Damn You Zelda.exe!!!

[System Error]

Whenever I try to load a quest over 2 Megs, that little SOB of a program shoots back "File Error - Out of Memory." I use Windows 98, Beta 183 and don't have a very big C Drive (514 Megs total, 120 Megs of free space). Still, that should give plenty of (virtual) memory to spare. And I do have a slave drive, a D Drive. I want to play some of the quests like DoY, but Zelda.exe always bitches "Out of Memory." I have no damn clue what the hell's up with this thing.

[fatcatfan]

How much real life *RAM* do you have? What are your virtual memory settings?

[System Error]

40.0 Megs of RAM. I let Windows mess with my Virtual Memory settings. Doesn't manage very well.

[fatcatfan]

Here's the thing. First, I'm not sure ZC is able to use virtual memory. I need to check that. I mean, we could, but we'd have to do a non-portable windows version which uses Windows API. Second, just by itself, the player uses about 32MB of RAM for buffers and such. That's *before* you even load a quest. If a qst is 2MB on disk, it likely decompresses to 8 or 10 MB in memory, so ZC would need that much more.

Now we haven't even considered the RAM Windows is sucking up. I think the minimum for Win98 is supposed to be 32MB, though you can get by with less. But if it's there, windows will likely use all of it. Now I've not even considered the RAM needed to load into memory the various DirectX and Allegro DLLs which Zelda.exe needs in order to run. So, assuming you got it to run with such a large quest, windows would be constantly swapping stuff in and out of virtual memory and you might get 2FPS. So you're probably better off that it doesn't try to load it for you.

Instead, I suggest you boot to a command prompt and try the DOS version. In short, Windows consumes too many resources for you to expect to get good performance out of zelda-w.exe on such a low end system.

[System Error]

I'll try that. :) Plus, Windows won't come barging in bitching about "So and so preformed an illegal operation..."

[SS4 Goku]

32 megs?! Window 98 only takes up 8 megs on mine. but i still have the same problem as system error. but 183 does it before i even open a quest.

[Saro]

Sometimes, ZC just freezes on me... it usually happens when I do something that would invoke a WAV sound... also, ZC sometimes freezes up on me when exiting. I think it has something to do with the MIDIs, since Winamp also tends to freeze when loading MIDIs, looping to the beginning of a MIDI, or quitting while a MIDI is loaded. Here are my system specs:

Windows 98
56 MB RAM
3 GB free HD space (approximately)
500 MHz