City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

[IGOR] Got the 100k blues? This may solve them!

Aliana Blue

By Aliana Blue,
Posted on: 2009-04-24 20:09 in Mission Architect

 

Posted

Character, before and after for convenience, sent via PM. Wouldn't go about sending my arcs themselves though, unless I already had them published. You seem to understand this, though.

Hope it helps. Just looking at the before and after files, there really IS a lot of fat that can be trimmed back.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
As to the question about "does this mean we can never edit the file?" -- yes, that's what it means currently, though IGOR does not alter your original storyarc! It creates a new copy of it that is reduced. So, if you need to edit your story arc... edit the original then re-IGOR it. Its possible to do a lot of reduction while still leaving the IGOR file in a format that will not give errors... but if you edit it and re-save it... it'll be back to full size, so... best to publish the IGOR versions, but work on your original versions.

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Thank you. But, this can't be used to edit an already published arc, so to me personally...not even going to bother. No offense meant to your effort at all, of course.

Dec out.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
As for wasting my time... well, we know for a fact that some changes are effectively influencing whether or not a storyarc can be published in that some that go slightly over the limit do become arcs that can be published. I'm sorry if that runs contrary to a thread you posted

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In what way does that contradict anything I said? Its been so long ago, let me look it up:

[ QUOTE ]
while some things that shrink the file will also shrink memory footprint, other things definitely will not

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What I'm trying to explain to you is that this statement:

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The only rational explanation is that 100k was an estimate they gave based on some level of trial and error with the system, since it corresponds directly to nothing we can measure.

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is wrong. The 100k limit is the memory limit, not some trial and error guesswork. It has always been 100,000 bytes of internal memory taken up by the data structures of the missions, period. As a result, some things can be reduced in the local files, and some things can't. Things in the local files that can't reasonably be reduced in size by compression trickery are generally things that are stored locally in a completely different format than they are stored in memory, such as costume color data. Other things, like text fields can theoretically be reduced in direct proportion from the local file and memory.

This means its possible by actual testing to confirm which things are worth even attempting to compress simply by testing missions with that data to determine if changes to those data elements actually have an impact on the actual memory consumption of the mission, rather than guessing randomly. I know its possible because I have a list of all of them.

Anyway, good luck with your utility.

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Posted

Ok, the old regex was eating costume parts that contained an fx field but no geometry - thats where the wings and aura went, since those costume pieces fall into that category. Beta 6 should handle the color and costume loss - thanks for the critter file info, Ledain!

As for arcanaville... you're too cool for school there, bud.. I'm happy that you have a list of things that affect it, but I don't, so its trial and error. At present I try to remove everything from the storyarc file that can be removed without altering the resulting story arc in the game. Does that mean some things are removed without an effect on whether it can be published? yes, that happens... however, if you remove everything that can be removed, then you'll cover the things that can be removed and have an effect since the latter is a subset of the former.

With luck they'll up the size limit in i15 and the entire point will be moot. The utility is just something I popped together while writing a set of classes for working with storyarc files with the intention of eventually making an editor/manager... so even if IGOR fails to have a profound difference, it also didn't require lots of effort to do.

In the end, my philosophy is "its better to try and fail than to sit around yacking about why there's no point in trying". This includes playing I-know-something-you-don't-know. But hey, we each spend our days doing the things we enjoy, right?

 

Posted

beta 6 seems to be causing custom bosses on boss events and ally events of mine to remove the custom boss/critter from being selected, thus making the arc invalid and having to go in and edit it resulting in re-bloating of arc size, an infinite loop of not-working-ness <_<

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
beta 6 seems to be causing custom bosses on boss events and ally events of mine to remove the custom boss/critter from being selected, thus making the arc invalid and having to go in and edit it resulting in re-bloating of arc size, an infinite loop of not-working-ness <_<

[/ QUOTE ]

Is this happening when you actually test the mission? Or is it only when you're looking at it in the editor? The events and what have you should still happen in the actual mission itself. However, the mission editor won't be able to read custom critters correctly from the IGOR-crunched files.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
beta 6 seems to be causing custom bosses on boss events and ally events of mine to remove the custom boss/critter from being selected, thus making the arc invalid and having to go in and edit it resulting in re-bloating of arc size, an infinite loop of not-working-ness <_<

[/ QUOTE ]

Is this happening when you actually test the mission? Or is it only when you're looking at it in the editor? The events and what have you should still happen in the actual mission itself. However, the mission editor won't be able to read custom critters correctly from the IGOR-crunched files.

[/ QUOTE ]

That happened to me when I went in to look at it. VPokey advised me to not open as it would work but show those errors when I went into edit the IGOR'd file. However there is some other sort of issue going on with my file and it still wouldn't publish. VPokey's work did lead me in the right direction to do some hand editing of the file on my own to reduce file size though and in the end I got my arc where I needed it and put it back up.

