[directmusic] Re: Survey
- From: "Ciaran Walsh" <ciaran@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <directmusic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 07:43:12 -0000
My answers...
1. Max voices: Capped at 64, possibly pushing that limit occasionally but
frequent peaks of around 40 to 50 - not quite sure what you mean when you
say excluding / including the MS synth though. Our PC versions play
everything back through the MS synth, but none of it was GM if that's what
you meant (as someone else obviously interpreted it...).
2/3/4. RAM footprint: About 8Mb on a single load, 99% of it DLS. That was my
RAM budget for POW and I didn't exceed it. This is measured both in DMP and
simply by looking at the size of the runtime files, all of which were
autoloaded. Streaming, as in my current project, is a different situation
and harder to measure, but by my calculations using DMDemo each 48k stereo
stream (uncompressed) adds about 40 to 60k continuously and around 300k
while it is being streamed. So if you had 6 streams available, 2 of which
were playing at any one time with both potentially crossfading into another
simultaneously (max 4 concurrent streams), the RAM usage would look
something like this:
300k for 6 available streams
600k for 2 playing streams
+600k when crossfading both streams
therefore, an underlying 900k, peaking at 1500k. This is measured using
DMDemo and Task Manager in XP. I'd be interested to know if this tallies
with other peoples estimates, and how changing the sample rates affects it
(I assume proportionally as it's essentially buffering a certain amount of
time for each wav).
My ultimate goal is to combine the streaming (up to 8 simultaneous streams)
with some real-time DLS content, within around 8Mb.
5. Project size - these streaming projects really get huge! Like others have
said, the fact that everything gets loaded into RAM in DMP is a headache. My
project sizes are currently in the several hundred Mb area and growing. As I
only have 768Mb RAM in that machine I'm going to need to go shopping very
soon! Or start using downsampled dummies...
I've never had any complaints about the CPU hit except when I had a bug
which was something to do with my band being redefined every time any
segments started, which was solved by defining a global band at the start
and taking the band tracks out of all other segments (you could adjust
individual instruments as necessary if you wanted to of course).
Good idea with the survey by the way Paul! It's intersting to hear about the
different ways people work - more contributions please ;)
-----Original Message-----
From: directmusic-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:directmusic-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Scott Morgan
Sent: 31 January 2003 02:11
To: directmusic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [directmusic] Re: Survey
Yeah, I bet his in game memory usage was no more than a couple of megs! The
X-Box only has 64 MB of RAM in the first place if I remember...
DMP stupidly loads everything into memory no matter if its streaming or not.
My voice meter can get up to 64 after a while, but usually I'm somewhere
between 5-45 voices.
I think I'm getting laxer and laxer about that since there have been no
complaints from the dev team even when I ask, "How am I doing? I'm using
more CPU now..".
My DLS RAM memory usage caps at 11MB, the team has been pretty generous with
me. It's orchestral so I really need as much as I can get. If it was
techno I would prolly be fine with 6MB or less even.
-Scott Morgan
http://Morganstudios.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jason Booth" <jason@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <directmusic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 4:08 PM
Subject: [directmusic] Re: Survey
>
> Well, in actual game memory, the most I've ever done is 300megs of
> sample data. That was for a test project where we didn't really pay
> attention to memory footprint, and went straight for quality and
> interactivity. The 1.2gig project is streaming wav based, and because
> DMP insists on loading all of those wav's into memory when your working
> on them, it's a real heffer of a project. If it actually streamed them,
> like they do in the game, it'd be a lot less..
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Stroud [mailto:paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]=20
> Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 6:58 PM
> To: directmusic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [directmusic] Re: Survey
>
>
>
> Over a gig? Gulp. You can't be serious.
>
> Was this for PC or XBox? I wouldn't expect the entire game to take up
> that much space.
>
> By memory, I was talking about RAM. 1.2 gig of RAM would be one hell of
> a minimum requirement.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: directmusic-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx=20
> > [mailto:directmusic-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Jason Booth
> > Sent: 30 January 2003 18:01
> > To: directmusic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: [directmusic] Re: Survey
> >
> >
> >
> > 1). What has been the peak number of Voices you have implemented.=20
> > Please give figures including and excluding the microsoft synth
> >
> > We usually cap it at 64, although theoretically a large group of
>
> > people playing music together in AC2 could generate double ro tripple=20
> > that voice count.=3D20
> >
> >
> > 2). What has been your largest memory consumption in a single script=20
> > loading?
> >
> > 500mb
> >
> >
> > 3) What was the largest peak memory consumption that you have allowed
> >
> > 1.2gb
> >
> > 4) How did you measure this
> >
> > DMPs display - in game it would be streaming..
> >
> >
> > 5) How large was the largest (in terms of disk space) single project=20
> > you have worked on. Assuming that you use one project per piece of=20
> > music.
> >
> > Not including the source files (which are much, much larger), about a=20
> > gig or so. It compresses down smaller when in MP3 format..
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
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