Given the need to reduce available memory has anyone gained any benefit from a ramdisk for LB2?

Eg there is an article at Frugals
on using a ramdisk in Falcon4.

From memory the LB2 install folder is approx 440 MB, so the whole thing could fit, leaving me 328 MB, just right for LB2.

Will try it tonight if no-one has any horror stories!

Cheers,
Keith

Excellent idea! I haven't tried it. It may speed things up, you may have to install the game to the drive first, not sure.

File access speed isn't an issue with todays modern PCs (which is what RAM drives are usually used for), but this may fool the program into thinking you have less than 366MB (assuming you leave that much free and take the rest for the RAM drive).

The program also checks to see that around 30MB to 40MB is free on the drive before launching (the exact value is is in the manual somewhere), so pad the RAM drive for this extra space.

Maybe it would speed up map decompression (using the NOCD hack). I don't know if map decomp is HD or processor limited, though. On my slow machine, it seemed to take MORE time to decompress from the HD than the CD. Very odd. Probably going back to the Longbow Tool Shop for swapping maps in and out, though this takes a bit more disk space and makes it tough to decompress on the fly if a host in MP has a different map. Takes less time to jump out, swap maps and return than it does to decompress (on my system) anyway...

Recluse

The holy grail would be to elimate the need to decompress, just have them all decompressed somewhere with the program accessing them natively! Big wish, I know.

I find the decompression is CPU related, my new machine flys through the decompression.

The ramdisk works well!

I'm using XMSDISK, a 500 MB disk is enough for LB2 with 60 MB spare.

I'm left with 260 MB for Windows and now the Glide Emulator works properly so I get hi-res too.

Result!

I use XCOPY to copy the data across, takes less than 30 secs, LB2 loads instantly and loading missions etc snaps through.

Need to think about decompression........
I thought it was possible to cache the uncompressed files somwhere?

Only downside is rerunning LB2 often crashes, dont think thats the ramdisk though.

Cheers,
Keith