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Saving Failure
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g-whizz
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Default Saving Failure - 03-19-2009, 08:25 PM

Okay, I'm doing a project and its been going okay, but I need to have alot of stuff in it to make it work i.e. the finished project will be over 50MB.
I'm trying to save at every opportunity but every time i try, it fails and alice shuts down. I'm getting extremely frustrated at this, and I'm beginning to get worried that all my work will be wasted.The file last saved without fail with a file size of 26MB.
Any help is much appreciated.
________
9C1

Last edited by g-whizz; 05-14-2011 at 12:21 PM.
   
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DrJim
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Default 03-20-2009, 02:14 AM

Unfortunately, file size can be a basic problem with Alice 2.0.

A couple of suggestions that may help (a bit ):
If you use a lot of sound, use compressed audio (mp3, etc.) instead of .wav files.
Only load one copy of an object from the library and make copies for the other instantiations.
   
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g-whizz
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Default 03-20-2009, 06:13 PM

ya i see how to do that now but i started a few weeks ago and i didn't how to use it. I've almost 500 fences now, all lined up nice and most are from the library!!! It took well over a week to do, and it was tricky and annoying so i don't want to it again! Any help on how to fix it without having to start over?
________
Iolite vaporizer temperature

Last edited by g-whizz; 05-14-2011 at 12:21 PM.
   
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Perhaps a solution...
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ezalice
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Default Perhaps a solution... - 04-05-2009, 10:08 PM

Hi,

I had a problem with saving last week. Story Telling (ST) Alice would crash part way through saving the project (it was up to 31MB). What I noticed was that during the save, Alice would attempt to grab over a gigabyte of memory, jumping suddenly from about 300MB during normal usage.

I can't speak for Alice, but with the latest download of ST Alice, there is an executable in the "required" folder call something like "IfAliceFailsTryThis.exe" along with a "IfAliceFailsTryThis.config" file.

Given that Alice is a Java app, it became obvious that I could tweak the vm parameters to try and fix the problem (in case it wasn't an outright bug in Alice). It seemed to me from my past experience, that Alice was not garbage collecting properly.

So, after a bit of dabbling I solved my problem. The corrected file required a few tweaks:

1. Fix the java runtime reference to point to the correct one (bundled with ST Alice)
2. Fix the java library path so that Alice can find all of the classes it needs.
3. Comment out the -Xincgc option which forced the java virtual machine to use a non-default garbage collector

This might not fix everything, but it certainly works brilliantly for me. I'd say that the app runs a bit faster now also.

Just dump the attached file into the "required" folder and rename it to "IfAliceFailsTryThis.config".

Running Alice via ""IfAliceFailsTryThis.exe" should work a treat.

ezalice
Attached Files
File Type: txt IfAliceFailsTryThis.config.txt (711 Bytes, 11 views)

Last edited by ezalice; 04-05-2009 at 10:13 PM.
   
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DrJim
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Default 04-06-2009, 07:38 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by ezalice View Post
3. Comment out the -Xincgc option which forced the java virtual machine to use a non-default garbage collector.
Interesting since the general consensus is that Alice does have a garbage collection problem. Can't say I personally have demonstrated that or even really understand the problem - but it certainly hasn't gotten any better over several versions of the JRE, which would be the case if an unusual garbage collection program was used.

Maybe someone better at Java than I am (which should be almost anybody that's programmed with it at all ) can experiment a bit more. The problem can get really bad with 2.2 if you do videos of any length and also a lot of undo's.
   
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Garbage collection
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ezalice
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Default Garbage collection - 04-06-2009, 08:50 AM

Hi

My first instinct was to run ST Alice under JProfiler to see what part of the program was sucking up all the memory, and then I noticed the config file so I didn't go ahead.

Maybe I'll go ahead afterall. My gut feeling was that there were an enormous number of objects being created very quickly at save time and the garbage collector wasn't getting a look in.

When I get a chance I'll take a look. Say, do you know if the ST Allice jar contains _all_ of the required source, or just some/most of it?

Thanks

ezalice
   
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