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Author Topic:   Gigantic maps......

Singularity posted 05-02-99 08:01 PM ET
I just played a game that was on a map waaaayyyyyyy over the recommended maximum size and it went fine. Why do they say 256x256? I had to crank it up to about 290x290 before I had even the slightest problem. How big have you gone?
jaghar posted 05-04-99 05:35 PM ET
Gone up to 250x250 before but I tend to find by the time the fighting really breaks out I'm so far ahead it's just not a challenge so never bothered to go for higher.
Nell_Smith posted 05-04-99 08:27 PM ET
Huh? I once tried setting the map to 256x256 and the game took 3 entire minutes just to initialise the map, then was so infuriatingly jerky and slow that I abandoned it after 10 turns. Is there some secret to this, or are you guys just incredibly patient? I have a P2 450 128Mb so I don't think system resources are the problem.
Any advice? I'd love to play on enormous maps but can't bear the amazingly long waits for the CPU to resolve each and every action.
Cheers,
Nell
trippin daily posted 05-04-99 09:02 PM ET
Nell, download the shareware version <snicker> of a memory manger that optimizes memory (can't remember the name of it though). Your memory may be cluttered up with windows garbage.
Trippin Daily
- -
MoSe posted 05-05-99 07:59 AM ET
There was such a topic few weeks ago.
That topic originator (Can't recall who he was) stated hed played with something short of 340x340 (more than 115,000 tiles anyway, that I do remember, I did the math then).
He had no crashes but the game become really slow.
I went up to 160x250 (40,000 tiles), and the game started freezing again during AI turns (the 3.0 patch eased it, but only shove the limit up).
I experienced some page faults, but that shows starting from 80x125 (10,000 tiles, CivII limit).
Trippin, it was MemTurbo. Unfortunately the shareware writes something into the register, so after evaluation time even if you regularly uninstall it, you can't use it anymore.
MariOne
trippin daily posted 05-05-99 08:03 AM ET
MoSe, there is also a program called regedit. You can hack your registry to get windows to do all kinds of neat tricks. Like not working properly, oh wait, it does that already. Notice the <snicker> after the shareware part, I wasn't recommending the shareware product.
Trippin Daily
-Disclaimer: I do in no way endorse pirating of anykind, unless of course, it involves ****ty microsoft products, people shouldn't pay to have there toilets empty into there operating system-
Nell_Smith posted 05-05-99 08:39 AM ET
Yeah, I have MemTurbo... a fully registered copy too, after I found out that not even Regedit can sort out the shareware expiry... actually you could get rid of it if you were brave enough: it writes data into system.dat and user.dat, and I *think* you'd probably get away with just deleting the text strings out of there, but hey, I've got a lovely clean install of Windows and I don't want to *invite* trouble!!
Nell... dodgy amateur registry hacker
trippin daily posted 05-05-99 08:47 AM ET
Nell, I'm ashmed of you. There is NO such thing as a clean version of windows. It just stinks. Oh come on, there is nothing more fun than hacking your registry without backing it up, and having it crash... and come to realize you have no boot disk on hand. I've done it several times... oh the things you think of to get a computer going then.
Trippin Daily
trippin daily posted 05-05-99 08:48 AM ET
Oh yeah, Nell, user.dat and system.dat are part of the registry.... The registry is a compilation of 5 files I think... its best not to **** with one and not look over the others.
Trippin ephant
MoSe posted 05-05-99 09:11 AM ET
Actually, I fell asleep into RegEdt32, the NT 4.0 version of regedit.
I could figure out a few things, whitout the endorsement of a manual or resource kit from the company.
But if they encrypt the data, well, I have to play SMAC too from time to time. I could be Omniscient, but not almighty .
If you have the time to figure out erehw the MemTurbo protection gets written in the registry, the tell me please .
I tried with a cute util that paints red the modified entries, but no use...
MariOne
-gettin paid for what he is not able to do (and he's not making a big effort neither)
LackOfKnack posted 05-05-99 05:51 PM ET
Right now I'm on a 256x256 and smokin', and it only took about 4 seconds to initialize. I have a Dell with the same specs as yours, Nell.
