Pulp not resetting Frame count after Exceeding 'frames-table-8-8.png' limit

SDK Bug Reports
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1

Platform - Pulp WEB environment on Edge, replicated on Chrome and Edge for Android

Explain what the expected result was and what happened instead.
I implemented a very large art piece with dozens of variations and exceeded the total frame allotment for a pulp project, as far as I can tell. This surfaced when I tried to download the PDX for device testing.

pdx no make
pdx no make1920×1446 215 KB

This happened 6/23/2022. I removed the most recent piece with the massive number of variations to reduce frame count (I estimate the piece added some 18-20k frames to the project, contained within a number of sprite tiles that would be randomized on room entry.) Using my method to tile artwork described here:

Pulp How-To: Drawing Frames from a Single Tile - Playdate Developer Forum

I have used somewhere in the neighborhood of 20k frames in sprites to draw art in rooms for ART7 1-bit Gallery With the large piece, I apparently hit a limit of which the community has been unaware :joy:

Now the Actual bug or at least unexplained case is that when I removed the art piece with the large amount of frames, the PDX still would not download. I was fairly sure I had brought the game back down below the limit, but couldn't get anywhere.

I was however able to export a JSON and dug through to investigate. It appears that the offending frames were removed but the frame count in the JSON makes a Large jump to overlimit - from 21562 to 39098

frame count jump
frame count jump1835×1080 320 KB

My supposition is that either those frames are still represented somewhere in the JSON or there was a bug causing that count not to reset after the offending tiles were deleted. It's possible that if I waited, some garbage collection would happen on the backend? We don't have a lot of insight into how pulp works server-side so far as I know.

Now as of tonight, I have imported the data.json from a previous download a few days ago and have recreated the work with A LOT of trimming. We were not aware of the frame limitation, so I had been operating without heed to it. So I'm good.

I'm mostly posting to let people know it is possible to get a little too aggressive with aspects of Pulp, and to ask if there is a system in place that takes this into account or if it sounds like a genuine bug?

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Did you ever figure this out? I'm having the same issue.

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Yeah absolutely. So my real issue was that I had a massive piece of art that took me way over that limit. This was for ART7. The problem was that even deleting it, I still was considered over the limit and had to roll back to a previous version of the game from before I added that piece and had to rethink it to stay within bounds.

So the fix was to roll back and reconsider.

For ART-O-WEEN I knew I'd be going over but importantly it will still export the JSON it just won't build a PDX. So that means I could go over and then use the JSON myself with pulpmill to get a working game.

So you have options. Have you looked at pulpmill? There are a couple issues with it but it's what made it possible for ART-O-Ween to exist at all so I'm a fan :⁠-⁠)

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I haven't tried Pulp Mill yet, but I'm concerned it won't work for me, because I saw that variables with {variable} in them mess with the conversion process and I use a lot of those. But I'll definitely give it a try when I'm ready to finalize the game.

Is the limit, from what you can tell, an overall limit of frames or just when a single set of animated tiles goes over the limit? I had a full-screen animation that had 30,000 tiles in it on its own, in addition to A LOT of other animations. So I'm definitely pushing it. But I want to do a lot more fullscreen animations, so I'm hoping it's just a limit to a single table of tiles and I can upload them in chunks or something.

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Unfortunately, it looks like it's a limit for the entire game. Definitely check pulpmill. DrewLo and NaOH on discord were huge helps in learning to convert. NaOH made it after all and just released Swap Machina on Catalog which is one of my favorites so far :grin:

Also you don't need to wait to finalize game. Test it now to check any issues you might have. You wouldn't want to keep building for another month or whatever and then test it and it not be viable.

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That's a good point! I will work on this tomorrow! Thanks for the responses! And congrats on being accepted to the catalog! Much excite!

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