Project file taking ages to load

dwibre

When I open up my project file on my mac its taking ages like 40 seconds to open the project. The file size is 14mb and my mac is only a few months old so its not the mac. Is this normal? Once open everything runs fine.

dwibre

bump!

tatiang

So a few details are in order:

What version of Creator are you using?
What version of OS X are you using?
Does this happen with all saved project files or just one particular file?
Where are you saving your project files (e.g. hard drive, flash drive, Dropbox, etc.)?
What happens when you open a built-in template such as Alien Conquerors?
What happens when you open a new Blank Project?

dwibre

Latest creator I think 0.10.1
OS X 10.8.2
Only got one project file but save revisions everytime I update it as the project has got bigger its taking longer to load up.
Alien Conquerors opens instantly
new project opens instantly
saves it hard drive

tatiang

Hmm... the only thing that comes to mind is that a large image or sound file could be causing loading times. But when I've seen corruption/large files affect project files, it's been when Previewing and not when opening the files. Still, might be worth making a duplicate copy (don't work in the original file when deleting images), stripping all the images and sounds out, and then seeing if it makes a big difference. If so, add the images/sounds back in one by one to see which file is causing the issue.

The_Gamesalad_Guru

I remember a post where someone did this and it helped. Make a new project with the same settings as the original. Make a copy of your original project. right click on the new project and select show contents. Do the same on the copy of the original project. Now select all the folders in the copy of the original project and drag them into the window of the new project, basically transferring all content into the new project. Close the windows, trash the copy of the original and try opening the new project. You're project will be intact. See if that helps with open times. This is the only trick I know.

dwibre

Thanks Dave will give it a try tonight. Projects coming along well, wont be long now till testing.

dwibre

Tried all the above but nothing improved the file load time. I went back though all my revision files probably about 50 of them and it seams that as the file size has got bigger the load time has got longer. So Im going to keep my fingers crossed that all is ok with the file and move on as I said once its open it runs fine and still running at 59-60fsp :-). Thanks for the help though guys

tatiang

Still seems strange. If I open a 20 MB project file, it takes 10 seconds to open Creator and open the file. If I have Creator open and just open that file, it takes 2 seconds. Sorry we couldn't help more!

The_Gamesalad_Guru

Did you try reinstalling GS and also do a permission repair on your Mac.

dwibre

No not tried that whats a "permission repair" - This morning though I deleated my "Mid Block" which as you know FBS is used 1000's of times (litrally) and it opened in about 15seconds which is good. I changed the image of midblock to something else and it went back to 45second opening time. I think it is just the amount of actors I have in the scenes thats causing the long load time when opening the project file. As I say it works fine and quick on my iphone

beefy_clyro

The more it has to load up then the longer it will take. Personally, I wouldnt worry about it, like you said, once opened is fine and when on device its fine.

tatiang

@dwibre, I sent you instructions for how to Repair Disk Permissions. But I suspect that's not going to improve your situation because it took over a minute to open your project file on my computer.

The project file is about 19 MB. I tried deleting all images and saving it and it was still 18 MB, which I find odd since there are no sounds. I noticed that in the Package Contents there is a .gsuser file that is 8 MB in size. I haven't paid attention to that before so I'm not sure if that's abnormal, but I looked at a few other project files and that file was way under 1 MB for all of them.

My best guess is that your file is corrupted somehow. I know beefy_clyro said to ignore it and he may be right. I know this information isn't very helpful. Continue to back up religiously!

beefy_clyro

You could always make a copy, delete the .gsuser file and see if its any better. It will recreate you a new one, it might not go to 8mb

tatiang

@beefy_clyro, I did that and noticed a dramatic improvement. Just wasn't sure about the purpose of that file.

The_Gamesalad_Guru

Yes this is the second time his file was corrupted. I did some work for dwibre and I rebuilt the project for him as Everything last time was slow even working in creator. Permissions keep track of what files can be written to or not and which user owns them. They can cause system wide problems and should be done on a Mac every two months. This corruption problem has been poping up around here often. Something is amiss with GS software.

beefy_clyro

@tatiang @dwibre FBS pretty much sums it up. 18mb for the .gsuser seems huge so its not surprising deleting it would speed things up What is the size of the new one? My lat release LAD was 2mb in total for the finished game and my follow up to that is currently only 288kb and over 2/3 complete

dwibre

Thanks for all the investigation, I have run repair permissions. Also I deleted the .gsuser and re-opened the file it took just as long but said project was only 5.8mb. I saved the project went back into and saw it had created a new 8mb gsuser file of 8mb when I reopened it it was back to 14mb and still taking 45seconds to open. So to sum it up still no change.

dwibre

Also tried deleting gs creater and re downloading it that didn't help lol. Any other ideas? Or should I just except it takes a while to load the project file and move on with the rest of the game? Rebuilding the game is not an option got months of time invested in it :-(

beefy_clyro

It will just be the load time, if you have lots of actors, attributes and rules, you got to expect time to open up. So it takes 40 seconds to open, no biggie really, i'd except it, stop wasting your time and carry on. If it did it with every project and say blank projects then i'd be worried, there must be something in your project causing it to take that long.

dwibre

Thanks @Beefy_clyro I'm a moving on.... :-)

Elfizm

This is worked for me when I had a similar issue except it took 20 seconds to open a 1mb game.

I just had to minimize all the rules and code and now it opens instantly. Not sure why but there's an idea.