Lack
Darkstar posted 05-05-99 06:12 PM ET
I ran a 400x400 map without any serious problems. It would occasionally take a couple of minutes to figure out what the AI was up to every once in a while (about every 5 to 10 turns) but aside from that, it played as fast as ever. It DID take forever to BUILD the random map though... (I was able to make a sandwitch and eat about half of it before it was done making the map. Reminded me of my Civ days...)
-Darkstar
Darkstar posted 05-05-99 06:13 PM ET
Sorry for the double post, but I forgot to list my system stats - I have a Pentium II 400 with 128 Meg Ram and about 4 Gig free on the HD. Running Win98 as my game machine OS.
-Darkstar
White Tiger posted 05-05-99 07:46 PM ET
I just finished a 128*256 sized map and didnt have any problems. Game ran smoothly. (Well, actually there was a slow down until I updated windows 98's DX61update and then defraged my swap drive. Then everything was smooth again until the very end. Maxium wait time on the AI was about 20 sec. I have celeron 333 with 64mb pc100 sdram. I did play on a map with 70-90% water. I will play again with mostly land to see if things slow down (if I last that long.)
Nell_Smith posted 05-05-99 07:59 PM ET
MoSe:
It's easy enough to find and delete the Registry keys using regedit/regedt32, but the problem is that doing this still leaves the MemTurbo strings in user.dat and system.dat, which is pretty cunning of them I suppose... I removed all the Reg keys (searched on MemTurbo, Silicon Prairie and also SPS, which I think is the name of the root key that MemTurbo creates)... rebooted... and MemTurbo entries were still present in user.dat and system.dat, which I guess is how MemTurbo knows it's already been installed when you try to reinstall it. It must add an encrypted key into the Registry somewhere. I searched my entire C: drive for the text string "MemTurbo" and those were the only two files that came up, so I'm assuming that these are the only places where the program hides references to itself. Load these two files into Word or whatever and you can find the text strings... the problem is what to do about them!
Trip:
Uh huh... but I'll tell ya, once you've done that to the super-trendy laptop belonging to the Chairman of the company that employs you, you learn pretty fast never to do it again!!! lolol.. fortunately he was susceptible to the old "techno-waffle" routine, so I told him that his mail database had crashed and had wiped his hard drive... and the great thing was that he believed me!
Everyone who can play on large maps when I can't:
Well I don't care coz I *like* playing on 20x20 maps so there... hehe... no but seriously, it's interesting to hear that it took a while for the computer to draw the map, but that it played OK after that... I'll try again and have a little more patience this time
Cheers,
Nell
jig posted 05-06-99 04:34 AM ET
If you're desperate, you could clean reinstall windows everytime MemTurbo expires...
Lloyd posted 05-06-99 05:57 AM ET
I've found Ghost Pro and a really big hard drive are nice for ill-advised reg hacking/installation of crappy software. A brutish solution, but very effective. I think MS should have bundled Ghost with IE 4.0--to be fair.
Lloyd
trippin daily posted 05-06-99 08:33 AM ET
Nell, it leaving strings in the user.dat and system.dat mean it left other keys in some other part of the registry.
Trippin Daily
-Realizing he knows way to much about a crappy product-
CatsAt8 posted 05-06-99 09:41 AM ET
Big maps ? I am currently playing on a 250x300 map with no bog downs.I am curious about the map size limitation.I know there is one,I just havent checked.
But I have found that the game as a whole suffers if I try to set it for 32-bit color.
My vid card can easilky handle the graphics of 32-bit.(ATI Rage Fury 32Mb) but the game itself doesnt like the 32 bit.
Damn the PB's and full steam ahead.
CatsAt8
CatsAt8 posted 05-06-99 09:43 AM ET
ps. easily...LOL...glad I dont speak as poorly as I type
CatsAt8
Zoetrope posted 05-06-99 10:33 AM ET
It's my suspicion that the amount of free hard drive space has a major influence on the performance of SMAC.
The only time version 3.0 crashed on me was when I was running significantly below the recommended 100 MB free.
