Posts by Paul_Boland

Hi Folks.

You know those 3D panoramic images you see online, where you can hold down the mouse button and you can drag and the image will rotate and show a full 360 degree view of the enironment based on the place the image taker is standing at... Can Fusion display these images? If so, is it possible to create interactive hotspots on them so a player can look around the place he's standing at and click on areas of the enironment he's looking around?

I got it sorted. Silly mistake on my part, the Load and Play commands were outside their group (set to execute once) and so were executing over and over again. Once I moved them into their group it worked fine.

Hi Folks.

This has be totally puzzled... When I made Dungeoneer, I used Active DirectShow to play the few hundred movie files that are in that game. I'm now trying to do this again, play a movie file in a game, but something very weird is going on...

Whether I use Active DirectShow or DirectShow, when I try to play a movie file I just get a black screen. Nothing plays. I have tested this to the hilt, even telling fusion to check the path to the movie is correct and if so, then to load the file and play it and all I get is a black screen.

BUT... If I load up Dungeoneer and run that in Fusion, all its movie files play perfectly!?!?! The new movie file itself plays fine outside of Fusion so thinking perhaps the file is corrupt I copied over one of the Dungeoneer movie files to the new project and tried to play that... All I got was a black screen!! So I then copied over the movie playing frame from Dungeoneer into the new project and it plays fine, both the Dungeoneer file and the new movie file.

Now I'm completely stumped!?!?!?! I have checked the coding:
Load file.
Play file.
The new movie playing frame in the new project just refuses to work, and yes, I ever tried creating it again and still no luck, just a black screen. But yet the copied over exact same frame from Dungeoneer plays the file fine?!?!?!?!?! I'm at a loss...

Can anyone offer some help? Can you test it yourself... Create a new frame, add DirectShow or Active DirectShow, and load a file and play the file and see what happens? This makes no sense to me at all.

Hi Clickteam.

Just a quick message here to suggest an update to Install Creator Pro. The software is currently limited to 2Gb file size for installers. With many of todays software running into the tens of gigabytes in size, the 2Gb limit for Install Creator is crippling. It would be great to get this increased. Perhaps the Installer could be split over multiple files instead of compressing all into a single file. Then all files are put onto an installation disc or compressed zip file and can allow the distribution of large titles. I am a huge fan of Install Creator, I have been for many years. But while i know the focus is on Firefly and Fusion 3, I would love to see Install Creator get some attention to and for this 2Gb limit to be removed.

Thanks, folks. Dungeoneer will be uploaded to Steam this weekend so hoping it will go live next week.

Quote from Volnaiskra

Great thread. Thanks for the heads up with the slow saves! I'll not get a heart attack if I get a 60sec+ save now! I'm currently on 300mb and about 20sec saves.

Congrats on getting the game finished! It looks 3D. Is it pre-rendered, or does it use P3D or something?

A 300 odd seconds save can be jarring! LOL!! As for the game, it's pre-rendered. Most of the three year development time was twiddling my thumbs waiting for Lightwave to finish a render. Level 3 of the Dungeon was the worst as it was an ice level and it had lots of transparent, reflective, rough ice to render!!

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Quote from Julian82

Great stuff, Paul XD How many hard drives did you have to clutter with your backups XD sounds like a nightmare o_O +1 for versioning in F3. Really happy I’m on Dropbox pro since a couple of months an it handles versioning for F2.5 extremely well. The most important message is you finished something against all odds, good luck with the release!

Four hard drives held copies of the game, each holding multiple copes of it. It got a bit crazy as the end drew close, particularly when backing up to a remote drive as uploading a folder nearly 40Gb in size took a long time!!

Quote from RhysD

Wait, you were only working with one MFA file the entire time? No versioning whatsoever? You'd sweat a lot less if you just saved a new MFA every time you've been working on it, that way if one corrupts you don't lose 3 years of work...

Oh, no, I'm not that mad! LOL!! I had backups. And every time I completed a new room in the game, a new backup was made just in case... The reason I'd sweat hitting the save button was that I was worried, every time I added to the game, would Fusion say enough is enough and refuse to save it. But it didn't, it worked out, it got me to the end. But rest assured, there were plenty of backups made along the way.

Thanks, folks. Just ticking a few final boxes here prior to release.

Zip2kx, not sure how to create levels like that. Do you have a tutorial? But yes, it did work out in the end though probably pushed Fusion to the limit doing it. LOL!!

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Hi Folks.

Dungeoneer is finished! I finished it two days ago, implementing the end of the game, the instructions, and the credits. The game is now going through some bug hunting and refinement. Recent Facebook Memories posts that appear privately in my timeline have confirmed that Dungeoneer has been three years in the making, work starting on it in 2014.

I am extremely proud of this game! It’s been a major, long term project, which has consumed my life almost every waking hour of every day for those past three years. And I think the finished game is a wonderful adventure, telling a great story. But the reason for this post is to give you some insight into what it is like to create a huge game in Fusion.

I remember many years ago I was working on Shooting Stars 2. As the game file grew in size, I got concerned that perhaps Fusion couldn’t handle such large MFA files. When I hit 400Mb in size, and still very much at the early stages of the game, I decided to cancel it as I could see the game file size growing to insane levels and I wasn’t sure Fusion could do it.

