Heres a question for ya, why are you making a 165+ meg game!? Good god! lol
I really doubt your problems are related to your HD space and RAM (As far as the size goes) Though I do think its POSSIBLE you could be filling up your ram somehow (Perhaps with added programs running in the background)
Since you have the HD space to spare, heres somthing you can try. I dont know if what OS your using, but heres how to do it with XP.
Go to control panel, System, ADVANCED tab, under PERFORMANCE click SETTINGS, ADVANCED tab. At the bottom it says Virtual memory, click CHANGE. Click CUSTOM SIZE: and then put in 1000 in both fields.
Dont worry it shouldnt mess anything up, if you want to change it back just choose System managed size. I did it with my system and it boosts performance a bit. But then again I have 256 RAM.
We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams...
Heres a question for ya, why are you making a 165+ meg game!? Good god! lol
No other way to do this sort of thing, as far as my inexperience goes, I have to admit...the premise to the entire thing, after all, is the player being able to interact/effect an animated short film...and you need all the frames there to tell GF where to do each particular thing...ie, 'frame 47' is where an animation may be keyed by the player (vie the keyboard) to switch instantly over to animation 2, and so on...
So far I have created about 68 seconds of full interactive animation, which includes camera movements (panning, zooming, etc) and character control situations.
If you honestly know of a different (ie, BETTER!... way to do this sort of thing, believe me...Im all ears!...
I really doubt your problems are related to your HD space and RAM (As far as the size goes) Though I do think its POSSIBLE you could be filling up your ram somehow (Perhaps with added programs running in the background)
I close EVERYTHING that COULD be running when working on this project...and it STILL takes up to a full 2 minutes to LOAD the 'gam file, or open subfiles (in the Storyboard Editor)...doesnt THAT sound RAM related? I mean, it SEEMS that way....
Since you have the HD space to spare, heres somthing you can try. I dont know if what OS your using, but heres how to do it with XP.
XP...I WISH I had XP!...
Naaah, Im stuck with ME...came with the system, via Gateway and the credit card plan...
Go to control panel, System, ADVANCED tab, under PERFORMANCE click SETTINGS, ADVANCED tab. At the bottom it says Virtual memory, click CHANGE. Click CUSTOM SIZE: and then put in 1000 in both fields.
Hi again
640mb is strange because ram usually works using numbers in base-2. That is 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, etc. You must have a 512 and a 128? (*Calculates in head) yeah, I think that's right. Seems like a strange combination.
Anyway, that's beside the point. The fact that you have 2 HDD's (one a 14gb the other a 19gb) doesnt make a difference -- virtual memory (AFAIK) only uses the main drive (at least by default). You can increase it, thought with only 14gb I wouldnt recommend doing that anyway.
I suppose I have to ask why a computer with only 14gb has 640mb of ram? I doubt you could install a program on that drive that utilised all that memory But I digress, once again.
Using the 60gb might fix the problem. If you do that, you'd need to increase your VM, however, or there will be no difference.
1. Under "Control Panel" double-click the "System" icon.
2. Click the "Advanced" tab.
3. Under "Performance" click "Settings".
4. From the dialog select the "Advanced" tab.
5. Under "Virtual Memory" click "Change".
6. If not already selected, click the "Custom" radio button.
7. Increase the "Initial" and "Max" values above what they were previously.
8. Click "Set" then OK out of the dialogs.
It's impossible for me to say what you should increase your page file size to, unfortunately, it depends on how much memory you can spare, and how much you want to keep free. It's up to you.
As far as the MMF demo goes, open the animation editor then click File -> Import -> Image to import a picture into the animation.
The animations I was importing into my own app were 320x240 in size, 32-bit colour bitmaps. I cant remember off the top of my head how big they were in terms of file size, it would have been a couple hundred kb each. Though I only did some of them manually -- the rest I got bored for, so I turned them into an AVI then simply imported the animation into the active object instead to save LOTS of time.
As far as limitations on the animation sequences, I am not sure. That's another question for one of the programmers at CT
Mike
"Now I guess we're... 'Path-E-Tech Management'" -Dilbert
As far as the MMF demo goes, open the animation editor then click File -> Import -> Image to import a picture into the animation.
I figured that out, yes...but unfortuantely, there is this odd aspect to MMF that created the new frames of animation 'off centered' to the existing frames...when you played back (tested) the sequence, the frames I had imported originally were all neatly centered onscreen...then the NEW frames I added in MMF appeared, and they were all off centered, with the top and upper right area of the screen 'white' or blank...and the lower right and bottom of the animation from that point on was in the bottom of the screen...what gives?
How do you 'center' the new frames, and why didnt they just automatically center when I imported them, to correspond with the EXISTING set of frames?
The animations I was importing into my own app were 320x240 in size, 32-bit colour bitmaps.