With a little over 100 MB unused, the game is much slower on the huge land map I tried, though still playable if I'm patient. I must admit I haven't finished that game yet: in fact, I've only met one other faction.
Unfortunately, my ms-windows partition isn't large enough to make the free space much more than 100 MB, otherwise I'd try out huge maps when 1 GB is free, to see whether it speeds them up greatly or not.
Jake Swindler posted 05-06-99 11:43 AM ET
Hmmm, there seems to be a lot of negitive feelings toward crash prone windows. Let me tell you my solution. Get a Mac and run Virtual PC for SMAC. You would be amazed to find out that SMAC runs as well on my Mac (G3 350) as it does on my friends PII 300. We both have 128 megs of ram but I only have 64 allocated to windows.
If you are just plain sick of it there are other options.
CatsAt8 posted 05-06-99 01:00 PM ET
Crashes ?? I have found that what few crashes I have had were mainly due to the graphics settings...as for mem and HD space/settings...hasnt entered into it.
Had I gone with a Mac years ago then I may have one now...but became a PCer (via Trash 80) and have never invested in Mac....but I know they are good machines and am NOT one of those PCers that trash Macs.
Each machine has its strengths and weaknesses....I did have an Apple II..LOL...
CatsAt8
Rong posted 05-06-99 02:36 PM ET
http://worldnation.virtualave.net/cgi-bin/fosi.cgi?mt10
(The usual disclaimers.)
LackOfKnack posted 05-06-99 05:11 PM ET
I tried to put 500x500 but it scales it down to 256x256.
I edited the aplha.txt file and changed Huge Map to 300x300, and I can render one in about 25 seconds. I tried 320x320 and it played music for 5 minutes then crashed.
Anybody get higher than 300x300?
Also, I can't see how you need 100 mb for one map, or maybe I am not getting the context. If you have a 300x300 with a 32 bit variable for the improvements, it's under 3 mb. I have 9 gb+ free but it still crashes.
Hmm...
Lack
MoSe posted 05-10-99 10:39 AM ET
Lack, did you COUNT the tiles?
MoSe posted 05-10-99 01:16 PM ET
Ther's some inconsistency in the game's enormous maps warning.
You get it when you set a big Custom Size, telling you the beyond 256x256 the game could hang.
Actually , no matter how big you set the custom size, it always gets clipped to 256x256! You can count the tiles! I did!
The custom size preferences are not stored in alpha.txt, they are recorded in AlphaCentauri.ini. And even if you edit there "Custom map X/Y", thay get clipped as well when you start a game.
You can also tell it by checking the savefile dimension, 256x256 gives a 2961Kb file at the start.
The way to play a bigger map is only the one Lack himself pointed out:
you have to edit a predefined Planet size alpha.txt.
This works, and you can tell it by counting the tiles (!) and by the savefile dimension: for 300x300 is slightly above 4 Mb
The fun thing is you get the warning via Custom size, where you can't get beyond 256x256, and you don't get it when you edit alpha.txt!
MariOne
Urban Ranger posted 05-10-99 11:38 PM ET
Nell,
The registry IS system.dat and user.dat. Anything screwing around with Windoze has to be there. Just remeber to back up the two files before you start regedit.
Also, I use Quarterdesk's QEMM/MagnaRAM on my computer. That's why it seems to run SMAC pretty fast with a lowly Cyrix?
Urban Ranger posted 05-10-99 11:42 PM ET
Lloyd,
Ghost is up to version 5 now and a Symantec product.
What you can do with it is to make an image copy to a CD-ROM. Then you won't lose any hard disk space and won't worry about losing your image.
wrigley99 posted 05-11-99 12:21 PM ET
Popel have been talking about TurboMem, a shareware product that won't let you reinstall it. There is a freeware memory optimiser called RamBooster, available in its 3.1 version at:
www.scifi.fi/~borg/rambooster/index.html
I have been using the 3.0 version for about a month and it works very well indeed. Nonags.com gave it a 6 rubber duckies rating (best), and other online places have rated it as highly as it deserves. Get it, and send the writer a postcard!
