SAS WW2 requires a minimum of 512 MB of dedicated memory (i.e. memory not used by your computer's operating system or any other applications running at the same time). A greater amount of memory is likely to improve performance on most computers.
SAS WW2 tries to acquire a minimum of 512 MB and up to 1024 MB of memory when you run it.
If you have more available - such as a GB or more - you can easily set up SAS WW2 to take advantage of this greater amount of memory.
An easy way to gauge if you have enough memory is to look closely at the progress bar at the bottom of the screen during turn calculation:
The figure on the right shows the currently available free memory. If your free memory at any time falls below about 150MB, performance problems are much more likely. If it falls much below this, SAS WW2 can stop working or experience intermittent issues.
If your computer has more than a MB of memort to spare and you want to optimise performance further, you can tell SAS WW2 to use as much as you want.
You can do this by modifying the properties of the desktop icon for SAS WW2 (assuming you launch the application that way).
To do this, right-click on the SAS WW2 icon on your desktop. It looks like this:
This brings up the windows properties dialog for the shortcut.
The "Target" command line string includes "-Xms512m" and "-Xmx1024m". The first means that a minimum of 512 megabytes of memory is required for the program to run. The second means that the program will try to get up to 1024 megabytes if it is available.
These values are on the low side in terms of guaranteeing optimum performance on your computer, but they have been set at these levels so that most computers can run SAS WW2.
If you have more memory, it is highly recommended that you change the target string to higher amounts. For example, you could replace the default values with "-Xms1024m" and "-Xmx2048m", if your computer had up to 2GB or more of memory.
Note that the "Xmx" value must be equal to or greater than the "Xms" value.
The new values you enter should also be multiples of 64.
Don't forget to retain the string exactly as it is with only the two numbers changed.
Once you have made the change, click the "Apply" button, and close the dialog. Then close SAS WW2 if it is running, and re-start it.