external images in game maker

[jacques]

I have external images that are loaded into my game, but I'm not sure if i want people to see the images in the game folder. anyone know is there a way to hide them from view or make them un-openable? It might not really matter, but looking through the images kind of spoils a lot of areas in the game

[Deleted]

what do you mean external images? can you even do that in game maker? why not just upload them directly into the GM file? 

[Jinxtengu]

I think what he means is having the images loaded on a needs basis when the game runs and being stored separately, rather than being packed into the game.exe. There are some advantages to doing this.

So some ideas off the top of my head, you could have the images extracted into a folder maybe even a system folder when the game loads then deleted when you quit the game, but then the images will still need to be loaded when the game starts, also requires some admin privileges enabled for the program so maybe not ideal.
Another thing you could try is to encrypt the image files using a simple key and then decrypt them when they are loaded on runtime.
I can't give you more specific details on how to do it, because I haven't used this before, but im sure If you ask on perhaps the GM forums someone will know how.
I don't think it should be too tricky to do.
Please post back to let us know how you go.
I would personally like to know the best solution to this problem myself. If I was going to do it, I think i'd try the encryption method, but then maybe there’s an easier way. GM is so advanced these days you can probably just tick a box somewhere.
One other thing, for what reason are you trying to store the game images separately?

[Deleted]

you could give them all a bizarre file extension so they don't know what kinda file they are

[jacques]

thanks for the responses. I did try giving them a file extension @ dany burton, but that didn't work and my programming skill is very limited. but I'm surprised loading the images does work, its really easy it's just:

bk = background_add(Backgrounds/file.jpg,0)
background[0] = bk

[this might different in a newer GM]

@jinxtengu I'm storing the images separately because if I put them in the game as backgrounds, they make the game take longer to load and testing it just gets a lot slower. also game maker seems close to freezing every time I load a big image into it as a sprite or background. also I'm using GM 8, so it may not be as advanced for this encrypting thing.

@saint: that's a good idea but i dont know how to do this sort of thingg