Krushala posted 09-06-99 08:37 PM ET
never tried over 200 by 200 myself
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Author	Topic: Gigantic maps......
Singularity	posted 05-02-99 08:01 PM ET I just played a game that was on a map waaaayyyyyyy over the recommended maximum size and it went fine. Why do they say 256x256? I had to crank it up to about 290x290 before I had even the slightest problem. How big have you gone?
jaghar	posted 05-04-99 05:35 PM ET Gone up to 250x250 before but I tend to find by the time the fighting really breaks out I'm so far ahead it's just not a challenge so never bothered to go for higher.
Nell_Smith	posted 05-04-99 08:27 PM ET Huh? I once tried setting the map to 256x256 and the game took 3 entire minutes just to initialise the map, then was so infuriatingly jerky and slow that I abandoned it after 10 turns. Is there some secret to this, or are you guys just incredibly patient? I have a P2 450 128Mb so I don't think system resources are the problem. Any advice? I'd love to play on enormous maps but can't bear the amazingly long waits for the CPU to resolve each and every action. Cheers, Nell
trippin daily	posted 05-04-99 09:02 PM ET Nell, download the shareware version <snicker> of a memory manger that optimizes memory (can't remember the name of it though). Your memory may be cluttered up with windows garbage. Trippin Daily - -
MoSe	posted 05-05-99 07:59 AM ET There was such a topic few weeks ago. That topic originator (Can't recall who he was) stated hed played with something short of 340x340 (more than 115,000 tiles anyway, that I do remember, I did the math then). He had no crashes but the game become really slow. I went up to 160x250 (40,000 tiles), and the game started freezing again during AI turns (the 3.0 patch eased it, but only shove the limit up). I experienced some page faults, but that shows starting from 80x125 (10,000 tiles, CivII limit). Trippin, it was MemTurbo. Unfortunately the shareware writes something into the register, so after evaluation time even if you regularly uninstall it, you can't use it anymore. MariOne
trippin daily	posted 05-05-99 08:03 AM ET MoSe, there is also a program called regedit. You can hack your registry to get windows to do all kinds of neat tricks. Like not working properly, oh wait, it does that already. Notice the <snicker> after the shareware part, I wasn't recommending the shareware product. Trippin Daily -Disclaimer: I do in no way endorse pirating of anykind, unless of course, it involves ****ty microsoft products, people shouldn't pay to have there toilets empty into there operating system-
Nell_Smith	posted 05-05-99 08:39 AM ET Yeah, I have MemTurbo... a fully registered copy too, after I found out that not even Regedit can sort out the shareware expiry... actually you could get rid of it if you were brave enough: it writes data into system.dat and user.dat, and I think you'd probably get away with just deleting the text strings out of there, but hey, I've got a lovely clean install of Windows and I don't want to invite trouble!! Nell... dodgy amateur registry hacker
trippin daily	posted 05-05-99 08:47 AM ET Nell, I'm ashmed of you. There is NO such thing as a clean version of windows. It just stinks. Oh come on, there is nothing more fun than hacking your registry without backing it up, and having it crash... and come to realize you have no boot disk on hand. I've done it several times... oh the things you think of to get a computer going then. Trippin Daily
trippin daily	posted 05-05-99 08:48 AM ET Oh yeah, Nell, user.dat and system.dat are part of the registry.... The registry is a compilation of 5 files I think... its best not to **** with one and not look over the others. Trippin ephant
MoSe	posted 05-05-99 09:11 AM ET Actually, I fell asleep into RegEdt32, the NT 4.0 version of regedit. I could figure out a few things, whitout the endorsement of a manual or resource kit from the company. But if they encrypt the data, well, I have to play SMAC too from time to time. I could be Omniscient, but not almighty . If you have the time to figure out erehw the MemTurbo protection gets written in the registry, the tell me please . I tried with a cute util that paints red the modified entries, but no use... MariOne -gettin paid for what he is not able to do (and he's not making a big effort neither)
LackOfKnack	posted 05-05-99 05:51 PM ET Right now I'm on a 256x256 and smokin', and it only took about 4 seconds to initialize. I have a Dell with the same specs as yours, Nell. Lack
Darkstar	posted 05-05-99 06:12 PM ET I ran a 400x400 map without any serious problems. It would occasionally take a couple of minutes to figure out what the AI was up to every once in a while (about every 5 to 10 turns) but aside from that, it played as fast as ever. It DID take forever to BUILD the random map though... (I was able to make a sandwitch and eat about half of it before it was done making the map. Reminded me of my Civ days...) -Darkstar
Darkstar	posted 05-05-99 06:13 PM ET Sorry for the double post, but I forgot to list my system stats - I have a Pentium II 400 with 128 Meg Ram and about 4 Gig free on the HD. Running Win98 as my game machine OS. -Darkstar
White Tiger	posted 05-05-99 07:46 PM ET I just finished a 128*256 sized map and didnt have any problems. Game ran smoothly. (Well, actually there was a slow down until I updated windows 98's DX61update and then defraged my swap drive. Then everything was smooth again until the very end. Maxium wait time on the AI was about 20 sec. I have celeron 333 with 64mb pc100 sdram. I did play on a map with 70-90% water. I will play again with mostly land to see if things slow down (if I last that long.)