Same size here, but Im using GIFs, as they are supposed to be somewhat smaller files...
I cant remember off the top of my head how big they were in terms of file size, it would have been a couple hundred kb each.
Mine average about 64kb.
Though I only did some of them manually -- the rest I got bored for, so I turned them into an AVI then simply imported the animation into the active object instead to save LOTS of time.
I cant do that, unfortunatley, as I need to see all the frames of animation seperately, in order to assign scene changes and sounds to exact frames of the work...(ie, 'frame 55 of USER ANIMATION 1 plays a WAV file, between frames 55 and 59 if user clicks left arrow key, change animation sequence to USER ANIMATION 2', etc)
If I import an AVI instead, it will be imported as an AVI movie, not frame by frame so I can see the frames individually...
Kevin: And then you right click the AVI and select "create active object" and it makes a nice active object for you with all the frames.
Ofcourse you need the avi frames to be in the right order or you'll have to go through them and rearrange them.
Kevin: With numlock on, you can align hotspots and actionspots using the keypad(5 = center, 1 = bottomleft, etc). You can also click the tabs at the bottom of the screen to flip between frames. In such a way I was able to rapidly set 60 frames centered in under 5 minutes. Not too long.
ShadowCaster: Ahhh . My C: is 9gb!(6gb full). I have 512mb of ram, but would have more if I didn't have windows 98. I was actually going to get 2gb, but when win98 didn't accept more than 512mb, the store agreed to take the ram back. Oh, and I have 1.5gb of VRAM.
Hey Kramy!
Ok, lets see what ya had to say, and what I have to say...
************
...And then you right click the AVI and select "create active object" and it makes a nice active object for you with all the frames.
Ofcourse you need the avi frames to be in the right order or you'll have to go through them and rearrange them.
Ok, so how do I import the AVI into the storyboard sequence to bigin with?
Do I go to 'new active object', etc?
Kevin: With numlock on, you can align hotspots and actionspots...
??
Ok, see, this is where my 'newbie' status comes shining thru...
I dont even know what a 'hot spot' or 'action spot' is, as I have yet to have a need for them (I suppose!) in the few games I have created thus far...
Hot Spot: the "center" of your image to make things line up correctly, even if frames have different sizes, and to line things up between different animation sequences. In MMF, click the icon that looks like a fire.
Action Spot: The position of the object where new objects will be created under the "Shoot From Object" action. For example, place this at the tip of a gun if you want it to fire a bullet from there.
I hope that made sense
Mike
"Now I guess we're... 'Path-E-Tech Management'" -Dilbert
I mean, under the animation editor you import the AVI... which imports them as individual frames in your animation.
This is in GF???
Once I open the animation editor (to add frames, etc, in the active object)I dont see any way to do that...I tried 'right clicking' the empty frame, where the new animation pic (frame) would go, but there was no option like that...
Hot Spot: the "center" of your image to make things line up correctly, even if frames have different sizes, and to line things up between different animation sequences. In MMF, click the icon that looks like a fire.
Hmmm...will check it out...
Action Spot: The position of the object where new objects will be created under the "Shoot From Object" action. For example, place this at the tip of a gun if you want it to fire a bullet from there.
I hope that made sense
I THINK it did...
I will need to try it out to make sure...thanks!!!
I meant in MMF you can import video files directly into the animation editor. Sorry if I wasnt clear.
Thats ok...
However, in GF and CNC, the AVIs I tried to import never got saved with the rest of the game files, they always seemed to be stored seperately...does MMF store them with the game files, thus installing them as part of the game...or do you need to save them all seperately?
MMF should import the avi's and save them as an active objects, unless you specify otherwise(by importing into an avi-playing object instead). Ask SC to be sure though, because I always use the right-click---->>>>insert object----->>>>>from file method.
Thanks, I will give it a shot...
I want to thank EVERYONE here that keeps giving their support/input to my problem, I really appreciate it!
On a side note, does anyone know if importing an AVI file is smaller sized in the long run than importing an 'animation' one frame at a time (GIFs)?
I know that MMF is the superior product for this sort of project, but I honestly cannot afford the 99.00 price tag at the moment, and Im hoping to find a way to get what I have already (GF) to do this...
Importing an avi all at once, or frame by frame, will cause no difference in the end file size, because they are both methods of converting a file into what the game will read. One is just a faster method.
I'm guessing MMF has better compression though due to being made later, but that will only slightly shrink the amount of harddrive space it takes up.
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way to do this sort of thing, believe me...Im all ears!...
Mike 
. My C: is 9gb!(6gb full). I have 512mb of ram, but would have more if I didn't have windows 98. I was actually going to get 2gb, but when win98 didn't accept more than 512mb, the store agreed to take the ram back. Oh, and I have 1.5gb of VRAM.
Edited by the Author.