Tracking a game/program's memory usage

[clebin]

What's the best way to track the memory usage of my game?

I want to know how much spare memory I have to play with and I can't see the Workbench titlebar while it runs.

* Some debug status built into the game? (nb. written in C, not ASM)
* Some utility on Aminet that can log memory over time?
* FS-UAE/WinUAE debug? (FS-UAE preferred)
* HRTMon/Action Replay?

How do others do this?

[roondar]

I'm not sure whether you just want to know how much memory is free on the machine, or how much memory your program is using.

So, assuming you want to know how much free memory is available:

There are indeed Aminet utilities, some with source, that can tell you how much free memory there is. You could also get the pointer to the Exec memory list and traverse it yourself, though that might involve some pointer arithmetic to work. As a last resort, you could also just execute the avail command and parse it's output.

But these are only really needed if you're using Kickstart 1.3. If your game is running Kickstart 2.0+, the easiest way by far it to just use the Exec AvailMem() function.

See: http://amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD.../node01EE.html

[clebin]

Originally Posted by roondar

I'm not sure whether you just want to know how much memory is free on the machine, or how much memory your program is using.

I want to find out how much memory my program is using, basically.

It currently runs on a stock 512k machine and I want to know how much RAM is left for sound effects, etc. Knowing how much is free before and during is ok as I can do the maths with that.

So, assuming you want to know how much free memory is available:

There are indeed Aminet utilities, some with source, that can tell you how much free memory there is. You could also get the pointer to the Exec memory list and traverse it yourself, though that might involve some pointer arithmetic to work. As a last resort, you could also just execute the avail command and parse it's output.

But these are only really needed if you're using Kickstart 1.3. If your game is running Kickstart 2.0+, the easiest way by far it to just use the Exec AvailMem() function.

See: http://amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD.../node01EE.html

Thanks! I'll check that out. It's only needed during development, so KS2.0+ is fine.

[kamelito]

Assuming your game load all the assets when running.
Try avail mem before launching the program and avail when the program is loaded.
Do a substraction.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by roondar

But these are only really needed if you're using Kickstart 1.3. If your game is running Kickstart 2.0+, the easiest way by far it to just use the Exec AvailMem() function.

AvailMem() exists in 1.x.

UAE debugger "Tm" also shows some detailed memory list information.

[roondar]

Oh, I didn't know AvailMem() was part of 1.x. Very useful to know!