Nell_Smith	posted 05-05-99 07:59 PM ET MoSe: It's easy enough to find and delete the Registry keys using regedit/regedt32, but the problem is that doing this still leaves the MemTurbo strings in user.dat and system.dat, which is pretty cunning of them I suppose... I removed all the Reg keys (searched on MemTurbo, Silicon Prairie and also SPS, which I think is the name of the root key that MemTurbo creates)... rebooted... and MemTurbo entries were still present in user.dat and system.dat, which I guess is how MemTurbo knows it's already been installed when you try to reinstall it. It must add an encrypted key into the Registry somewhere. I searched my entire C: drive for the text string "MemTurbo" and those were the only two files that came up, so I'm assuming that these are the only places where the program hides references to itself. Load these two files into Word or whatever and you can find the text strings... the problem is what to do about them! Trip: Uh huh... but I'll tell ya, once you've done that to the super-trendy laptop belonging to the Chairman of the company that employs you, you learn pretty fast never to do it again!!! lolol.. fortunately he was susceptible to the old "techno-waffle" routine, so I told him that his mail database had crashed and had wiped his hard drive... and the great thing was that he believed me! Everyone who can play on large maps when I can't: Well I don't care coz I like playing on 20x20 maps so there... hehe... no but seriously, it's interesting to hear that it took a while for the computer to draw the map, but that it played OK after that... I'll try again and have a little more patience this time Cheers, Nell
jig	posted 05-06-99 04:34 AM ET If you're desperate, you could clean reinstall windows everytime MemTurbo expires...
Lloyd	posted 05-06-99 05:57 AM ET I've found Ghost Pro and a really big hard drive are nice for ill-advised reg hacking/installation of crappy software. A brutish solution, but very effective. I think MS should have bundled Ghost with IE 4.0--to be fair. Lloyd
trippin daily	posted 05-06-99 08:33 AM ET Nell, it leaving strings in the user.dat and system.dat mean it left other keys in some other part of the registry. Trippin Daily -Realizing he knows way to much about a crappy product-
CatsAt8	posted 05-06-99 09:41 AM ET Big maps ? I am currently playing on a 250x300 map with no bog downs.I am curious about the map size limitation.I know there is one,I just havent checked. But I have found that the game as a whole suffers if I try to set it for 32-bit color. My vid card can easilky handle the graphics of 32-bit.(ATI Rage Fury 32Mb) but the game itself doesnt like the 32 bit. Damn the PB's and full steam ahead. CatsAt8
CatsAt8	posted 05-06-99 09:43 AM ET ps. easily...LOL...glad I dont speak as poorly as I type CatsAt8
Zoetrope	posted 05-06-99 10:33 AM ET It's my suspicion that the amount of free hard drive space has a major influence on the performance of SMAC. The only time version 3.0 crashed on me was when I was running significantly below the recommended 100 MB free. With a little over 100 MB unused, the game is much slower on the huge land map I tried, though still playable if I'm patient. I must admit I haven't finished that game yet: in fact, I've only met one other faction. Unfortunately, my ms-windows partition isn't large enough to make the free space much more than 100 MB, otherwise I'd try out huge maps when 1 GB is free, to see whether it speeds them up greatly or not.
