View source for AGIWiki/Out of memory error

{{AGIWiki}}

An '''out of memory error''' or '''no memory error''' occurs when a game tries to load too much information into memory.

''No memory. Want x have y''

This message means that your game is trying to load something that requires x bytes of memory, but your game only has y bytes of memory available. Since the game cannot grant your request to load the resource, it prints this error message and quits.

The original [[AGIWiki/Interpreter|interpreter]] was written for computers that did not have very much memory, and – perhaps as a method of making sure games could run on those computers – the interpreter was not written to take advantage of extra memory if the computer had it. The end result is that [[AGIWiki/AGI|AGI]] games have a memory limit of roughly 64 kilobytes for game data.

As a game author, if you want your game to run on all interpreters, you must observe this limit, even though modern interpreters such as [[AGIWiki/NAGI|NAGI]] and [[AGIWiki/ScummVM|ScummVM]] do not enforce it. See [[AGIWiki/Managing resources|Managing resources]] for some tips for avoiding this error and working with the other constraints of AGI.