Length of GLP replay (question/problem)

I have a PII 300 + Thriller 3D with 64Mb RAM. To my knowledge GPL requires only 32 Mb RAM. That means I have at lest 32 Mb RAM free for the replay... right? Here's the odd thing. I could not get a reaply of a whole Nurburging ring until I cracked the 10 minute mark. Now when I save this replay, it's only 1.6Mb. Why can't I have a longer replay?!? By the way, this is in the training mode so there are no other cars. To give you more data, a single lap around any other track takes about 300-400Kb. but I can only get 8-10 laps which totals less than 4Mb. With all of the other tracks I get 3 laps in a reaply of I'm lucky. I don't understand this, I have 64Mb RAM (at lest 32Mb free) and if 1 Nurburgring lap takes 1.6Mb, then my PC shoud be able to "keep" about 20 laps (when on the track by myself)?!? Not that it has anything to do with it, but the replay format seems similar to ICR2, and in there I can have a 3 hour replay with all the cars on the road with this kind of RAM. Can anyone explain/clear this up for me? Also, can you tell me how much replay can you have (and how much RAM you've got). Thanks, David Mocnay

I don't know the real answer, but I'll pass on what I know about Windows memory usage. Well, maybe I won't. I don't know enough to be educational or entertaining. I'll just agree with you that the replay length should be configurable, either up or down depending on your needs or wants. Michael.

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> I have a PII 300 + Thriller 3D with 64Mb RAM. To my knowledge GPL requires > only 32 Mb RAM. That means I have at lest 32 Mb RAM free for the replay... > right? Here's the odd thing. I could not get a reaply of a whole Nurburging > ring until I cracked the 10 minute mark. Now when I save this replay, it's > only 1.6Mb. Why can't I have a longer replay?!? By the way, this is in the > training mode so there are no other cars. > To give you more data, a single lap around any other track takes about > 300-400Kb. but I can only get 8-10 laps which totals less than 4Mb. With all > of the other tracks I get 3 laps in a reaply of I'm lucky. > I don't understand this, I have 64Mb RAM (at lest 32Mb free) and if 1 > Nurburgring lap takes 1.6Mb, then my PC shoud be able to "keep" about 20 laps > (when on the track by myself)?!? > Not that it has anything to do with it, but the replay format seems similar to > ICR2, and in there I can have a 3 hour replay with all the cars on the road > with this kind of RAM. > Can anyone explain/clear this up for me? Also, can you tell me how much replay > can you have (and how much RAM you've got). > Thanks, > David Mocnay

>Can anyone explain/clear this up for me? Also, can you tell me how much replay >can you have (and how much RAM you've got). I cannot explain why, but I have 128MB RAM, and the replay file seems to stop at about 30MB maximum. That is about half an hour racing. -Jan Otto

Search back through old posts on www.dejanews.com. A few weeks ago, Randy Cassidy explained why this is so and gave some "not recommended" ways of making bigger replays with lower RAM configurations. In a nutshell, GPL uses a heuristic to compute the amount of RAM devoted to the replay. On a system with 64mb, this is a little over 2mb. On systems with 128mb, I have seen replays that include 3 online racers in practice and a 11-13lap race! The replay was about 8mb. Hope that helps. J.

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>>Can anyone explain/clear this up for me? Also, can you tell me how much >replay >>can you have (and how much RAM you've got). >I cannot explain why, but I have 128MB RAM, and the replay file seems to >stop at about 30MB maximum. That is about half an hour racing. >-Jan Otto

I posted a message about this a few days ago and got this definitive reply (as well as a lot of wrong information) I tried it and it works, and I have noticed no paging with 128 meg RAM and a replay setting of 96000 giving me over 3 hours with 20 cars! ****************** We use a conservative heuristic to determine how large a replay buffer to allocate to reduce the likelihood of paging during gameplay. GPL will always allocate a replay buffer of at least 2M, however, even if the heuristic says that's too much. On a 64M machine, you'll pretty much always be in this 2M zone. You're welcome to experiment with larger replay buffers, but I found that even doubling the buffer to 4M on a 64M machine lead to significant paging. Play with this at your own risk. In the same directory as the gpl.exe program, use Notepad (or another plain text editor) to create a text file named core.ini In this file, add the following two lines: [ Replay ] replayMemoryOverride = X where X is the number of Kbytes of memory you want to dedicate to the replay buffer. Randy

Thank Randy, this seems to be what I was after.... I'll give it a go tonight and post my resuts. Thanks again, David Mocnay

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>I posted a message about this a few days ago and got this definitive reply >(as well as a lot of wrong information) I tried it and it works, and I have >noticed no paging with 128 meg RAM and a replay setting of 96000 giving me >over 3 hours with 20 cars! >****************** >We use a conservative heuristic to determine how large a replay buffer to >allocate to reduce the likelihood of paging during gameplay. GPL will >always allocate a replay buffer of at least 2M, however, even if the >heuristic says that's too much. On a 64M machine, you'll pretty much >always be in this 2M zone. You're welcome to experiment with larger replay >buffers, but I found that even doubling the buffer to 4M on a 64M machine >lead to significant paging. >Play with this at your own risk. >In the same directory as the gpl.exe program, use Notepad (or another plain >text editor) to create a text file named core.ini In this file, add the >following two lines: >[ Replay ] >replayMemoryOverride = X >where X is the number of Kbytes of memory you want to dedicate to the >replay buffer. >Randy

I wonder if the replay has something to do with the number of cars you race against. I have 64 meg of ram too, and I can only get a little over 1 lap worth of replay on most tracks.

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>I have a PII 300 + Thriller 3D with 64Mb RAM. To my knowledge GPL requires >only 32 Mb RAM. That means I have at lest 32 Mb RAM free for the replay... >right? Here's the odd thing. I could not get a reaply of a whole Nurburging >ring until I cracked the 10 minute mark. Now when I save this replay, it's >only 1.6Mb. Why can't I have a longer replay?!? By the way, this is in the >training mode so there are no other cars. >To give you more data, a single lap around any other track takes about >300-400Kb. but I can only get 8-10 laps which totals less than 4Mb. With

all >of the other tracks I get 3 laps in a reaply of I'm lucky. >I don't understand this, I have 64Mb RAM (at lest 32Mb free) and if 1 >Nurburgring lap takes 1.6Mb, then my PC shoud be able to "keep" about 20 laps >(when on the track by myself)?!? >Not that it has anything to do with it, but the replay format seems similar to >ICR2, and in there I can have a 3 hour replay with all the cars on the road >with this kind of RAM. >Can anyone explain/clear this up for me? Also, can you tell me how much replay >can you have (and how much RAM you've got). >Thanks, >David Mocnay