Jake Swindler	posted 05-06-99 11:43 AM ET Hmmm, there seems to be a lot of negitive feelings toward crash prone windows. Let me tell you my solution. Get a Mac and run Virtual PC for SMAC. You would be amazed to find out that SMAC runs as well on my Mac (G3 350) as it does on my friends PII 300. We both have 128 megs of ram but I only have 64 allocated to windows. If you are just plain sick of it there are other options.
CatsAt8	posted 05-06-99 01:00 PM ET Crashes ?? I have found that what few crashes I have had were mainly due to the graphics settings...as for mem and HD space/settings...hasnt entered into it. Had I gone with a Mac years ago then I may have one now...but became a PCer (via Trash 80) and have never invested in Mac....but I know they are good machines and am NOT one of those PCers that trash Macs. Each machine has its strengths and weaknesses....I did have an Apple II..LOL... CatsAt8
Rong	posted 05-06-99 02:36 PM ET http://worldnation.virtualave.net/cgi-bin/fosi.cgi?mt10 (The usual disclaimers.)
LackOfKnack	posted 05-06-99 05:11 PM ET I tried to put 500x500 but it scales it down to 256x256. I edited the aplha.txt file and changed Huge Map to 300x300, and I can render one in about 25 seconds. I tried 320x320 and it played music for 5 minutes then crashed. Anybody get higher than 300x300? Also, I can't see how you need 100 mb for one map, or maybe I am not getting the context. If you have a 300x300 with a 32 bit variable for the improvements, it's under 3 mb. I have 9 gb+ free but it still crashes. Hmm... Lack
MoSe	posted 05-10-99 10:39 AM ET Lack, did you COUNT the tiles?
MoSe	posted 05-10-99 01:16 PM ET Ther's some inconsistency in the game's enormous maps warning. You get it when you set a big Custom Size, telling you the beyond 256x256 the game could hang. Actually , no matter how big you set the custom size, it always gets clipped to 256x256! You can count the tiles! I did! The custom size preferences are not stored in alpha.txt, they are recorded in AlphaCentauri.ini. And even if you edit there "Custom map X/Y", thay get clipped as well when you start a game. You can also tell it by checking the savefile dimension, 256x256 gives a 2961Kb file at the start. The way to play a bigger map is only the one Lack himself pointed out: you have to edit a predefined Planet size alpha.txt. This works, and you can tell it by counting the tiles (!) and by the savefile dimension: for 300x300 is slightly above 4 Mb The fun thing is you get the warning via Custom size, where you can't get beyond 256x256, and you don't get it when you edit alpha.txt! MariOne
Urban Ranger	posted 05-10-99 11:38 PM ET Nell, The registry IS system.dat and user.dat. Anything screwing around with Windoze has to be there. Just remeber to back up the two files before you start regedit. Also, I use Quarterdesk's QEMM/MagnaRAM on my computer. That's why it seems to run SMAC pretty fast with a lowly Cyrix?
Urban Ranger	posted 05-10-99 11:42 PM ET Lloyd, Ghost is up to version 5 now and a Symantec product. What you can do with it is to make an image copy to a CD-ROM. Then you won't lose any hard disk space and won't worry about losing your image.
wrigley99	posted 05-11-99 12:21 PM ET Popel have been talking about TurboMem, a shareware product that won't let you reinstall it. There is a freeware memory optimiser called RamBooster, available in its 3.1 version at: www.scifi.fi/~borg/rambooster/index.html I have been using the 3.0 version for about a month and it works very well indeed. Nonags.com gave it a 6 rubber duckies rating (best), and other online places have rated it as highly as it deserves. Get it, and send the writer a postcard!
Krushala	posted 09-06-99 08:37 PM ET never tried over 200 by 200 myself