How long does it take to start a VASSAL session?

Thus spake “mike murphy”:

To start which module?


J.


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It takes me about 10 minutes to load VASSAL and another 10 minutes or so to load VASL. The short answer appears to be both the VASSAL engine and VASL.

I’m running Windows XP (SP3) on an AMD Athalon processor with 512MB SDRAM. I could just get a newer system but then I would have to convince my wife that this would be a good thing!

A couple of years ago I had an earlier iteration of both VASSAL and VASL installed, but I removed them (as I’m occasionally prone to do). When I downloaded and reinstalled the newest versions of these products, I encountered the extremely slow performance that prompted my plea for help.

I’ve tried increasing the memory space in the individual BAT files and unloading the XP SP3 … no improvement in performance.

I’m fairly comfortable tweaking my system settings if you have any specific suggestions. Still, I’d be more comfortable with detailed “how-to’s” if that’s where your suggestions lead.

Thanks in advance, Mike

On Sep 9, 2008, at 6:17 AM, mike murphy wrote:

Well, not being a Windows user, I can’t offer much in the way of
specifics, but one relatively inexpensive thing you may be able to do
that would increase system performance is to buy more RAM. I’m not
sure how much your system can take, but if you look at some of the on-
line memory vendors, you’ll find that 1GB should run somewhere between
$40-80 dollars, depending on exactly what kind you need.

Generally when I’ve had Java programs that are sluggish, the cause is
usually a lack of sufficient allocated memory. The recent versions of
Vassal now have a sufficiently high memory allocation in their default
installation that this shouldn’t be a problem except perhaps for some
very large modules.

It would also be somewhat illuminating if you were to try running some
other Java program as well and seeing if there are slow startup and
sluggish running with them as well. There should be some example
programs in your java installation that you could try. Perhaps one of
the windows guys could provide some instructions on how to locate and
run something like that.


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Thus spake “mike murphy”:

To be clear: You’re saying that 10 minutes elapse from when you start VASSAL
to when you see the module manager window?

My wife’s system is at least superficially similar to yours, and on it I
always get the Module Manager in under 10 seconds if it hasn’t yet been
loaded on this boot, and in 2-3 seconds if it’s been run one or more times
before. This is almost certainly a problem with your machine or how you’re
starting VASSAL.

SP3 should make no difference at all. My wife’s XP system is SP3 also.

What BAT file are you talking about here? You said you’re running 3.1.0-beta3,
correct? Did you set it up via the Windows installer?


J.


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That’s what I’m saying … an agonizingly long time to await for this to appear.

Not to seem too slow … what is the proper way to start VASSAL? I’m doing this on my own without anybody else helping me to this point. I’ve been loading and running VASSAL and VASL of on the fly. I’m usually not to big on reading detailed documentation unless I have to!

When I downloaded 3.1.0-beta3, I did install it using the Windows Installer. I would like to mention a couple of points at this time. I first wrote for help last weekend after spending several hours of time on this. Now that the workweek is underway, I’m only able to get to this for an hour or two (at most) at a time. Hence, my responses may seem slow.

I downloaded the latest version of Java ™ 6 Update 7 through the Windows Installer early on in the process. As far as I can tell, Java is properly installed. I haven’t had the time to run another Java based program to see how it’s working. I do have the Sun Open Office Suite on my machine, I just need the time to run it (today’s not a good day for that).

I have a Registry Cleaner (monitor) program running in the background and today I turned it off. Already I think I see an improvement in my machine’s performance. Again, today’s not a good day to explore this.

Thanks for your help. I’ll be getting back with you in another day or so to touch base on this issue. I’m kind of hoping that the Registry monitor is the culprit and that turning it off is the answer.

Mike

mike murphy wrote:

This makes me wonder if you’re somehow not running the new beta at all,
but web-starting an older version, and managing to download it again
every time.

Does anything different happen (even failing in a different way!) if you
try with the computer disconnected from the network?

Regards,
Tim.


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Thus spake Tim Franklin:

Or, simpler: What does the window you get when VASSAL starts look like?


J.


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Guys,

Thanks for jumping in to help me. I don’t have the time right now to work with you to resolve this. Perhaps we can try again in a few weeks.

My ultimate goal is to be able to fire up a game on the fly whenever I get a few minutes free.

Thanks again.

Mike

Given the limited memory on the system, best guess is that VASSAL is taking all of it and the system is having to swap. Maybe the initial heap size is too large. In v3.0 it wasn’t set at all.

rk

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Thus spake “Rodney Kinney”:

This is unlikely to be the problem for any of the 3.1.0 betas, because the
module manager starts with the JVM default max heap, and from my tests won’t
use more than about 20MB RAM peak (and about 5MB thereafter). Unless he has
under 20MB RAM available at the time when he’s starting VASSAL, it’s not a
swapping issue.


J.


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Guys, I finally found a bit of time to play around with this some more; here’s what I’ve discovered. Some of this should be quite obvious to you but it wasn’t to me until tonight!

  1. I have Sun’s Open Office suite installed — the perfect tool to test out my Java. The suite loads within a minute or so and runs like a champ! The Java that I have on my machine is good! :smiley:

  2. I uninstalled VASSAL and VASL from my machine.

  3. I went to (I think it’s) VASL.org and re-read the page. I had been trying to run both VASSAL and VASL simultaneously. That certainly didn’t help me. :blush:

  4. I downloaded the local (non-web starting) version of VASL and ran it. It took about 10 to 12 minutes to start up, but once it started up it ran as fast as I expected it to run. I was able to set up a scenario and save it for future use in a time frame that I consider to be normal. I didn’t experience any untoward delays whatsoever.

I conclude that I have good installations of both Java and VASL. I appear to need more memory to run the application. I either need more memory for my machine, or better yet, a new PC.

Anybody have any other thoughts about this?

Thanks for putting up with my slow responses.

Mike

Thus spake “mike murphy”:

If you’ve accurately reported your hardware, then I think that’s not true.
VASSAL uses little memory prior to loading any modules, and as I said before,
I’ve run VASSAL on a machine similar to yours without difficulty.

Look in the Task Manager and check how much free memory you have before
starting VASSAL. How much is it?


J.


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I cannot figure out a quick way to post a copy of Task Manager so I’ll have to hand copy these for you instead.

Physical Memory (K)

Total…490992
Available…131120
System Cache…212792

Granted that as these figures constantly change, this is only an approximation of the memory usage.

Does this provide any insight to you?

I am also not ruling out the possibility that some program or internal settings are slowing my machine to a crawl. Note that I HAVE run full system scans on my machine several times to rule out any possible viruses.

Thanks for your assistance.

Mike

Today I switched from a DSL to a cable-based broadband internet connection. While checking out my new connection, I decided to fire up VASL. What do you know, it began running normally in under two minutes! Somehow my DSL connection was really slowing things down!

Mike

Thus spake “mike murphy”:

That’s very interesting. It points to there being a reqeust we’re sending
which should timeout much before it actually does. I wonder if your old ISP
was blocking a port or something?


J.


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If you’re asking me, my answer is that I don’t know. I may be a geek (hell, I am a geek), but I’m not that geeky!

I just thought that you’d like to know how I resolved the problem. All this time I thought it was a fault with my machine or software.

Mike :confused:

Thus spake “mike murphy”:

I’m not expecting an answer, I’m just speculating about what went wrong. I
think the problem was something that was partially our fault and partially
the fault of your ISP.


J.


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