values - in my latest map i changed the sun values to positive and it's MUCH more stable than my older maps. Although i still do think it's a function of how much ram you have. I think that if you have low ram and the map has negative sun values then you're in trouble.

mufdvr222 · Post by **mufdvr222** » 28 Jan 2007, 05:24

It would be great if someone managed to nail this bug, negative sun values affect me but there are a fair few people for who it does affect, interestingly I have 2gb of ram.

Spring RTS Engine

Recommended compression

Recommended compression