<sigh> Viv says its no longer "all me".
http://wendy-mags.mybrute.com/

 

Posted

Huge huge help. But it's still cutting some color options out of custom critters. I'm using beta 6.

Specifically, things like wings, the valkyrie costume pieces, etc are only keeping color1 and color2, setting everything else to black.

Also, on one toon's shield (a tech shield) only one of the colors works. The other is black as well.

--Virtue--
My 50s:
Tigra Swipe (BS/SR/Dark Scrapper)
Galena Storm (Emp/Ele/Ele Defender)
Master Tolarin (Psi/Fire/Force Blaster)

 

Posted

Busy week! Sorry it took so long to get back to you guys.

Toril - think you could enlighten us/me on what you additionally did to reduce the size to make your storyarc work? I'd love any extra info on what can be automagically reduced for future versions.

Tigra - I think that was my bad, and have posted beta 7 to rectify what I believe to be the issue with those colours. There are actually 4 colors and while two of them are rarely used, they do get used from time to time (as with wings and possibly shields). They were being eaten by the program.

Wuigly - that's a known issue with the in-game editor opening files that have been IGOR'd. All the information needed to publish is still in the file, but the information that the in-game editor uses to cross-reference (badly) the storyarc's critters with your critter files, despite not actually updating the former when you change the latter, is removed from the file by IGOR.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Busy week! Sorry it took so long to get back to you guys.

Toril - think you could enlighten us/me on what you additionally did to reduce the size to make your storyarc work? I'd love any extra info on what can be automagically reduced for future versions.

Tigra - I think that was my bad, and have posted beta 7 to rectify what I believe to be the issue with those colours. There are actually 4 colors and while two of them are rarely used, they do get used from time to time (as with wings and possibly shields). They were being eaten by the program.

Wuigly - that's a known issue with the in-game editor opening files that have been IGOR'd. All the information needed to publish is still in the file, but the information that the in-game editor uses to cross-reference (badly) the storyarc's critters with your critter files, despite not actually updating the former when you change the latter, is removed from the file by IGOR.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're already doing it with IGOR, Pokey.

Starting at the front of the file and moving toward the EOF :

All I did was look at what the text file looked like after the program edited it and then went through and hand edited to do the same thing, but to take care and not remove the custom boss info that was being pulled. For some reason pulling that info was making the mission invalid for me to the point it wouldn't publish. Hand editing it was a PitA, but by seeing what IGOR was doing I was able to avoid delete out enough non-essential crap (which IGOR was doing already) and get another custom mob I was needing.

So basically the only thing I did that IGOR wasn't was hand editing it to avoid accidently pulling info that seemed to be needed to stay. I also quit editing the file when I got it down to about 90k, as there was no reason to go any further, and it published.

You're on the right track, but I think pulling out the custom boss info is causing more problems that initially being seen. It may not cause problems with the arcs you have done, but with some its giving fits. I'll give beta 7 a go and see what it does as well.

Also, any differences between using Vista and XP as an OS base? I'm using Vista here.

<sigh> Viv says its no longer "all me".
http://wendy-mags.mybrute.com/

 

Posted

I'm having the same issue above, once I IGOR my MArc file and go to test it, it won't let me. Says the file is invalid. The Publish button is grayed out still.

Am I doing something wrong?

- J

 

Posted

Well, the only thing that is causing the editor to claim the custom boss info is missing, is removing the ReferenceFile field from each critter. The only thing that field does is tell the editor which of your .critter files the critter comes from which, in turn, the editor DOES NOT USE once you've imported them the once. If you alter the .critter file, your .storyarc file won't update its internals to match it automatically. This is especially true if you're going back and editing an already-published arc.

Ultimately, it comes down to being a quirk of the editor. The field is not used for anything, but the editor complains if its not there - BUT it will not affect the publish button unless you go into the in-game editor and then save the file from inside that.

As for it being greyed out - was it greyed out before you IGOR'd the file, BrandFrontier? If so, its possible the data is still too large, even with the garbage stripped out. If the file is genuinely invalid, the entire box that displays that custom story arc turns vivid red, the buttons aren't just greyed out.

As for Skarmony's statement... well it comes down to this. If the arc would NOT publish without the use of IGOR, then you're pretty much out of luck on post-publishing edits without unpublishing the arc anyway. Why? Because unless I'm mistaken (and I might be - I'll admit that I have not tried this) when you do your local edit of the data, it will reinflate the entire thing and make it too large for the system to accept once again. This would be true even if the editor did not tell you that the custom boss data was missing (which, again, it is not - the only thing missing that causes that "error" is the ReferenceFile field in the cutom critters, which is nothing but a pointer to the .critter file that all the internal critter data originally came from). The referencefile field is totally useless since the storyarc file holds a complete copy of that file inside itself.

 

Posted

Well, this is the order I do things:

- Edit my arc. Currently at 119. Click "Save As" and save the file as the current name of the file but I tag it with "test" at the end like this --&gt; chaosrevisitedTEST.

- I then exit out of the MA.

