Well this problem reared it's ugly head again... after switching to windows 7 32 bit I cannot get the game to even run through "test mode" in SED. It just loads the game up and takes about 1.6GB in the memory counter of the taskbar. It then crashes instantly with directx errors. Windows 7 uses more memory natively than XP did.

So... I tried re-installing A8 with the latest edition, created an empty work folder, and the copied and pasted the files from my demo folder. In total the whole Gstudio folder is 900 MB.

But that did not matter, the problem is still there! It consumes 1.6GB for a 900MB folder.

The problem does not appear if I publish the game. The game in the published folder uses the exact same resources I put in the work folder and only takes 400MB to load up.

Any ideas on this problem? It looks like it's gotta be an engine issue only relating to the non-published engine.