StarLogo Overload?

[Kay McCullough <mccullou@netspace.net.au>]

Just when I thought I was getting the "hang of it", I've done something
with one of my projects that seems to simply overload it so much that it
just slows and then stops. At that point the buttons don't respond properly
either.  There are no error messages. I've tried increasing the memory
partition allocated to StarLogo, and reducing the number of turtles from
500 to 300 but it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference.

To give a little more detail.  I've set up a model to simulate evaporation.
It starts with 500 turtles in the lower part of the screen that move in
random motion.  The interface between the top and bottom parts of the
screen is a line of patches coloured "sky". These patches act as a barrier
and only let through turtles of a preset energy or greater.  Everything
worked nicely until I decided to try to simulate "drying up" by introducing
another parallel procedure that basically redraws the line of sky patches
across the screen a unit lower every 0.5 seconds. (using the every 0.5 []
primitive on a forever button). It works, and redraws a few times... but
then it all seizes up.

Have I just tried to do too much, or does it sound like theres an error in
my programming?

I'd really appreciate any thoughts anyone had on the matter.

regards,

Kay