How to reduce .swf file size?

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  • Hi all,

    I'm working on converting an old games factory game of mine to newgrounds flash. It's essentially an image driven text adventure.

    I have around 150 images, which originally came in at around 30mb when I first imported them as animations. Realising this was way to big, I compressed the images down to 8mb and reimported them to the .mfa. However, the file size has actually increased from 60 mb to 90mb for the .mfa, and 30mb to 40mb for the .swf.

    My guess is that even though I've replaced the larger images, the program is still for some reason including them in the build.

    Any guidance would be massively appreciated. You can download the .mfa and .swf here:

    .swf: Please login to see this link.
    .mfa: Please login to see this link.

    Sorry they're such huge downloads, obviously that's the problem ;)

    Naturally this is unreleasable unless I can get this fixed, and other than this issue it's almost complete, so I'm really counting on you.

    Many thanks,

    Tom Jubert

  • MMF uses its own compression format for images that you import!. By compressing them smaller and then re-importing them you may have INCREASED the file size because your compressed images now have less areas of clean, solid color (due to lossy compression like jpeg).

    anyone have any suggestions for TJ?

  • - You can set the amount of colours you work with
    - try to avoid gradients if possible
    - try to avaid soft opacity, it creates extra 'colours'

    I must say I don't follow these rules 'every' time, but they could help in making the filesize of your images smaller.

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  • That all makes sense... try to make images that will compress very well...as in not tons of colors and large areas of solid color...and avoid alpha transparency if possible. Other possabilities are make each image size smaller or come up with clever ways to create the images out of repeating parts like tiles etc.

    good luck

  • Thanks a lot guys.

    Is there any way to monkey with TGF's default compression? Seems crazy that it's turning 8mb of images into 40mb for zero recognisable improvement.

  • Is that 40MB the MFA or the SWF? I'd be surprised if it was the MFA. If it's the SWF, then probably it's because Flash doesn't like raster graphics too much...but then again, I'm no Flash expert, it's just a guess. Usually TGF2's and MMF2's compression is really good, unless your 8MB images are lossy formats like JPEG, GIF, TIFF, etc., as those create lots of different colors out of solid colors and makes it harder for TGF2 and MMF2 to compress them.

    Working as fast as I can on Fusion 3

  • technically ANY format with LOSSLESS compression...in other words, an image format that leaves the image perfectly intact...and design your art to use not too many colors, and if possible, larger areas of single colors...like cartoon cell shaded sort of stuff should compress the best.

  • PNG is the best format. It supports alpha transparency, animation, and is lossless. However, MMF2 will not retain the original format. Changing your format before importing will not change the final result.

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  • I agree that PNG is the best format, I was only trying to clarify that the most important point is to NOT allow the image to become "artifacted" by compression and for the sake of reducing file size, to use large areas of solid color and avoid alpha challel unless its really needed for effect or visual quality.

  • Thanks a lot everyone! The biggest thing was reducing the colour palette in TGF2, but I've also had my artist go for less lossy images and we're now down to around 13MB!

    If you're at all interested, watch this space for the announcement in the next month or so:

    Plot is Gameplay's Bitch Please login to see this link.

    Cheers,

    Tom

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