Adding hundreds of custom critters into a group

[huang3721]

I make a custom group where each member has a different name. I also slightly vary their height and their color. The group has 54 bosses, 162 lieutenants, and 324 minions. In total, there are 540 toons. Yet, it only takes about 63% of the size limit. 

 

 

 

I was going to squeeze another 230 toons into the group (770 characters for a 90% size limit). Unfortunately, the interface lagged after I added the group to my story. Adding or editing each character in the text box takes a full second; typing "Thank you for rescuing me, $name!" quickly became a nightmare.

 

The mission itself went smoothly. As far as I know, there were no weird changes in costumes or colors.

 

 

 

So, in a practical sense, there is no need to worry about the size limit unless you include hundreds of unique toons in your story.

Edited May 21 by huang3721
adding picture

[cranebump]

That's just crazy! I'd have thought things would crash well before that.

 

My issues with file size are well-documented. I've had crash issues with nowhere near as many critters. That's on my poor lil laptop though.

[huang3721]

8 hours ago, cranebump said:

I've had crash issues with nowhere near as many critters.

 

True that. Seeing all of the hard work ruined is beyond annoying.
 
When creating characters for Daughters of Gaia, I encountered a bug where the game increased my toon's height to maximum and randomly assigned colors to her costume. It happened when I went back and forth between body and costume tabs while editing my custom character. My hunch is that these errors in *.critter files add up and eventually ruin the villain group and the story arc they are attached to.

[cranebump]

31 minutes ago, huang3721 said:

When creating characters for Daughters of Gaia, I encountered a bug where the game increased my toon's height to maximum and randomly assigned colors to her costume. It happened when I went back and forth between body and costume tabs while editing my custom character. My hunch is that these errors in *.critter files add up and eventually ruin the villain group and the story arc they are attached to.

I would think your efforts to test the limits will be extremely useful in ferreting out things like that. Looking forward to seeing what else pops up.

[huang3721]

On 5/21/2024 at 9:07 PM, cranebump said:

I'd have thought things would crash well before that.

 

I found out yesterday that, yes, things crashed. Despite the story running smoothly during testing, uploading it was problematic. The server kept forcibly disconnecting me whenever I tried to publish the thing.

 

 

Perhaps the file size was too large. So, I cut the number of toons from 540 to 180. The game accepted the revised file.

 

I guess the maximum size limit is not 100 kB. It seems to be much lower than that in reality. 

[Jiro Ito]

I've never been able to get a workable arc over 50% file size.  I usually start crashing in the 40s and have to start scaling back.

[Greycat]

15 hours ago, huang3721 said:

Perhaps the file size was too large. So, I cut the number of toons from 540 to 180. The game accepted the revised file.

 

I guess the maximum size limit is not 100 kB. It seems to be much lower than that in reality. 

 

It's got to be something other than file size. I've uploaded and run missions of 200-500+ kb.  However, they also didn't have that many unique NPCs. So ... more "whats in it" than "how big it is," I'm guessing.

 

Edit: Also, that largest mission at 581 kb only shows 38% of the file size used in the AE editor.

Edited June 14 by Greycat
More info

[huang3721]

On 6/14/2024 at 1:20 PM, Greycat said:

It's got to be something other than file size.

 

It seems the publish limit is 380 characters.

Publishing an arc with more than 380 characters in a group (381 toons, for example) will cause the game to disconnect. 

 

I tried to create two groups to sidestep the limitation. The first group contains 380 toons, and the second contains the rest of my toons. It also didn't work.

 

These screenshots are the size of my single-mission test story arc with 380 custom characters (ID: 62979).

 

 

  

[Darmian]

On 7/2/2024 at 12:19 AM, huang3721 said:

 

It seems the publish limit is 380 characters.

Publishing an arc with more than 380 characters in a group (381 toons, for example) will cause the game to disconnect. 

 

I tried to create two groups to sidestep the limitation. The first group contains 380 toons, and the second contains the rest of my toons. It also didn't work.

 

These screenshots are the size of my single-mission test story arc with 380 custom characters (ID: 62979).

 

 

  

Now, is this just for a single mission or is that cap applied across a full 5 mission arc for instance?

[huang3721]

17 hours ago, Darmian said:

Now, is this just for a single mission or is that cap applied across a full 5 mission arc for instance?

 

Judging from the file structure, it's across the whole story arc. For some reason, a published story can't have more than 380 toons, even though an unpublished 540 toons mission arc (from my local hard disk) will run just fine.

[ZamuelNow]

Been away from AE for a while but about to gear up to work on some stuff.  45.81% of the file size?  Interesting...

[Ankylosaur]

I have authored several large missions with lots of custom characters and can open them locally. However, after publishing they time out when trying to open them and I disconnect if they are too large. 

 

I think somewhere around 42 or 43% file size is my practical limit - and sometimes doing things like opening in a quiet zone while in the AE authoring room with a low level toon makes the difference - no idea specifically why.  I have some published missions that open some of the time and some that just don't and I can't edit without unpublishing and republishing.

 

(My largest single mob was Playing Cards for Alice in Wonderland, but that was grouped with several other custom groups so no idea how many it was overall.)

 

Just a reminder though that I think the current file limit is about 4 times the old file limit on live I think - so its not like this is a degraded experience from the OG - still about twice as nice.