Presagis

Is there any particular way I can adjust my memory settings to reduce smartheap errors when openning a database?  I believe they’re originating from too many textures…or too many large textures but as they’re outsourced databases there isn’t much I can do about that.  Was hoping maybe I could change a configuration setting somewhere and make everything be alright.

If I ignore the error the texture doesn’t load if that helps any.  I’ve found some work arounds that are working ok but thought maybe there was something I could do to avert this nonsense all together.  I’ve tried adjusting my memory settings in the system panel with no luck at making things better, just worse

On a totally unrelated note(and I don’t know where the complaints dept is) *sigh*.  the first time I visited the site this morning for some odball reason I was only presented the Mod Sim/Embedded Graphics buttons without any of the options bellow until I hit one.  Looked kind of silly, but now when Igo back it appears the mod/sim options are listed below the two buttons by default.  Not sure if there may be a bug that needs working out.  I’m not sure if it’s only showing now on my machine because I made a cookie or something.  Just a friendly tip.  new site’s pretty nice.

Dankya,
Matt

The first thing to check (and it sounds like you may have already done this) is the Virtual Memory setting on your computer. Verify in your Windows Control Panel Settings that you have at least ~2GB Virtual Memory set. If you are running Creator in normal 32 bit mode (on a 32 bit computer), any more will not be useful.

On Windows XP, you can find this setting at:
Control Panel: Advanced: Performance: Settings: Advanced: Virtual Memory

If you have done this and your database is still too large to read into Creator, there are additional measures you can take in Creator itself to reduce the amount of memory Creator uses when loading a db:

If the memory culprit is TEXTURE, there are two ways to reduce the amount of memory Creator uses for texture:
1) When you File>Open the db, you’ll notice 2 checkboxes on the File Browser Dialog, one labeled “Read External References” and the other “Read Textures”.  Uncheck the “Read Textures” then select the file for Open.  When you do this, Creator won’t load the texture pixels.  Then you can “selectively” load individual patterns if you need to from the Texture Palette.  You can probably guess what un-checking “Read External References” does.

If you drag and drop files to open them, there are also Preferences to control these 2 settings.  Go to Info>Preferences>Flight.  Check or Un-check “Read External References” and/or “Read Textures” here to apply these rules for d&d (or double click open db in Windows Explorer)

2) Before you Open a db go to the Info>Preferences>Texture Tab.  In the Texture Cache group box, check “Load Low Resolution Texture Objects”.  When you do this, the next time Creator opens a db and loads a texture it will load a “low resolution” copy of it.  The texture will still be in the palette and you will lose resolution but on the flip side, each texture will take less memory to load.

If the memory culprit is EXTERNAL REFERENCES, see #1 above and uncheck “Read External References”.  Then you can “selectively” load individual x-refs if you need to using the File>Reread Externals command.