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Varl
Hero
Joined: 03/05/2006
Location: United States
Posts: 151
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| Posted: 04/04/2007 at 3:05pm | IP Logged
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I think I have a pretty decent computer, but the past few weeks, I've been having terrible save times when it comes to saving a map. I'm working on a cave/dungeon map now for a friend that has no floor textures at all, and minimal detailing such as doors, walls, chests, treasure, and some furniture. It takes my computer about 5 minutes to save even small changes or upon closing. Anyone got any tips on performance I can try with DJ? Item placement is fine. Editing walls with the eraser is laggy, but most item placement and editing is okay.
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WayneFrancis
Janni (Moderator)
Joined: 08/31/2006
Location: Australia
Posts: 962
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| Posted: 04/04/2007 at 5:30pm | IP Logged
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What are your walls like? Maps with lots of curved walls take more processing to save.
When I start getting large lag times dealing with walls I do a save and restart DJ.
Just to cover the basics.
1) How much memory does your computer have?
2) How much memory have you set DJ to use?
One thing you can do to check if it is just the Java environment being slow is bring up task manager by pressing "Ctrl-Shift-Esc" then click on the "Processes" tab
Next click on the "Image Name" column header and scroll down until you see "javaw.exe". Select it so you can monitor it better.
During many operations it is common for javaw.exe to use 99% of the resources. If it is not you may have another process fighting for CPU time. You can find out by clicking on the "CPU" column header, once or twice (until you see the top item in the list show a high CPU usage. When nothing is happening this should be "System Idle Process"
Another nice piece of info is the "Memory Usage" you can get an idea of how much data your map is actually using.
Without a map loaded and just the base art packs you should be sitting at ~43,000k or 43meg. With a map just loaded I often sit at ~200,000k. Saving will bumb that up another 50,000k or so, this only happens the first save. Exporting a map is the big memory killer. I can often get the java platform using over 700meg during and after an export.
As far as tweaks go there are so many things you could try I don't know where to start and I'm not sure if any of them would help with saving.
could you post a small jpeg of your map to give us an idea of what your wall placement is like? We'll go from there.
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Varl
Hero
Joined: 03/05/2006
Location: United States
Posts: 151
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| Posted: 04/04/2007 at 6:24pm | IP Logged
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Here's the image of the map I'm working on.
Here's my system specs: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2 Ghtz, 2 Gig RAM, DX 9, GeForce 6800 Ultra 256M, and I don't know how much RAM I have allocated to DJ, nor do I know how to set that or where to look. I didn't know you could allocate RAM specifically towards DJ. Let me know if you need any other info. Thanks Wayne!
Edited by Varl on 04/04/2007 at 6:25pm
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".....I saw some children talking about whether they liked radio or television, and I asked one little boy why he preferred radio, and he said, ‘Because the pictures are so much better.’" -Gary Gygax
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heruca
Janni (Moderator)
Joined: 09/28/2005
Location: Argentina
Posts: 6328
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| Posted: 04/04/2007 at 6:52pm | IP Logged
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There's info in this thread about how to allocate more memory to DJ.
http://www.dundjinni.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=2279&PN= 0&TPN=2
I'm sure there are more concise instructions posted here somewhere, but the only ones I can find right now are Mac-specific. This should really be made into a sticky in the Tips forum.
Edited by heruca on 04/04/2007 at 6:53pm
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WayneFrancis
Janni (Moderator)
Joined: 08/31/2006
Location: Australia
Posts: 962
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| Posted: 04/04/2007 at 7:14pm | IP Logged
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Here is a clip from a post of mine on tuning DJ
Adjust your Dundjinni memory useage if you desire.
