yikes... 50MB worth fo images turned into a 200MB+ app

hillelc

Any ideas?

I have lots of 1024x768 images in my app. None more than 200k. Most closer to 100k.

In total, in the Finder, they amount to just over 50MB.

But my GS app is now over 200MB.

Any thoughts on how to get this app way smaller?

I tried publishing just for kicks... the GS servers barfed of course.

Help?

mentaldirector

You probably didn't read the message carefully. The images are not big, there are many images. It could be a picture book for example. And I wonder the solution too.

juzcook

Well here's something to consider. I updated one of my apps that was built in 0.8.9. The 0.8.9 build was 17mb (with retina display box checked), then when i updated the game in 0.9 by adding a button that turns off music, and a splash page, the build became 41mb. I think they've changed something in the way it publishes...

mentaldirector

I don't think GameSalad team takes us seriously... No serious answers in this forum by team at all...

Photics

mentaldirector said:
I don't think GameSalad team takes us seriously... No serious answers in this forum by team at all...

I'm not sure that's accurate. CodeMonkey seems to be doing a good job.

GameSalad doesn't work well with large images. I learned that the hard way.

Here's a comparison of two games...

Annoyed Tomatoes vs. Arcade Action

Annoyed Tomatoes is really pushing the limit of iOS devices, while Arcade Action is smooth and optimized. Both games can generate a large number of actors on the screen, and both have retina display quality graphics, so that's not a problem. Annoyed Tomatoes even has animated actors, but it seems OK. The real problem I've seen with GameSalad is when you have large images... especially scrolling background. It really hurts performance.

The major difference between those two games... image size. In Annoyed Tomatoes, I have Retina Display quality backgrounds... not particle effects or textures like in Arcade Action. Just five large images, along with other artwork, and my game is approximately 20 MB in disk space. The final upload for the free version was 19.7 —— that's just under the limit for mobile downloads.

So, right there that's an issue... large images means players may not be able to download your app. From what I've read, apps over 20 MB will need wi-fi connections.

And then... there's memory issues. On my iPhone 4, I think Annoyed Tomatoes was pushing like 70-80 MB. I was only using the Change Omage behavior, so only one large image was on the screen at a time. It didn't matter... BOOM... massive memory usage.

Did you try dividing your game up into scenes? Also, I think firemaplegames posted a trick to save memory... something about instances vs. prototypes. It didn't work for me though. HA

cbt

mentaldirector said:
I don't think GameSalad team takes us seriously... No serious answers in this forum by team at all...

Yeah.. They just hate their customers.. A company that doesn't care the users, on their own support forum..

That doesn't make any sense now, does it?

I'm sure that as soon as someone who is capable of answering this question (like CodeMonkey I think) sees this, will write an explanation.

Until then, for a more certain solution, report here;
http://gamesalad.com/bug/report

hillelc

Some notes:

1. it is a bunch of children's picture books
2. i am ok with it being over 20MB. Just not 200MB.
3. they're already definitely not retina display quality.
4. they're already broken up into 26 scenes. No more than 17 images per scene, and often around 8 images per scene.
5. performance is fine. Not amazing, but fine.

I'm still hoping someone from GS will give me an official take on this.

p.s. subscribing to topic via e-mail has stopped working for me.

jonmulcahy

email subscribing is a known issue, it's been reported.

what are the specs of the images?

png? jpg? gif?
8bit? 16bit? 24bit?

if they are not already PNG, convert them before you add them. GS automatically converts all images to PNG anyways.

Photics

hillelc said:
4. they're already broken up into 26 scenes. No more than 17 images per scene, and often around 8 images per scene.

So, this seems like 260 images at 480x320. If each image is 200 KB each, that's like 52 MB. Where is the other ~150 MB coming from?

Did you delete the unused images from your project?

mentaldirector

I don't say they hate their users of course But there is no satisfactory explanations usually. For example; splash screen issue... or 0.89->0.90 issue... So many users wrote so many messages... What's the result? What can I do if I don't create a game but a serious application? They may say GameSalad is for games only... It's ok too, but I think the team must be more interactive... Correct me if I'm wrong... Actually may be this is a better solution: Ok it's hard ro reply every message I understand, but at least they must create a good FAQ section with up-to-date info on it. If something is mentioned too much they may include the solution there... BTW: I'm not blaming anyone, I'm talking about forum and customer-company dynamics here.

I'm sorry it's a little off topic!..

CodeMonkey

I've already emailed hillelc in Customer Support. Waiting for a reply.

StormyStudio

Be good if you can post the outcome...just out of interest as my game will soon grow quite a bit and get lot more images in it...

I'm assuming if I optimize all my images first, into 8bit pngs where possible, and delete any unused graphics it should be ok.

Must say my current game scene has 7 images, each 960 x 640 (roughly) all spread out over 1 scene, and the adhoc version works perfectly fine on my phone (admittedly an iphone 4) , testing on a 3G tonight.

sebmacfly

I think that if hillelc duplicate a scene with some pictures in, that will increase the project size... I'm right??

izam

Ok I had the same problem too. My project file was stated as 5mb inside the gamesalad "Home screen" on the bottom right corner. However, when I publish it adhoc, it becomes a whopping 60mb!!

So I look inside the package content of the gameproject file, and tried to see which files from inside it is the culprit. Turns out that there's a folder called "screenshots" which stores all the screenshots that I had for ALL levels that I have in the game. The screenshots are all captured EVERYTIME you "preview" your game.

The thing is, even OLDER screenshots are saved in there. I deleted them all and gotten back my slim 6mb adhoc .app file.

Hope this helps you...if you happen to have the same problem as me. I think you do. Let us know.

sebmacfly

izam said:
...
The thing is, even OLDER screenshots are saved in there. I deleted them all and gotten back my slim 6mb adhoc .app file.
...

Great job izam!

hillelc

I did delete unused images.

CodeMonkey did write to me about deleting screenshots.

I did reply asking how to do that (i can't find it in the UI).

Outlook decided to hold on to my mail for some unknown reason instead of sending it out like it's supposed to.

I just sent the mail again.

If anyone knows how to delete screenshots, I'd be most appreciative.

--hillel

izam

ok this is what you do to delete the screenshots:

(But first please make another copy of your gamesalad project file before doing this.)

When you're done with that, right click on that gameproject file and select "show package content".

The Finder will open up a new folder and you can see all the "assets" within your gameproject file. Within that, you can see a folder called "Screenshots". Click on that and you can see all those screenshots. You may want to delete the ones you don't want, or you might want to delete all (I deleted them all, because every time you preview the game a screenshot will be generated and saved again; so there's no need to worry)

Hope this helps.