$EMBED
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The $EMBED metacommand can embed any designated file (e.g. images, sounds, fonts and all other file types) into the compiled EXE file. You can roughly compare this to converting and placing a file's contents into DATA lines, but $EMBED obviously is much more convenient.
Syntax
- $EMBED:'filename','handle'
Parameters
- IMPORTANT
-
- Both parameters must be enclosed in single quotes and given as literal strings, variables cannot be used here.
- The parameters will be checked while typing to ensure its validity, warnings (if any) will be displayed immediately in the IDE status area.
- The filename is the name of the file to embed, if required inclusive a full or relative path.
- The handle is a unique case sensitive identifier beginning with a letter and only containing lower/upper case letters and/or numbers, it's used later in the _EMBEDDED$ call to recall the embedded data.
Description
- All files will be embedded in a compressed form, if a 20% least ratio is reached.
- This low ratio was chosen, cause it will be reached by most files, except those which are already highly compressed such as PNG, JPG, MP3/4, ZIP, 7z etc. and are not worth the additional effort for just a few bytes less.
- To recall the embedded file data use the _EMBEDDED$ call with the very same handle identifier which was used in the respective file's $EMBED line.
- Embedding files can be useful to deliver a program inclusive all required assets in just one EXE file.
- No more worries whether a user installs your program correctly and retains the required folder structure.
- If required, you can write the files back to disk, i.e. it could serve as an simple installer or package manager.
- Embedded images, sounds or fonts can be passed directly to _LOADIMAGE, _SNDOPEN or _LOADFONT respectively when using the memory load capabilities of these functions.
- Note: The $EMBED metacommand can be used everywhere in a program. You may even place it inside pre-compiler $IF..$ELSE...$END IF blocks and only the files designated in the true block are embedded then.
- How many or how big files you can embed depends on your system achitecture (x86/x64) as well as your installed memory. However, it should work just fine for all the normally expected working cases like embedding a font, a spritesheet and some level graphics as well a couple sound effects.
- To avoid useless bloat of the compiled EXE file, the embedding process is smart enough to only embed those files, which are recalled by the _EMBEDDED$ call at least once. I.e. you may $EMBED a dozen files, but if you recall only one of it in your program, then only that one file will be really embedded, while the other files are simply ignored.
Availability
none
v3.10.0
yes
yes
yes
Examples
- Example
- Embeds two image files into the compiled EXE, then memory loads and displays it.
$EMBED:'source\peLogo.png','bigImg' $EMBED:'source\qb64pe.png','smallImg' SCREEN _NEWIMAGE(640, 480, 32) bi& = _LOADIMAGE(_EMBEDDED$("bigImg"), 32, "memory") si& = _LOADIMAGE(_EMBEDDED$("smallImg"), 32, "memory") _PUTIMAGE (140, 180), bi& _PUTIMAGE (410, 230), si& _FREEIMAGE si& _FREEIMAGE bi& END |
See also