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Recently, I have been having problems with my map sizes being huge. I have narrowed this down to the sides. The entire sides folder takes up 6mb of space, but the compiled all.lvl eats a whopping 170mb of disk space! Imp.lvl also takes up about 80mb. Any ideas as to what is causing this?

*Solved*

Are you changing the original sides at all? If not, you don't need to include the original .lvl files; they came with the game after all.

Make new sides with just what you need. NEVER, EVER just edit a shipped side. You'll end up with huge files. If you're editing just a couple of soldiers, or even all of them, make a new side for them.

There are only about 20 files in the "all" sides folder overall, including MSH files...20 files of that size shouldn't compile into 170mb...

Clean then munge. Your file size should be smaller.

Clean then munge. Your file size should be smaller.

What he said.
Basically, to lower munge times, the mod tools only compile what you changed and a few other files. They then copy over all the rest of the files from what you munged last time.
Clean will delete those files that were previously munged.
Munge again and there you go.

I clean almost every time I munge, so that can't be the problem...And you also told me how the munger works, so I do know what is happening...

There is no reason the clean every time you munge. That is just a waste of time. Don't include things in the .req that you are not using in your map.

The .req! I didn't check that!

Let's see what I can do...

YES!!!
Zerted...You rock.
I never would have guessed it was the .req...I didn't even have any.

Let this be a lesson to all those with huge sides:
Remove anything in your .req that you don't need.

My 99mb compressed map is now 4.92mb!
Thanks a lot!!!