This drives me absolutely crazy, so your help is much appreciated.

I plan on sharing a couple of my games on other sites. I first wanted to update a VERY small part of X1. I created a new picture for a puzzle and replaced the old one. That's all. That file is minimally sized at 171KB. I went to publish the game and it went from 9.03MB to ~53MB. I realize what is happening here (I think). In converting everything to a .quest file, other files in the same location were bundled with this new picture.

If I were to move all X2 pictures out of this shared location and republish, I assume the file size would shrink to its original 9-ishMB. But, if I do that, wouldn't that mean if I wanted to republish X2 at some point down the road I would need to go back into game and relink ALL my pictures?! Argh!

Am I wrong? Is there an easier way to rearrange these files without jumbling up the location of the others?!

And for future reference... if, when starting a new game, should I create a new folder and then save all images/sound files associated with that game into that folder? Currently, I have all of my files basically in a few scattered folders based on their extension types.

EDIT: I guess I don't really understand how things are bundled when creating a .quest file (and forgive me, I know this has been mentioned before on the forums). I think I only have one image and no sounds with X1. So, I took that one image and put it all by itself in a neat little folder on my computer labeled 'X1 images' thinking that when publishing, it would only pull stuff from that folder, but the file size remains at 53MB...

Hell, I just 'Saved as...', created a new file name and saved the .aslx into the X1 folder with the ONLY other file associated with the game, published it, and it is now 55MB! Sorry if I'm an idiot, but this seemed like an easy fix. Hopefully it is and I'm overlooking something obvious.

Thanks!

XanMag

Put them in different folders. That is what Quest does and it is what quest expects, and it does so because that is the best way to organise it.

Publishing does two things. First it combines all the library files with your game (including the built-in ones), to make one big .aslx file. Then it collects all the files in the folder with certain extensions (.png, .gif, etc.; there is an attribute on the game object that controls what).

The Pixie wrote:Put them in different folders. That is what Quest does and it is what quest expects, and it does so because that is the best way to organise it.

Sorry... Is "them" the files from my different games? If so, I thought I did that. I have the .aslx file and my one associated pic file in the same folder separate from all other files. Pardon my idiocy.

So go to Windiws Explorer, and open that folder. Do [CTRL]-A to select all files, then right click and select properties. How many folders and files are selected? What is their size?

You can also rename the .quest file to .zip and then open it up and see what files are inside.

Will try both when I get home. Thanks!

I must be a total idiot. Here are two screenshots of the files. Before changing the picture (~9MB) and after (53MB).

I tried sending it to a .zip file. I extracted it and it just opened exactly what the 2nd pic is.

Ignore that second tab up there. Idiot at work here.

EDIT: Well... I moved the old .aslx file and the one picture to my F: drive - my portable hard drive. I published it and rerouted the compress .quest file to the F: drive as well. The .quest file is now a measly 259KB. So... I have NO clue what got compiled into my first X1 publication to make it 9038KB. It would be nice to know how Quest grabs files to put into the published .quest file to avoid this in the future. FYI... I updated the listing after a few simple corrections (purely text, no pics or sounds). After the simple changes and publishing, it went from 259KB to 388KB, just adding to the confusion.

Thanks and sorry for the bother.

What I had suggested wasn't sending the file to a zip (not creating a zip file from the .quest file) , but renaming the .quest file to a .zip file. A quest published file is just a zip file in disguise. Once you *rename* the extension to .zip, you can then open up the quest file and see the files inside it. (Unless I misunderstood you.)

Since a .quest file is just a zip file, it's possible (?) that Quest isn't deleting the old file but just adding on with the new content? Perhaps always deleting the old .quest file before publishing again will make a difference, if you're seeing the exact same content generating an ever-growing file.