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Suppose you have 35 "object.x" files to load for a game and 125 textures. The total of the project is 63 megabytes. What is the limit of megabytes that DBPro can load as a game?

tx
cypher

Your free Ram limit

DarkBasic Pro is just like any program, all operations are stored within the memory - for a program this is a matter of a few hundred kbyte

When it comes to arrays and such used within the program this will automatically use the System|Main Ram to sort these, which oki again arn't that big so doesn't really need to consern about - I'd say 4Mbyte for the actual program itself is a good limit unless you're using memblocks, then you have to compensate for whatever they use.

When it comes to graphics, and don't quote me on this because I'm not sure how Lee has set up the DirectX and HAL interface - but all the 3D Models within the Rendering pipeline, which is basically all not hidden will be stored within the Video|Graphics Ram onboard the card.
Textures are probably stored within the main ram when loaded and then passed over to the Graphics card when it is actually being used.

This would mean if you load ALL media at once, then you should have 64Mbyte Ram for the System + 16Mbyte (32Mbyte in XP) as the min amount. Althought shouldn't be used, plus calculate roughly how much graphics memory you'll need just add up what is used at one time - remembering textures for models if the model is hidden then it isn't passed into the Graphics Ram.

If the system you launch the game on doesn't meet up with the requirements then the game will slow greatly because it can't handle the ammount of data and is relying on the Hard Disk which is VERY slow (yes even ATA166) in comparison.

really you need Lee to explain the render pipeline so you know how DarkBasic Pro will use what you load but that is the most likely setup.

You forgot about the swap file.
Windows will use your hard disk to swap memory in and out as needed. The memory limit is your free ram plus most of your swap file.
Usually that is 100s of MB. For me around 500MB, I'll never use that much in a game.

none of my DirectX work has used the Swap file and access's the memory directly - otherwise certain operations would be far too slow.

Like when you run outta ram to use

Wow! Thank you for the detail in the explanation, more than I thought I would get, this is great.

So, really most computers these days would be rather hard to "task" with a moderate sized proggy from the sounds of it.

thank you Raven Vegeta
Cypher

well... thats a LOT of images your loading. There HAS to be a better way!
.X files are very small, less than 50kb mostly, but they can get up to a couple hundred, so you really don't have to worry to much about them.
And even if you could get all that in memory, it would take a hell of a long time to draw. I suggest finding a way to use fewer textures. Or maybe you could use JPG compression on them. That would make them smaller, although I guess they get decompressed at run-time anyway :S