posted 03-27-99 09:13 AM ET        

voodoo,

You're a God! I downloaded that utility (MemTurbo), and let me tell you one example of the improvement:

I also have 128MB of RAM (running on a 450Mhz Micron machine). I figured that no matter how bad a given program or Windows itself is, that would be enough room to play for hours without a slow down. Not true.

For example, somewhere after 30-45 minutes or so, the objects in the workshop would spin (you know, the 3d preview ones) at a jerky rate of about 1/2 their usual speed.

After using the Ctrl-Alt-M hotkey to defrag the memory, the spinning went right back to normal! Now, MemTurbo itself describes this problem as the fault of the program, not Windows. It says that programs like SMAC are "behaving badly" by not cleaning up their own garbage left in the memory. As others have guessed, it does seem that SMAC is "leaking memory."

Who knows. Maybe MemTurbo is an Activision-funded program designed to make SMAC look bad. Maybe. But I do have eyes and most of my brain.

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit proof(?) that SMAC deserves some criticism for its programming. Without a third party shareware utility to defrag the memory--which SMAC should be doing on its own--I would continue to suffer these quite annoying problems (which were replicated throughout almost all aspects of the game, not just the workshop, until I rebooted the system). I would also continue to hear from innumerable SMACophants that the problem was somehow mine and not SMAC's.

I can't wait to hear from them how the problem still IS mine, but that will come soon enough, I'm sure. ("Well duh, dude, that's what you get for buying a new machine!"--whatever.)

Perhaps this is only a problem on high-end machines, since most of you don't seem to encounter this.

Firaxis: Could you please check into it? This might be an issue of greater importance to the future of this game as 128Mb RAM becomes the norm. And if you do find a memory leak on higher-end machines for some reason, please give all the credit to voodoo.

posted 03-27-99 10:41 AM ET            

http://www.memturbo.com/productinfo.htm

posted 03-27-99 12:43 PM ET            

My $.02...
I also have MemTurbo, and have found it sooooo helpful for other games in the past that I paid the fee.

I also have problems with SMAC slowing down, locking up, etc., after which my mouse refuses to move more than say one inch/minute across the screen (even after SMAC has been C+A+D'd out of).

MemTurbo does NOT solve this problem for me and I have to reboot. Often I will have to reload the -5 year to -10 year autosave and replay several turns to get past the turn that is locking up.

I have a k6-2 300 with 64mb of ram (I think I said I had a p2 300 at some point on this board by mistake, but was a mistake that I didn't bother to repost and correct until now, I haven't paid for the premium pentium since I had an old p66), so player2 is in this case not correct. I also have a Hercules Stingray 128/3D for display and a SB AWE 32 for sound, in case this helps anyone figure out the problem.

I enjoy the game enough to 'play through' these problems, but they do get frustrating.