This can be done by altering the registry key. To do this follow these instructions.
a) Click on "Start" on the taskbar.
b) Click on "Run" in the Start menu.
c) Type in "RegEdit.exe" in the "Open" dropdown box.
d) Click on "OK". Regedit will then start up
e) expand the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" folder
f) expand the "SOFTWARE" folder
g) expand the "Fluid" folder
h) expand the "Dundjinni" folder
you should see something like this
i) double click on the "Memory" entry (called a key)
j) adjust the number "Value Data" text box to suit your hardware configuration. IE if you have 2gig of RAM you can put this up to 1024 which equal 1024meg or 1gig
k) click the "OK" button
l) Close Registry Editor
I'll put this in the tips forum and under tutorials
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WayneFrancis
Janni (Moderator)
Joined: 08/31/2006
Location: Australia
Posts: 962
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| Posted: 04/04/2007 at 7:17pm | IP Logged
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Oh ... let me comment on the map, thanks for getting an example up so quickly. The walls are very complex as DJ goes. I'm running a similar spec box as you
AMD 3500, 2gig RAM, GF7800 (really doesn't matter to DJ)
Big thing I can suggest is bump your memory usage up to 1024 (1 gig). It is probably at the default of 256. This should help alot. Let us know if it doesn't help. Bear in mind I'm used to saves taking around 1 minute often.
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Kepli
Djinni (Admin)
Joined: 01/04/2005
Location: Netherlands
Posts: 16797
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| Posted: 04/04/2007 at 11:57pm | IP Logged
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WF is right Varl, that is a very complex wall placement for DJ. More allocated memory should definitely help you. 
Great advice again WF 
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Varl
Hero
Joined: 03/05/2006
Location: United States
Posts: 151
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| Posted: 04/05/2007 at 3:29pm | IP Logged
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I shall make the memory changes as soon as I get home from work. Thanks Wayne and everyone for the advice. 
If this drops my save times down to just one minute, I could live with that. I'm also confused how people can draw maps I've seen on these forums that are incredibly more detailed than what I've done, and still have time for dinner. 
I'd be curious for the creators of some of those very intricate maps to let us know approximately how long it took their machines to save such files, because if mine is causing such lag, I can't imagine what those maps caused (unless, of course, they made said memory changes, and it helped them0. I'll let you know of any performance improvements.
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".....I saw some children talking about whether they liked radio or television, and I asked one little boy why he preferred radio, and he said, ‘Because the pictures are so much better.’" -Gary Gygax
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forumLurker
Legend
Joined: 03/31/2005
Location: United States
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| Posted: 04/05/2007 at 6:21pm | IP Logged
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Varl wrote:
| If this drops my save times down to just one minute, I could live with that. I'm also confused how people can draw maps I've seen on these forums that are incredibly more detailed than what I've done, and still have time for dinner. |
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Sometimes we don't. Honestly, most of my stuff (contest maps especially) are done in the same vein as my writing. Work on it for a few hours, go do stuff, come back to it a few days later, etc. Take the draft, fix the parts that suck, start adding the RAM-draining detail bits (lighting/shading), show it to someone for feedback, go eat dinner, nap, post to forums. My Tomb contest map took me around 3 hours to do, and it was pretty dang small, while my Modern scene for the hideout contest took around 6-9 hours with much revision, over the period of a week or two.
~lurker~
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Varl
Hero
Joined: 03/05/2006
Location: United States
Posts: 151
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| Posted: 04/05/2007 at 7:26pm | IP Logged
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No change. I edited the memory key for DJ in the registry to 1024, rebooted, and opened the file again. I didn't add anything to it, but simply relocated one already existing object, and saved. If there was a change, it wasn't significant enough to detect. I even loaded a different map in Adventures called Ambush (default I think), and it took a good 4 minutes just to load. I'm out of ideas. Don't get me wrong; I don't have unrealistic load or save time expectations, and DJ used to load and work just fine.
To be fair, I have been experiencing some weird technical difficulties with an unknown graphical component on my system (blue and red "dots" that occasionally plague me whenever I scroll on a page). My IT guy and I suspect something is failing, but so far, we've been unable to pinpoint what it is thus far. Perhaps this is what's dogging DJ. I have no idea. 
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".....I saw some children talking about whether they liked radio or television, and I asked one little boy why he preferred radio, and he said, ‘Because the pictures are so much better.’" -Gary Gygax
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Dundjinni Mapping Software - Forums : Questions
Topic: Save Times
