Using external graphics?

[blub]

Hello

Is there a way or is it even recommendable to use external graphics?

The exe file of my game is already 714KB and it's FAR from done. It doesn't even has music and sounds yet.
Would it be possible to use different files for the graphics?

Something like this:

\gamedir\
\gamedir\game.exe
\gamedir\data\
\gamedir\data\background1.png
\gamedir\data\enemysprites.png

etc.

Is it possible? Would it lag? Is it stupid to do?

[LB]

It is perfectly possible to do as long as you don't access the images in rapid succession.

By the way, 714KB is extremely small. Even 10MB is a little on the anorexic side. Do you have some file size constraint?

[oasuke]

Yes it's possible considering I use external files daily. Lag depends on how you're using them. If you're constantly reading/writing to a file in a fastloop or some other resource tasking event then yes it'll be a problem. Usually with external files you should only need to access it initially during frame start up, sorta like caching. I don't think it's stupid considering you'll have greater modularity.

[Corlen]

Yeah my game right now is almost 9MB (not including the music and sound data which is external) and it's still not even half finished and it only has NES graphics and crap like that, although it's getting close to 9MB. As LB said, 10MB is a little small for an application size, let alone 714kb.

I make use of external files quite often but I try to load them few and far in between because when I did something like loaded the controls constantly from an INI file, my game lagged like hell but I've since learned from that mistake so you should load them at the start of the frame or something like oasuke recommended.

[Chrille]

Was just about to ask a question on this topic, I prefer working with external files mostly as it's much faster than re-importing a sprite in MMF. However, I've always wanted to be able to compress or encode a folder with MMF somehow. To disguise it so that people can't edit the files inside. Is this possible?

[Stephen]

Archive Object would work. Add all your files to an encrypted zip file (with a custom file ext if you want) and just extract what you need at runtime.

[Chrille]

Thanks! Will give it a look.

Hmm, although, as I'm considering releasing this in flash format I guess I'd probably better off just using in-game sprites right?

[Stephen]

I am pretty busy but I will add porting Archive to flash to my list.

[Shawn]

You'll need to use some sort of file compression on the external graphics. Otherwise you aren't saving yourself anything by making them external, it will still be basically the same size download (if file size is your main concern). I'm not sure how MMF handles graphics internally and how it compresses them. Couldn't tell you the size difference between things stored in the .exe and loading external uncompressed graphic files, maybe someone else knows.