[F8] Any Ideas How I can lower the filesize of the first frame?

[The_Mercenary]

Well guys, I'm making this game, and well, the loading screen doesnt appear until about 1,400 kb is loaded. I know its because I export the sound in the first frame, cause I really hate adding sound to frames, and anyway, when I uncheck the "export in first frame" box in the linkage menu, the sound wont play at all. So Is there any way of using sound in AS w/o having to export it in the first frame?

[fil_razorback]

Make the preloader an external swf =)

[The_Mercenary]

well, wouldnt it still need to load the first frame before it could load the swf? And I'm not sure if flash can load swf files not hosted on the server its on, which wouldnt matter for my site, but it would affect the sponsor and such.

[marmotte]

here's a working solution then:

1) as you said, uncheck "export in the first frame"

2) put your loading bar at the 1st frame, with a stop() of course. when your game is fully loaded, tell to go to frame 3 (that's where your game begins)

3) now, frame 2. create an empty movie clip here. inside that movie clip:
3.1) 1st frame is empty. add a stop()
3.2) 2nd and last frame, put all your sounds there, on the timeline directly. you're done


how does it work?

when your loading is OK, it goes to frame 3. in order to go to frame 3, it "goes through" frame 2, where you have all your sounds stored "physically". since they are stored there, flash now knows they exist. and if flash knows they exist, it can now attach them even if "export to first frame" is unchecked ^_^

EDIT: note that the same method can be used when you attach dynamically movie clips from the library

[Gloo pot]

Can you store all your sounds in a seperate swf file and just load them in that way?

[The_Mercenary]

here's a working solution then:

1) as you said, uncheck "export in the first frame"

2) put your loading bar at the 1st frame, with a stop() of course. when your game is fully loaded, tell to go to frame 3 (that's where your game begins)

3) now, frame 2. create an empty movie clip here. inside that movie clip:
3.1) 1st frame is empty. add a stop()
3.2) 2nd and last frame, put all your sounds there, on the timeline directly. you're done


how does it work?

when your loading is OK, it goes to frame 3. in order to go to frame 3, it "goes through" frame 2, where you have all your sounds stored "physically". since they are stored there, flash now knows they exist. and if flash knows they exist, it can now attach them even if "export to first frame" is unchecked ^_^

EDIT: note that the same method can be used when you attach dynamically movie clips from the library

thanks, I was actually thinking about doing something similar, but I wasnt sure if it would work. Anyways, thanks alot! thats been a problem for me for a while now, good to know I can get rid of it.

[mrpauly99]

grant skinner has created a great jsfl command which takes the headache out of setting export frames in a huge library. very handy!

http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/000104.html