Putting video files into your game but keeping space small

Perhaps there's a way to embed them, and someone can explain how.

But if not, a (somewhat half-baked) solution could be to rename the file extensions. Eg. From *.Mp4 to *.dat or *.bla

Then on launch you could use the file object to rename them all. And on quit you could rename them back.

At least they wouldn't be super obvious, with thumbnails in Windows Explorer. And there'd be a slight barrier to people who want to view them. Though of course if your player alt-f4s out of your game, they would remain in *.mp4 form.

I wonder how much compression Fusion provides vs using a movie file. Anyways, most 90's games for windows just had the video files in the folders, it was almost a source of pride

Would it possibly work to add it as binary data in the Data Elements window, then load them as necessary? I haven't tried that with video files so not sure how it works out.

If you put them in the Binary Files in the Data Elements editor, your files will be automatically extracted by the Direct Show object to a temporary file, that will be deleted when the Direct Show object is destroyed or the filename is modified. You haven't to modify your code, just add the files to the Binary Files, they'll be embedded into the EXE.

However this can add a little delay before your videos start (as the program has to extract them to disk). If you prefer, you can extract yourself your file(s) manually, for example when the frame starts, with the Extract Binary File function, and then use the BinFileTempName$("pathname of your video file") to retrieve the pathname of the file in the temp folder, pass this pathname to the Direct Show object, and when you no longer need it, use Release Binary File action. Note: use the same normal pathname as parameter for all these functions, for example Apppath$ + "videos/video1.mp4".