Is there ANY way to get past the 65536 byte string limit??

http://www.staredit.net/wiki/Strings

Start deleting trigger comments, recycling strings, etc.

Without modding SC, there isn't any known way. If you happen to find one, however, you'd be a hero.

How do I recycle strings? If I have two seperate triggers (say two display text msgs) with exactly the same txt will it automatically use the one string twice? Or does SCMDraft2 just create two identical strings?

With that in mind couldn't I just have a string for each letter of the alphabet, and then recycle them and have them form different word combinations, hence only having 26 strings??

Also without comments on my triggers well, I'm gonna have a hard time sifting through all those triggers. :S is there anyway to mark them without using strings?

ScmDraft automatically recycles strings that match exactly.

Yes, that's theoretically possible, if you like your ingame texts aligned vertically.

Nope. That's why we're asking for it in the "last call for ScmDraft" topic.
You can reduce the need for comment strings significantly if you don't comment small triggers at all and for the rest use only 1 header comment for the entire system and for the rest of the triggers of that system just make an empty comment.
Usually you don't hit the byte limit, just the number of strings (1024) limit, so you can comment every trigger of that system in a seperate line of the same comment. Like this:

Respawn timer:
Counter
Died
Respawn

So you needed only 1 string for 3 triggers.

Classic StarEdit creates two different strings in this case (and all other cases too). SCMDraft2 reuses all strings. If you have two identical (colors and spaces count!) strings used at any place in your map SCMDraft2 will reuse them. For example, if you have a "Terran Marine" string used in brifing, comment, unit name and display text SCMDraft2 will use one string.

No, you can't, because at each place you can specify only one string, you cant build a string to display consisting of other strings.

There is a way, write triggers in text and maintain them in a separate file. Use real text comments.

So lets just say i had a comment saying: GENERAL STORE HEALTH POTION FAIL COST and then i cut it down to GSHHFC how much wuld i save?? If i was to apply that principle to all my comments wuld i save a worthy amount of space?

There's 2 limits:
- Number of strings: max. 1024
- Bytes used for strings: max. 64k

The number of strings limit can be circumvented (ScmDraft allows that) but it seems to create a whole lot of problems, so unless SI fixes it I'd stay away from >1024 string count.

The Byte limit cannot be circumvented, except by reusing and shortening strings.

So if you shorten "GENERAL STORE HEALTH POTION FAIL COST" (37 chars) to "GSHHFC" (6 chars) you saved 31 byte, but same number of strings.

What kind of problems occur when you go over the STRING limit?? (Not the byte one)

Nothing bad happens to go over the 1024 limit. If you go over the byte limit, I think the text doesn't show up, or SC crashes or something.

No.
Starcraft can handle string indexes > 1024.
It's the editors. Afaik only ScmDraft even supports > 1024 but it tends to crash or mess up the strings indexes so the wrong string are shown. But I also received reports of it working properly. Use at your own risk.

If you're interested you can test for yourself and post your results. Maybe you can even help SI to overcome these problems.

I have maxxed out on string bytes which was 1354 strings in total. When I tried to save when going over the max limit SCMDraft 2 immediately crashes and the save does not follow through. Hence you CANT save a map that has over the maximum amount of bytes.

I have not noticed any errors going over the 1024 string limit though.

Anyway thanks for all the help guys I've been recycling and cutting down on strings like mad now but I think I will have to cut out a fair chunk of the ideas I had planned.

Damn this byte limit, does anyone know why it is in place? Seems rather useless really.

I updated the strings wiki to add what has been said about using the exact same thing over and over again, because I honestly never knew that. Someone should go over it to make sure I didn't say anything false.

This is your answer.
The string index, as I called it earlier, is 2 byte (=16bit => 0-64k) and shows where in the string section this string is located.
This is a limitation Blizzard set over 10 years ago when the game was created and is part of the definition of the .scm/.scx file type. Obviously they didn't think that anyone would hit that limit.

Sooo the only way to remove this limit would be to modify the game and thus make it unplayable on reg SC...

Ah well thanks 4 the help all.

I doubt you can even mod such a basic thing.

EDIT:


Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 22 2009, 6:04 pm by NudeRaider.