April Update: Demo is on schedule for April 15th.
Hm... a bit short for a post. I know, let me blather on about something I learned just this week. Actually, let me back up first. When I released K. Fox & the Magic Sword, the file size was just over 4 MB. About a month later I released version 1.1, and the file size had shrunk to just over 1 MB. What changed you ask? I learned how to compress sound files. The background music was taking up 3 MB of a 4 MB game.
So, this week I've been adding in the double team animations, and the file size has grown quite a bit because of it. Simultaneously, I've been having this 'funny' problem where saving can take up to 10 minutes. I assume the two are related - it's like I've exceeded some file size limit. I've been thinking the machine is hoping into virtual memory, or the hard drive is full or something else along those lines, but nothing is showing up as being obvious. Anyway, about the same time I learned that you can also compress sprites. AWESOME! I thought, I'll cut my file size by 75% for sure, probably even more because graphics take up a lot more space than sound files. This should totally fix my saving issues.
The compression tool in Flash works by combining features together. So a drawing with several small lines converts to fewer, smoother lines. And there's even a slider bar so you can control just how much it smears your work. (For those of you playing along at home, it's under Modify, Shape, Optimize). I didn't really want to change my art that much, but even with the slider set to minimal I was seeing the number of curves get cut in half. So, yeah, I was super excited about this.
I'll skip to the end here. The FLA file (the one I work with) shrunk from 53 MB to 50 MB, and the SWF file (the one you play) shrunk from 2.6 MB to 2.4 MB. So... yeah, not the improvement I was hoping to see. I'm going to keep these changes, as I really didn't notice much of a visual change, and maybe it will make the game play a bit faster as well. But, have to say, not the game changer I was hoping for.
So that's the main thrust of what I've been working on this week. I've also been a bit paranoid that I have a more serious computer problem, so I've been a bit better about making backups & such. So far, the extra-long save times have been the only anomaly. Here's hoping I find the cause sooner rather than later.
-DirtyC101
Hrm, have you tried to play/test the game in .swf format on a machine other then the one you work on? It'd give you a better idea of if the problem persists only on your machine or if its a programming error that you need to root out. Because if the saving times do not persist elsewhere, its more likely to be something on your end.
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