Enormous file size if you make font unique

[OlegVegan]

Tested versions

• Reproducible in 4.4.1 stable

System information

Godot v4.4.1.stable - Windows 10 (build 19045) - Multi-window, 2 monitors - Vulkan (Forward+) - dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER (NVIDIA; 32.0.15.6614) - AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor (24 threads)

Issue description

My main project started to load 5 times slower. I found out why it happens

Turns out that one of my scenes is now 165 Mb (used to be 4 Kb)

It happened because I wanted my labels to have different fonts, that's why I made them unique (edit: Recursively)

I reverted the label changes and it all went back to norm, the scene is now 4 Kb
I attempted to recreate the issue on a minimal project

Before making label unique (2 Kb):

After (929 Kb):

The change is huge, but not as dramatic as in my case
In the MRP I included my (small) game_ui.tscn file just in case

Steps to reproduce

1. Add a Label to a CanvasLayer
2. Add new LabelSettings
3. Add a font
4. Make LabelSettings unique (Recursive)

Minimal reproduction project (MRP)

bugreport.zip

[AThousandShips]

That's because it's unique and embedded in the file, the font data has to go somewhere, to fix this you should save the font as a file instead

To avoid this you can try using FontVariation

[OlegVegan]

In my case, I had no idea why my project load time went from 3 seconds to 15 seconds. Only when I tried pushing my latest commit to GitHub it warned me about a file that's 100+ megabites now. Before that, I had no idea. Maybe there should be a warning about the size increase in the file dialogue?

I thought it only makes stuff like front size, outline color unique, but the font can still be referenced by its uid. Embedding a font in a file didn't make sense to me. That's just my chain of thought

[AThousandShips]

The font is a lot of images though, and those images are what you are making unique, as you can change them directly, the images have to go somewhere, making it unique means disconnecting it from the source

It might be the recursive part, which I'd suggest testing, but FontVariation should be the solution if you want to just change things like colors and sizes and margins, making the label settings unique without making the fonts unique will also allow you to change the settings

[AThousandShips]

For a warning you also have:

• Show a warning dialog when saving a large text-based scene #53679

[OlegVegan]

have to go somewhere

I understand that. Nothing is free. It's just that I didn't expect that 3 clicks would cost my project to load time increase from 3 to 15 seconds. The fix was easy, I didn't need to embed the fonts.

This behavior surely looked to me as "a flaw in a computer program that causes it to produce incorrect or unexpected results" which is a bug to me. I just want other people not to be confused as I was.

The warning solution is great! I guess it solves the issue

[AThousandShips]

Did you test duplicating without recursively duplicating?

[OlegVegan]

Did you test duplicating without recursively duplicating?

Yes, It's checkmarking the font that makes the file size huge

• Make LabelSettings unique is GOOD
• Make LabelSettings unique recursively is BAD (for file size, if you checkmark the font)
• Make LabelSettings (FontVariant) unique is GOOD
• Make LabelSettings (FontVariant) unique recursively is GOOD (if you only checkmark FontVariant)
• Make LabelSettings (FontVariant) unique recursively is BAD (for file size, if you include checkmark the font)

[AThousandShips]

That sounds like expected behavior, it's doing what you are asking it to do, duplicating the font data

[OlegVegan]

That sounds like expected behavior, it's doing what you are asking it to do, duplicating the font data

I agree 100% with you, it does what it says

The only unexpected and unwanted thing for me is its math

a 50 Kb font on 5 labels + 2 Kb scene = 1 Mb (in the MRP)
or a 4Kb scene and 3 unique fonts of 50 Kb each gave me 164 MEGAbite(!) scene and a lot of headache for a day =)
A warning that you linked is a great way to signal people about the size, so I'm happy with that

[AThousandShips]

The fonts aren't stored in the original scene file though, they're in the imports, try saving the font separately as a .tres file after making it unique and the math will work out, when you use an imported font the data is stored in .godot

[kleonc]

Also to clarify, note that text formats (.tscn, .tres) take more space than binary formats (.scn, .res).

For comparison canvas_layer.tscn in the MRP takes 929 KB, the same scene saved as canvas_layer.scn takes 28 KB.

[AThousandShips]

So to recap here:
The issue is that it's a bit unintuitive the way font data is handled, and it's not well documented

Part of the solution is warnings for large files, this goes for other cases as well like duplicating mesh files

We should also document this in some places, a note in Font might be useful, maybe also in LabelSettings to clarify that a recursive duplication might not be desired

The final step is a bit more involved and would include making some warning for duplicating certain resources, this would require adding a bunch of new features though, but might be worth it