Movod Ruins re-release / File sizes

[TJgamer]

Hey guys, I've fixed a couple things in Movod Ruins.

1) The music and ambiences now loop instead of only playing once.

2) I fixed the mistake in the library, where the blue book used to say that the pattern that you use opens a wall, when in reality it's a bridge.

But I still have trouble keeping the game in proper size. Right now it's around 100MB, including the sound, video, and image files. I've seen and played the game "Dreaming" (heard of it?), and I've seen that there are no audio files in it's folder, yet there is still sounds and music. How is this done? Can anyone help?
 Thanks in advance.

[Silverwind]

Hi TJ, excellent job on Movod Ruins, it's an awesome adventure game.

Dreaming uses the Sound system to play audio tracks. Select "Go>Sounds" in the Finder bar to bring up the Sound window. From there you can manage all the sounds in your game. (note that the Import button sounds promising but only works with .snd files, which as far as I know haven't been in use since OS 8. You'll probably have to settle with the Record feature)

As for how the code, the SOUND command worst almost exactly like the MOVIE command:

Code: [Select]

MOVIE 0 0 movieFileName
LOOP MOVIE

SOUND soundFileName
LOOP SOUND

The big downside of the SOUND command is that sounds greatly increase the file size of your game. If your game breaches 16 Megabytes you run the risk of corrupting the entire file, resulting in content loss. So if you're working with lots of sounds, make sure to keep a backup of your game!

Hope that helps!

[TJgamer]

Thanks, but the record feature only records sounds by microphone. I was expecting it to record sounds on your computer. Any other ideas? Is there any application that can record sounds into .snd files?

[Al Staffieri]

I would keep using the aif sounds that you have, but try reducing their size. For example "The story of Helva" is over 4 minutes long and takes up 11.7mb. Try cutting the length in half and have it loop in GameMaker.  That should reduce the disk size by half. Do that for any lengthy aifs you have.

You might also be able to resave them at a slightly lower quality (I don't know what you use to make them) to reduce disk size. You may have to play with different quality settings to get something that doesn't suffer from noticeable reduced sound quality, but takes up less space.

[TJgamer]

For music, I make it in 'GarageBand'. And then I record the music I made with 'Wire Tap Pro', an application from Ambrosia Software. Wire Tap Pro records sounds into aifc. files. And you're right, recording something for that long would make it a large file.