- Then I open IGOR.

- Click on "File", "Reduce A Story Arc", select "chaosrevisitedTEST" then click "Open".

- IGOR does it's thing and saves the file as "IGOR-1912.storyarc.

- Then I go back in to the MA Interface and see the "Chaos Revisited" story arc with the file name "IGOR-1912.storyarc".

- At this point I click the story arc once, enlarging the sub-window and on the right side it has only the "Edit" button clickable, the rest of the color scheme of the interface has remained the same except...

- At the upper right of the screen the Exclamation Point Icon is orangeish red. Clicking on it says that the names of the critters are missing. No option to published exists.

Is there something there that I'm doing in the wrong order? I thought it was fairly straight-forward, could've missed something tho....

- J

 

Posted

Oi vey, let me try this again.

Was the arc, prior to applying IGOR, able to publish? If not, it is possible that even with IGOR's reductions, the data is too large to publish. As we found early on in this thread, the whole 100k statement was an arbitrary estimate, so reducing the filesize below 100k doesn't guarantee it will publish. IGOR does reduce the functional size, but even with the reduction some arcs are still too big.

If the arc could publish prior to using IGOR, but will not publish after using it, then we want to take a look at the original arcfile (well, I do) so I can figure out what is going on there.

When a file is run through IGOR it will remove certain fields used by the EDITOR that are not used by the MA system for any other purpose. This is why the editor will give you errors when you open an IGOR file with it. These errors DO NOT INTERFERE WITH PUBLISHING. They are not actual errors to anything except the in-game edit system, and even the in-game edit system doesn't actually use those fields for anything but giving silly errors.

So what it probably comes down to is: your arc is still too big even with IGOR's reductions.

 

Posted

Well, lets see... before I decided to IGOR it, I removed my custom boss character, tested the arc, and made sure the missions flowed well.

Then I re-added the custom archvillain (which I've used in another arc with no problems) back in to the arc, which is what drives it over the limit and makes it unpublishable.

Once it's saved at this point is when I IGOR the arc and have the issues stated above.

The only variable 'seems' to be adding in this archvillain, nothing else changes, no dialogue changes or mission details variences either.

- J

 

Posted

That's pretty bizarre, I'll admit. I can't see how a single custom critter whose inclusion or exclusion will change the mission being able to publish normally, would make the arc too big even after IGORing it. How complex are the costumes of these custom critters? One of the things that has been reported is that critters with all parts used (wings, auras, glasses, beard, etc etc..) tend to reduce badly since IGOR has to leave most of their costumepart entries alone.

 

Posted

Ok, then I'd have to take a look at the storyarc file to see what is happening to it. I can understand the possibility that an arc that could NOT publish prior to IGOR still not being able to publish, but not the idea of an arc that COULD publish prior to IGOR not being able to afterward.

If I SWEAR TO GOD I'm not trying to steal your brilliant MA ideas, will you send me a copy (or post it) in PM? If any part of IGOR can possibly ruin a storyarc file then it needs to be modified (igor, not the storyarc).

 

Posted

I *think* this actually worked for my problem.... I had petitioned the devs because when I published my arc it was at 96% and when I went in to edit it (before I touched anything) it popped to over 107%. I petitioned and was told that the system was artificially padding my arc.

Looking for solutions, Turg directed me here. I d/l IGOR- Ran it, there was no change. *HOWEVER* when I went back to check my arc yesterday (Sunday) it was fixed at 88%. Now I don't know if it was IGOR that did it, or just all of a sudden the game fixed it, either way, I am happy- and Everyone can now enjoy "The Quest for Fish Melee" Arc 99058 .

"I don't wonda what Rose is like in RL, I just imagine she is a catgurl an' wish I could cyb0r wit her. "
- the legendary J-man

Silence!!! I kill you!

 

Posted

OK, so this prog still up to date with i15 and the new changes?

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
I *think* this actually worked for my problem.... I had petitioned the devs because when I published my arc it was at 96% and when I went in to edit it (before I touched anything) it popped to over 107%. I petitioned and was told that the system was artificially padding my arc.

Looking for solutions, Turg directed me here. I d/l IGOR- Ran it, there was no change. *HOWEVER* when I went back to check my arc yesterday (Sunday) it was fixed at 88%. Now I don't know if it was IGOR that did it, or just all of a sudden the game fixed it, either way, I am happy- and Everyone can now enjoy "The Quest for Fish Melee" Arc 99058 .

[/ QUOTE ]

I published The Echo before I15 went live, and at Publish it was at 98% and publishable, editable, playable, no problems. After some weeks, without me doing anything to it, it jumped to 107%, but was still Published and still playable. I couldn't edit it anymore for fear of it not letting me publish it again, but I could go into the edit screen to see it reported as 107%.

I petitioned support too. All I got was 'we don't know. Reduce the size of your arc' lol. I didn't.

When I15 hit, it dropped to 98%.

So alls well I guess.

Eco

MArcs:

The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)

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