Can MM2 cars be compressed?

[e-cobra]

Some really nice vehicles are TOO big to run, meaning of greater file size. They cause a "Heap Overrun" when added with other vehicles. Is there anything to 'compress' vehicle size like its done with images?

NOTE: I've read everything and hence 'dared' to ask..

[Triple_X]

there is nothing you can do about it , the only thing is to play them with less cars and mods , cuz the files off the cars are already compressed once , my cars usually are like twice as bigger in actual size then in .ar archive , also the files have a limit on the compressing you can't make them as little as you want , so the final answer is no and i already told you the reason why

[dummiesboy]

As Triple_X said, you can't compress them. Many addon cars are very detailed, and push MM2 to it's limit. You just gotta use less.

[Franch88]

Ways to compress more the .ar files there are, from trying to use an heavier compressing method when you make the .ar file to use a tool made by Volky. But, that will just let you have a less big .ar file, but the game will have have the same problems with reading too much of them, because are the files of model and textures in it that are too big than the usual for the game. In fact is normal that the game can properly read lot of add-on cars made of low quality at the same time than add-on cars made in higher quality. Is always the same story, when adding cars add-ons the game crashes while the first loading or while selecting the vehicles, remove one or some more of them till you don't get any game crash.

[e-cobra]

So, the way out is to use less vehicles at a time. Do bigger tracks cause such effect or tracks can be added endlessly?

[Triple_X]

tracks are waay bigger then cars, so if you want a good gameplay without problems don't have more then 5 tracks (including SF and London) in your game

[e-cobra]

Oh!! I have 19 tracks and the game is still running!

[Riva]

Compress the AR to the maximum of his capacity is only useful for the bandwidth. People with a bad Internet connecton are able to download recent cars and these files take up less space on the server. It was a good reason few years ago.

The best way to avoid "heap overrun" :

- don't play cars with HQ textures (a car with 20 textures of 256 px is better than a car w/ 2 textures of 2048 px) ;
- don't add too much cars in the same game folder ;
- don't play HQ models (especially if they're coming from Juiced 2).

Some modders put HQ textures (1024 and 2048 px) by default, bad choice if you want to play more than ten recent cars in the same time.

Valid for the maps and the mods too.

Finally, compress textures or 3D models doesn't work in this case. The game engine decompress every file once the game is started.

[Franch88]

Triple_X is wrong, not always the tracks add-ons are bigger than cars, for .ar file sizes, 3D model polygons and textures number and sizes.

I think that the fact of making crash MM2 while the first loading and especially when selecting the vehicle in the vehicle selection menu depends only by the number of cars add-ons present.
The first kind of game crash depends by the adding of too much add-ons, especially cars, dunno if is really the same with tracks too, but I kinda remember that when having this game crash removing one or two add-on tracks instead of add-on cars didn't let avoid this game crash.
The second kind of game crash depends especially by add-on cars that uses big textures like 2048x2048 pixels and that uses high polygons models, with more than 60000 polygons I would say; to avoid this kind of game crash you must not add too much of cars add-ons, in fact with just a bunch of cars add-ons with these characteristics is possible to select and play them all without get any game crash.
About mods (are excluded the pack mods that do many things, including the adding of new cars and tracks), they make the game crash while the track loading, especially when using cop mods, traffic mods and mods that add lot of new objects in the cities; many mods do little changes that doesn't affect visible things or not so many of them, so about 3D models and textures related things. All these cases have the same condition, the increasing of the polygons to manage by the game, and also about this there's obviously a limit: the ones of the city, plus the ones of the player car, plus the ones of the traffic cars, plus the ones of the cop cars, etc. Most of the times you avoid this other kind of game crash when playing a detailed car add-on downcreasing the amount of cop and traffic cars and of pedestrians, possibly the cop cars set to zero.

All is in the game limts in reading too much big files of 3D model (.pkg) and textures. Agree with Riva where says that have less sized .ar files is useful only for their downloading, this thing isn't considered by the game, the files in the .ar files are read in their entire sizes indeed.