64-bit Windows? Running out of memory when saving a map? Enabled LAA...

TL;DR - use a small, free app to give you more memory access for CC3/CC3+ on 64-bit Windows.

Details:

While having a discussion on another forum (the Fantasy Grounds VTT forum), I did some investigation and discovered that both the base CC3 and CC3+ application executables haven't been compiled with the Large Address Aware (LAA) flag set. Whereas the CC3/CC3+ executable (fcw32.exe) is a 32-bit application and limited to using 2GB of memory on a 33-bit operating system, if the LAA flag is set on a 32-bit executable, and the application is running in 64-bit Windows, the application can use 4GB of memory. See the "Virtual address space per 32-bit process" entry in the "General Memory Limits" here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/889654 This /LARGEADDRESSAWARE flag doesn't have any impact when running the same executable on a 32-bit system, where the memory use would be limited to 2GB.

Now, there may be a technical reason why the ProFantasy devs haven't used this compile option when making the fcw32.exe file. Hopefully they might see this and comment...

The good news is, that with a simple application (there are a number available on the 'net) you can set this flag on your CC3/CC3+ application and immediately have access to more memory.

Steps:
1) Locate your fcw32.exe application file in your CC3/CC3plus directory and make a backup copy of it.
2) Download the LAA ZIp file from here: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/large-address-aware.112556/
3) Run "Large Address Aware" application from within the ZIP file.
4) Click the "..." button in the app and select the fcw32.exe application located in step 1.
5) Check the "Check this box to enable the application..."
6) Click the "Save" button.
7) Run CC3/CC3+ as usual.

You'll find that when you're exporting (save as) your maps to PNG, JPEG, etc. that you'll experience the "You don't have enough memory to export at this resolution" much, much less (and only for very large maps) and also CC3 should crash much less when exporting large files.

I've done a number of tests, exporting large maps with a lot of effects enabled, and this has allowed me to reliably export large maps that I couldn't previously do.

You can always roll-back to your backup of fcw32.exe (assuming you made a backup copy in step 1 above) if this doesn't work for you.

Comments

  • Trenloe, thank you! I am a new CC3+ user and was just finishing up my first feeble attempt at a map, only to be disappointed when fcw32.exe crashed on a 9000 x 9000 map (in order to output 30 in. @ 300dpi).

    I can confirm that this worked for me... well that it is rendering, at least. Looks like it will take a while! 12 of 44 passes! I doubt I'll ever print this one, but it's nice to have the option now.
  • edited July 2015
    Great stuff Trenloe. I downloaded the LAA file, pointed it at fcw32.exe and as far as my very limited brain can tell it appears to be awesome! I can now print to PDF at 1200dpi (sorry I just saw your reply on my printing challenge post now). Had a look at the windows task manager when CC3+ was printing to PDF and it was using nearly 3GB of ram so that's got to be a good thing. Excellent detective work :)
  • RalfRalf Administrator, ProFantasy 🖼️ 18 images Mapmaker
    Very interesting, thanks for the heads up. We thought LAA was already enabled on the CC3+ build and are investigating this. We'll incorporate it into the next build if we can.
  • Thank you very much for this little trick. I knew about LAA, because of some of my games, but I never made the connection with CC3 rendering.
  • 19 days later
  • Little late to the party here, I just came back to regularly using CC3 again after a medium-sized break from working on my maps to focus on other things, but I wanted to say thanks so much for this! I'd learned to live with having a ceiling on export resolution and anti-aliasing, and this method to increase that ceiling worked! Before, if I tried to export in a res that would require more than 20 passes for the render to be made, it would always crash. But I went up to an export requiring 31 passes (a PNG export at 4500x2800 with 65% AA) and no crash! This is with CC3, by the way, not +, for anyone curious (still using vanilla CC3 because my main mapping project uses an annual style that's not compatible with + yet).

    Of course, said render took about an hour and a half to finish. XD So I won't ALWAYS export in that size - if I just made a small update to a map and want to render an image to show someone, I'll still go with lower res to speed up the rendering. But it's nice to have the option now of putting out a much higher res image every now and then.
  • 4 months later
  • I've just installed CC3+ Update 3 (version 3.69) and LAA is enabled for the application. :)
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