"Not Enouch Memory To Edit"!?! Argh!

[islandjack]

Okay, so things were moving along nicely with my game (I should point out to anyone who hasn't been following my misadventures with RPGM2 or hasn't been helping me out with my questions that I'm working on making my first game ever), I've been getting great help and advice from everyone here, learning a lot, having a great time, and have finally figured out what my game is supposed to be about, and then, last night, as I was finishing up one area of my game, I go to add one last event and when I tried to create the script for it, I get the error message:

"Not enought memory to edit."

Let me just say that I would consider my game, at this point, about 25% done, meaning that I've still got 75% more of my game to create, but apparently, not enough memory. So, I'm wondering how many people have run into this problem so early on in their own game designing, and what did you do about it? I'll also add that I'm not about to give up. I'm not a perfectionist or an obsessed madman, and Lord knows I've given up on about 90% of things like this that I've started in my life. I'm just having too much fun to be stymied at this point.

As I've said before, I started this game as a test to see what I could do and learn by first starting with the "Sample Game Design" from the Prima Strategy Guide, changing and editing and adding things to suit my tatstes, so all the default information you would normally start with at this starting point is in my game file.

I came to the conclusion that there are some default Maps that I will never use in my current game. With my whole game world laid out, there's only three that I'll be using, variations of which I've edited for my game, so I went ahead and deleted the ones I don't think I'll use (like Map#11 "Fun (Interesting Creations)"), and seem to have cleared up enough memory to keep going for the time being. I'm assuming that if and when I start all over again with a completely new file for a different game they'll all be back by default in case I want to use them.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong so far, and feel free to correct me or to offer any advice concerning anything else I'm going to say or plan to do!

I don't want to mess around with deleting any of the default scripts or events, as I really think this would be a bad idea. Also, of all of the items and abilities I've created so far, I'd say half of them are edits of pre-exisiting ones, and I'll probably need to create more, so I was thinking I shouldn't mess with any of the default items or abilities unless I absolutely need to.

I do have all the party members created that I need for the game, and I was thinking that I could go ahead and delete all of the default party members, "Virk" through "Oricalum." They're not going to show up in this game whether they exist in this game file or not. Does anyone think this would be a bad idea?

For the purposes of my game, I'm a good enough hand at creating my own dungeons, building interiors and buildings, so I was also considering deleting the ones I don't think I would use, don't look cool, or wouldn't want to edit. It will take a bit more pencil & paper planning of the rest of my game to make sure I absolutely have any default stuff I'll want to use, but I've got a lot of time and paper.

So, are my plans reasonable?

Also, one last thing before I shut up is another option I've considered, but think might be opening up a Pandora's Box. Maybe halfway through the game, at mid-point of playing or at a sensical spot, I have to throw in a screen or something telling the player to load "Game File 2" or something like that. How cheesy is this? I guess it wouldn't be as bad as when you're playing a "real" game and you have to "insert disc 2," but I'm not sure. Then, I suppose it would be a matter of copying the original game file and deleting things that are explained in the game as permanently blocked off or nonexistent. The, I'd have to figure out what to do with the player's save file, but I'll worry about this last option if it comes to that.

So, I'd appreciate any help/suggestions/comments/rants that any of you have.

As always, thanks in advance.

[Rodak]

I'm at work and could not read your whole post, but it sounds like You just have too much open and minimized at once.

If certain editors are open, you must close them before saving in other editors.

Too much Triangle Button Tricksing can do that.

Peace.

[christi]

the presets do take up a lot of room... if you’re certain you don’t need some of the world maps, i’d start with deleting those, because that’ll free up quite a bit of space really fast.

if you’re going to delete your unused party members, i would make sure that the party members youv’e created were copy/pasted from defaults, and not created from scratch. if not, i would save at least one default party member. i created all of mine from scratch the first time i attempted to make a game, and deleted all the preset party members... my party members were all really glitchy and i didn’t have any defaults to revert back to.

but yes, to answer your other question, if you delete anything default in your game, if you were to start over with a whole new game, it would still be there.

hope this helps... i’m sure others who have run into the same problem will have more input.

[islandjack]

Thanks.

I did actually create the party members from scratch, I think. It was one of the first things I did when starting to make the game, so I'm not quite sure. I know that I edited the character models for them, but I don't recall ever even looking at one of the default party members. As they're all "Warrior Types," (I just left that in the box) maybe I can delete all the default party members that aren't "Warrior" types? This may be something I have to try, I'll see. But thanks, christi, this is something I never thought of.

And thanks again, Rodak. To be honest, I've never used the Triangle Button when editing/creating the game. I know someone explained it once, but I either forgot all about being able to use it or just got so used to taking the long way around that I never bothered. I did consider that at the time I got the error message that I had too many things going on at once, even though I wasn't sure how I could have, so I saved my game, reset my PS2, reloaded the file and the first and only thing I tried was to create the script. I went right to Scripts, Create New Data and got the message again, so I figured I was just out of memory. I deleted some default maps and was able to go from there, so I thought that was the problem, but I'm still worried about running out of space in the future.

Another thing that I did was to go in and edit the maps that I am using. In a few of them, there was a lot of land that had nothing on it, wasn't being used and wasn't going to be used, so I deleted it. I have no idea if this made any difference or not, but I imagine that the actual map files were made smaller because of this. I'm just going with the thinking that anything that is anywhere is using memory, so if I don't need the space on a map, delete it.

Thanks again and keep the help coming, folks!

[Rodak]

OK, finally read the whole thing.

Sorry, I was way off earlier...

But I'm glad it helped some.

Enemy Actions take tons of memory.

If there are any enemies you know you won't use, wipe their enemy actions from the database.

You already got party members...

That leaves pre set graphics (dungeons, maps, buildings, etc.).

There are scripting tricks too that can save memory.

Use one or two warp events for every warp in the game by sorting the current map.

And more.

I'll try to find a list later.

Lunch is over (saw your Beer post... will respond later... Nice Label and your friend is a Genius!).

Peace.

[BloodKnight]

Seems like the default stuff is a big problem. First, delete anything you don't need. I think it's easier on the game's memory and you if you just started from scratch instead of using the presets. Second, you'll want to look at the visual effects and delete/trim any that might take some hefty memory, same goes for maps and enemy stuff as well.

Aside from classes and a few other things like dungeons, you shouldn't have too much of a problem with memory if you trim your game.

[Kumo Shinagi]

Dont forget to delete some of the Preset VFX either. They take up a GOOD chunk of memory.

[manji]

..can't say this has happened to me, island jack. i knew from the get-go that i wanted to do everything from scratch in my game.

but yeah, just what everybody else said: delete what you're not using or going to use.. take a look through all of your databases and pull those weeds out one by one..

are you using the default battle system? i think that's probably what's saving me a lot of memory for my game. my enemy menus are untouched and they'll be staying that way. rodak says those take up a lot of memory, so i'll believe it.