When I started Dungeoneer, I did indeed know that the game file size was going to grow big, and yes, Shooting Stars 2 was not far from my mind in that area. But I’m happy to say that Fusion is a lot more robust than I gave it credit for. Dungeoneer is finished and Fusion managed to keep the game file together, but it did start to groan as the file size got very large.

Dungeoneer contains a movie folder. This folder is external from the game file and it comes in at 4.24Gb!

The actual MFA Dungeoneer game file is a whopping 1.03Gb!

When I hit around the 600Mb mark for that file, I started to get worried. I still had a lot of the game to do and now it was even larger than the Shooting Stars 2 game file when I canned it. Would Fusion handle all that was to come for Dungeoneer?

It did! But it did groan about it…

The first issue I encountered did indeed scare the hell out of me, and it continued to scare the hell out of me EVERY time it happened… Loading the game took about one minute. And I do mean one minute, roughly sixty seconds. It also took that long to save it. And sure enough, every time I added more to the game and clicked the save icon, I held my breath in hope it would save without any issues.

Then one day, a few months back, I clicked save and the hard disk light started flashing as Fusion saved the game. Time passed… Ten seconds… Twenty… Thirty… Forty… Fifty… Sixty… … … … And the hard disk light kept chugging!! After about another sixty seconds, and with the hard disk light still chugging, I got worried! That was over two minutes now saving the game, and all I had was the spinning Windows cursor… What was going on???

Another minute passed, and another!! That’s four minutes!!! I sat on my chair waiting and I literally did indeed think the game file was gone, it was corrupted!! This was not right!! About a minute more later, that’s five minutes total, the chugging stopped and the windows mouse pointer reappeared!!

Checking the file in Explorer, the file size seemed ok. But I was worried. I closed down Fusion and instantly launched it again and loaded up Dungeoneer again. That one minute load time was scary because I really did think I was going to get prompted by an error message saying it couldn’t open the file. But it loaded, it opened, and all was fine.

And so began what I came to know as the “Five Minute Saves!” These didn’t happen all the time, most times I got a one minute save. But as the Dungeoneer game grew, and the MFA file size grew, the five minute saves became more frequent! Suffice to say, a one minute save is scary enough, but to see the hard disk light chugging for five minutes can really break you out in a sweat!

And just so you know, this happened on multiple computers, not just one. So I don’t know what Fusion was doing during these five minute saves, but it did indeed save my game just fine, while scaring the hell out of me in the process! LOL!!

The second issue I encountered was very slow launching of the game. Again, this didn’t happen all the time, most times I would launch the game, or the frame, to play it, and it would launch within a few seconds. But there were times when I would launch the game or a frame, and it would take up to twenty or thirty seconds to launch. These, too, were scary moments but again, they always worked fine.

The third issue I hit was when Dungeoneer’s frame count exceeded 500 frames. It was after this was I found Fusion itself started to act erratically. Sometimes menus, such as the Jump To Frame menu, would display erratic frame numbers, jumping all over the place. And twice, and twice only, Fusion wouldn’t allow me to copy a frame when needed. First time that happened I really did think Fusion had given up but once I closed down and restarted Fusion, it worked fine.

So in the end, Fusion did it! It is robust enough to allow you to build BIG games. It will groan about it as your file size, and frame count, grow, but it’s a sturdy piece of software that’s very capable of achieving your big gaming idea goals.

As for me, will I ever do such a huge project again? While I have no immediate plans to jump on another huge project like Dungeoneer, I do have plenty of gaming ideas that I want to make that would be just as big. For now, I’m preparing Dungeoneer for release and then I’ll take a short break and then I’ll start looking at my next project.

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Thanks. No, the game is all made in Fusion itself. It's a point & click adventure, not a free roaming 3D game.

Dungeoneer. Final promo movie for the game. Steam store page should be live soon...! The game won't be too far behind that...!!

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Dungeoneer.

Thanks!!!!

Quote from Volnaiskra

Just checking: you're using OGG or MP3 and not WAV, right?

Yes, using OGG. Music files aren't that big. I think the majority of the bulk is coming from the graphical content. There is a lot! And a lot of animated stuff too, and I'm not talking about the movie files which are whole other massive content area. The game folder is humongous!

Thanks for the feedback. If it is indeed 2Gb that will be grand, the game is over 50% done so I won't hit that high. In regards to keeping the artwork and music externally, I could do it with the artwork but the music is under royalty free license and has to kept inside the application so can't keep that outside. Work is continuing, hope Fusion keeps it all together.

Hi Folks.

Can someone here help ease my concerns about the file size limitations of a Clickteam Fusion MFA file... My big gaming project, Dungeoneer, the MFA file is currently 768Mb in size, the in-game frame count is around 340 frames. With still some way to go before I complete the game, I'm starting to get concerned about the sizes. I am pretty sure there is no limit on frame count, can anyone confirm that for me? But my main question is in regards to the actual file size. With the 1Gb approaching, and it's possible I'll reach it too, I'm wondering if I need to be aware of any limitations Fusion is going to having as the MFA gets so big!

If anyone from Clickteam themselves see this, could you give me some feedback please! Am I good to keep going, or am I approaching a danger zone and need to bring the game to an end A.S.A.P.?

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Dungeoneer. Mystis attacks!!

Thanks again for that, appreciated.

Here's a piece of Dungeoneer factual artwork...

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Dungeoneer. Coming 2017...!!

Well done, Clickteam, on taking a first step into 3D. I wish you the best with it and will be keeping an eye on developments.