🚀 go-pugleaf

cau...@access4.digex.net (Michael) writes:

>1. How much memory can Descent actually use?

If I'm not mistaken, it's somewhere between 6 and 7 megs.  
If you have less than this amount, Descent will use virtual memory
and start paging information to the hard drive.  The amount of space
needed depends on how short of memory you are.

>2. What memory manager software should be loaded to allow Descent
>   do use the available memory?
>3. What memory manager software does not need to be loaded?
>6. Which memory managers does Descent work best with and which ones does
>   it not work well with?

No memory managers are necessary to run Descent.  It should neither
help nor hinder performance.  Unless, of course, loading your memory
manager puts you under the watermark... then it would hurt.

>4. Does a disk cache help, hurt, or make no difference?

If you have 4 megs of RAM, running a small (256k) disk cache should help.
Any bigger and you're cutting into memory too much.

>5. Would it help, hurt, or make not difference to run Descent off of a 
>   RAM disk?

Running a RAM disk would probably not be good.  If you have enough
memory to run one, I'm sure you have enough memory to run Descent
without virtual memory kicking in, thus making the RAM drive useless
anyway...

Hope this helps.

-- 
---
Adam Pletcher
Parallax Software

> 2. What memory manager software should be loaded to allow Descent
>    do use the available memory?

None.  Memory managers use memory themselves, and are unnecessary with
Dos4gw games (ie. Doom and Descent).  Dos4GW games have their own built in
memory manager, and they make the best of it.

> 3. What memory manager software does not need to be loaded?

All of them.  Do a clean boot.

> 4. Does a disk cache help, hurt, or make no difference?

In my experiences, I've seen no noticable difference; but the FAQ and Readme
recommends a 256k disk cache, which is what I use.

> 6. Which memory managers does Descent work best with and which ones does
>    it not work well with?

Like I said, Descent works best without a memory manager.

> I fall into the 12 Meg category.

Then you really have nothing to worry about :)

--
Mosh Hard!

> >1. How much memory can Descent actually use?
> If I'm not mistaken, it's somewhere between 6 and 7 megs.  
> If you have less than this amount, Descent will use virtual memory
> and start paging information to the hard drive.  The amount of space
> needed depends on how short of memory you are.

I'm limited to 4 megs of Ram.  Is that why I have a huge 2 meg .swp file
in my descent directory?  Can I delete this file when not running Descent? 

> No memory managers are necessary to run Descent.  It should neither
> help nor hinder performance.  Unless, of course, loading your memory
> manager puts you under the watermark... then it would hurt.

It may hinder.. you need every byte you can scrape if you deathmatch
people.  Deathmatching is a competition of frame rate as well as playing
ability because the author did nothing to match the speeds. 

--
Mosh Hard!

> You may delete that .swp file that Descent creates.  If you exit the
> game properly, it will delete it automatically.

That's weird.. I always cd into Descent's directory, run it as normal, 
and do a normal shutdown by selecting quit; the .swp file remains.  It's 
not really a problem, I'll just put 'del *.swp' at the end of my batch 
file.  

BTW: the commandline in my batch file disables all the unused drivers, 
and -lowmem in attempt to get the best frame rate.. which brings up 
another question:

Doom used dots in the status bar to indicate frame rate.  Is there such 
an indicator in Descent?

> If you have (gasp!) a crash, or you reboot right from Descent, it wont' 
> get deleted. 

Makes sense.

--
Mosh Hard!