Messing with the crash to desktop bug in TOAW

[cathar1244]

Some may know that TOAW has a memory management bug that allocates memory but fails to later release it. This bug sometimes manifests when playing scenarios with lots of placenames on the game map.

I've been trying out a freeware utility called "Wise Memory Optimizer" that cleans up RAM usage. It takes a couple of seconds to run. This may be a work-around for the crash bug, as in running WMO at the beginning of a turn, or more often, to keep RAM usage in order.

While playing the first turn of D21 (on a very limited basis), I noted no impact to TOAW function or performance by releasing RAM, and the utility considerably shrunk the usage of RAM by TOAW.

People playing scenarios may wish to experiment with this and see how it works for them. Might prevent unfortunate game crashes.

The figures shown below identify how many Megabytes of RAM that TOAW was using at any given point. "WMO" is the Wise utility mentioned above.

Cheers

-----

D21 test:

Start of 1st turn 11.6

Scan entire map, now 60.8

Run WMO

Released 72, now 1.3

Show supply visible 43.9

Run WMO

Released 137, now 0.7

Hide supply 23

Attack with one division, allow battle resolution, numerous air strikes, 192.4

Run WMO

Released 246, now 0.6

Use 19th PzD to capture Grodno, now 180.8

Run WMO

Released 169, now 0.7