"seek failed message" on >2GB .mfa

[JasonDarby]

Hi JARhead76. You are 2 builds behind. Upgrade to build 251 and see if that helps.

This

You have to be on the latest build really to get the best hope of help, otherwise it may be a bug that has already been solved/fixed. And people will waste time trying to help when they cannot.

So update to 251 (always back up your projects before upgrading), and then try it again. Then we can at least rule out that as a possible problem.

Jason

[Johnny]

2 GB °° you have 1 mio graphics in you application ?

[Looki]

Just a little heads up, the 2GB limit seems to be caused by using a signed 32-bit integer to store the size (of whatever kind of data) - It's very similar to FAT32's 4GB limit, but FAT doesn't use signed integers which doubles the maximum. That's the only explanation I can think of here.

[izac]

You should try and keep large files externally, and have MMF2 load them when needed.

My current game uses 16bit 44.1Khz uncompressed wave files for all sounds, imagine how big my MFA would be if I didn't keep them external? Plus, I can easily change the sounds if I am not happy with them by editing the files. I also load high resolution images at runtime using the picture objects to save storing them in active/backdrop objects, keeping the MFA size down.

[Paul_Boland]

FAT32 has the 4gb limit, NTFS doesn't.

When my external hard drive was FAT32 I couldn't copy files bigger then 2Gb to it. After formatting it to NTFS, that limit disappeared. Now it has a 4Gb limit.

[Paul_Boland]

In either case, an .mfa should never be two gigabytes. When I see a fifty megabyte executable or .mfa, I tend to think THAT is very large.

I don't think 50Mb is a large for the MFA or EXE.

Shooting Stars 1's EXE is 198Mb.
Shooting Stars 2's EXE is 246Mb.
The Caretaker's MFA file is 58Mb and growing.

[RickyRombo]

My biggest game, Iceball, is only around 20MB.

And I thought THAT was big.

[JARhead76]

Hey thanks everyone for the responses, I didn't think I would get this many so soon ;-).

@JasonDarby, I just installed build 251 last night and unfortunately the same problem remains, however the good news is I found that by manually checking the image and sound filters I need and by changing the graphics mode from 16 Mil. to 65,000 colors cut my .exe by more than half and my .MFA is now only 1.5GB LOL!

@Paul, I checked and confirmed my hard drive is NTFS formatted

I keep hearing from you guys that I should keep my large files (Poser 8 animations eg.) externally and have MMF 2 load them as needed to keep the .mfa small, can anyone show me a tutorial on how to do this? I always render an animation in poser then import as an active object, this is when the .mfa starts getting HUGE!!!

[Nifflas]

I don't think 50Mb is a large for the MFA or EXE.

Shooting Stars 1's EXE is 198Mb.
Shooting Stars 2's EXE is 246Mb.
The Caretaker's MFA file is 58Mb and growing.

Traditionally, executables contains the program itself and you have resource files for content. So, just because MMF2 does it and your games are that large doesn't mean it's normal to have the data stored in the executable. Of the commercial games I have purchased, the largest executable is only 3 megabytes.

JARhead76: That sounds tricky. It's actually for this reason high resolution games today don't actually tend to use pre-rendered frame by frame animation at all. If you can create a sprite sheet and use it with the Animated Picture extension, it'd probably work as a solution for storing the data externally and cutting the .mfa size.

The problem is, even if you can reduce the size of the .MFA, the loading time and memory usage will still be huge because of the high resolution animation. I wish I could give you an answer that would solve your problem, but all I can say is that high resolution frame by frame animation is very heavy and rarely used in any games, and MMF2 doesn't support the alternative animation methods in an user friendly way.

[JARhead76]

Good news to report on my end :-) I've finally started to dramatically lower my .MFA file size thanks to all the suggestions here.

@Nifflas, thank you for the in depth explanation into what an .exe file size SHOULD be and why, I tried your idea of using a sprite sheet and the "animated picture extension" and it was a success, now that the .MFA externally references my high res images it's much smaller, but the active object is still more versatile and simpler to use but at a cost of course.

Thanks again everyone, if I have any further questions in the future, I know where to ask them ;-)