Out of Heap Space

[Cloudee1]

Ok so I leave room 1 and when I try to reenter it from any direction I get an "out of heap space" error.

What should I be looking into to alleviate this situation.

(A prompt response would be appreciated!)

[Eigen]

When you left room1 did you use direction?

If not, make sure it's (send gRoom: ...   not something else, I once had this problem when I accidentaly used (send gGame: newRoom( ))



-Eigen

[Cloudee1]

Nope that isn't it, all of my room changes take the form of
      (send gRoom:newRoom(1))

[robingravel]

Did you get this error after you have downloaded a previous game?

I got it in King's Quest IV.


Robin Gravel

[Chris Cromer]

I used to get this error in Space Quest 3 and Codename: Iceman... this was on my Tandy 1000, the problem went away once I got a newer computer.

[Brian Provinciano]

It's a standard SCI error message for when it runs out of memory. SCI0 should be only allocating a max of 1Mbyte of heap space, but some versions might be under 512K. You are likely not unloading your views and/or other resources properly.

[Jim C]

Hi Brian, I just got this problem too. Could you please explain what you mean by 'unloading resources properly'? Thanks!

[Jim C]

Does anybody know how to fix this problem? My game is just about finished, but it keeps running out of heap space and crashing! I need to get this game done this week before I go home for Christmas...

It's not a very long game, so I don't understand why it keeps running out of memory. It happens after ~ 5 rooms. And it doesn't just happen at one particular spot. If I edit the initRooms script to start the game at a different screen, it still happens after a few rooms. Each individual room works fine, though.

Can anybody help me with unloading resources? I don't know how to do this. Thanks!

[robingravel]

How many rooms your game has?

I have over 40 rooms on my game in progress and I never got this error at the moment.


Robin Gravel

[Jim C]

Hi Robin:

I only have 17 rooms. The scripts are all 10-15 kb. I also have 55 views, most of which are < 1 kb, but a few are 5-10 kb and my ego is 60 kb, because it has so many loops. Could that be the problem? The problem may also be inefficient coding, since I'm pretty new to it.

[robingravel]

my ego is 60 kb

Impressive. Your ego should have many loops and many cels.
My ego is only 6kb. Not serious.


Robin Gravel

[Kyoufu]

Let's just say Jim has an inflated ego and move along, k?

[Jim C]

  Kidding aside, I think that's exactly what the problem was. Some of my ego loops were death scenes, and a few of them were way too big. That, along with some extraneous text output (which made my room scripts too big) was causing my heap space errors. I trimmed a lot of the extra stuff down (for instance, I removed every other cel in some of my animations), and now the game works fine. I'll probably have it out for download in a week or two, after I work out a few more bugs. I really appreciate all the help I got on this forum. This game should make a good Christmas present for my friends!