Breaking apart a graphic advice please

[chuckylefrek]

My knowledge of Flash tends towards the programming side of things - so I am hoping the graphics peeps can offer me some advice.

I have a large background image in a Flash game that is causing my game to run very slowly.

see http://www.mediakitchen.co.uk/monkey_game2.html

The graphic was supplied to me - I guess the graphic designer probably created it in illustrator.

Anyway it appears to be made up of loads and loads of groups. I thought I would try and repeatedly break it apart in an effort to make it not so resource hungry however when I do this is all messes up with things disappearing etc.

I therefore hope someone can suggest how best to do this.

I have created a bitmap version by doing several screenshots and it runs alot faster

http://www.mediakitchen.co.uk/monkey_game3.html

But it will not scale so elegantly and this is important for the final product
Thanks in advance

[Natsia]

Not too sure what you mean?

I'd say your best bet for file size would have to be physically redrawing it in flash.

[RUSHVision]

Can you post a .SWF with just the background? I was able to get the file size of your first one down to 54k by compressing it with Optimaze!. That background doesn't look that complex, but optimizing it should make it run smoother. I'll post the optimized version and you give it a shot.

[chuckylefrek]

Hey RUSHVision - many thanks for offering to do this

The file is here

http://www.mediakitchen.co.uk/background.fla
http://www.mediakitchen.co.uk/background.swf

Thanks

[RUSHVision]

Here ya go. Looks like I have an older version of Flash than you so I just worked with the .SWF, but I've attached a zip that has three different versions...30, 40 & 50% compression. The 50% has a bit more distortion of the lines, but if you had never seen it before you would never know it was different.

[chuckylefrek]

mrush - thanks alot mate - much appreciated! Looks absolutely perfect and should run alot better.

Just out of interest, how did you do it? Did u mention some program optimaze? Is that what you used? I have never heard of it.

Anyway thanks again - very kind of you to spend your time helping me out

[RUSHVision]

No problem.

Yeah, it's a program called 'Optimaze!'. It lets you interactively optimize vector graphics. You can check it out here if you like. You can find it on their product page.