Necessary to name all game files without spaces?

If so I'm a little annoyed the game doesn't make this abundantly clear, I'm primarily a Windows user and used to naming files with spaces, and the game works fine with files named that way, but I understand it won't deploy properly for Mac or Android with any file names with spaces?

It's my understanding that for potential Mac and Android versions of the game NONE of my files can have any spaces in them?

So no spaces in image file names, none in sound file names, no spaces anywhere at all?

I have a fair amount of images to rename without spaces in that case.

Also I had a glitch where the game stopped recognising certain character images, even ones placed in events that I could still see, I couldn't select that character to use it again even though it was still in the folder, though they were named with spaces, so perhaps that caused a glitch? I had to delete the glitched characters and recreate the files with no spaces which is working fine now.

Luckily most of my stuff is without spaces but there's some old stuff with spaces that'll take a while to change so I want to be sure before I do it.

Any help is much appreciated.

If you can, get your hands on a Regex driven mass renaming program to help with that. It requires you to learn some Regex commands, but they aren't that difficult. You'd essentially keep the names of the files, but you'd be removing the spaces. However, I stress that this method would probably break your game as the JSON data files have the names of the files with spaces and if you don't change the names of the images within the JSON files or plugin settings JSON, then it'll bark at you that it can't find such and such image.

The whole thing about not using spaces is that it tends to break many programs that don't wrap the names of files in quotations ( "file name.ext" ). It's something programmers have instilled in them to make things compatible across devices. I started as a Windows user since I was a kid and still, mostly, use it, but I rarely put spaces in files unless it's music. I end up use _ instead of a space or just leaving no spaces to maximize compatibility. All stems back to the original days of DOS.

Thanks for the reply, luckily I've caught this fairly early so I'll be able to rename them manually, perhaps less than 100 files at this stage as I've only been making my battle system and haven't even laid down any complex maps down yet so should be easy to do, just a bit laborious.

I'm clearly not a programmer but I did make a pretty big RM2K game back in the day which I'm pretty sure was absolutely full of file names with spaces but it was just for Windows and worked fine, so I guess that where I get the bad habit from of using spaces in file names. I won't be doing it from now on.

Spaces used to be fine with the previous versions of the engines, as they only deployed to Windows. The problem has only come in since MV, and it probably wasn't something that was discovered until someone tried to deploy a game using resources with spaces in the name (maybe everyone who tested it on other devices were used to no spaces so it didn't occur to them that there was anything "special" about the naming requirements)

What? I deploy on android and I have resources with spaces on it. What is the problem with that? I don't notice any o.0

it might be more iOS and Mac

Under the original, universally-defined networking rules (Back in pre-windows times), filenames are only allowed latin letters and very few special signs - spaces, non-latin letters and special signs like ? or * have always been forbidden under networking rules because they have special functions and any network using them in regular filenames would fail - just try to use them as the network name of a folder that is shared, and even windows will refuse them there.
And you can still find those limitations on web-based error messages where spaces are automatically replaced by %20 (and other special letters with different replace codes)

However, to allow for better usability, all operating systems have implemented overrides that allow them to use spaces under local conditions - but different solutions for different OS. Which means that the override for windows will not work elsewhere.

As a result, MV deployment (even to windows, because it still needed to be deployed as a web-based solution) has been blocked with error messages from the very beginning if there were filenames that were illegal under networking rules - but that error message was very bad and couldn't even point to the problematic file in the first few versions.

So I consider it a very good change that RMMV now blocks the Windows-override for non-network-legal filenames at the editor level, because it will force the user to detect the problem and change it before they get to the cryptic messages of the deployment failure after months of work (and possibly hundreds of wrong files)

Many thanks for the replies guys, much appreciated.

Just to clarify some things for me, thanks to your posts, this is now my general consensus regarding my situation.

1: I want my game to be released on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux, therefore the no spaces file naming policy is absolutely vital for my game to ensure deployment to all 3 platforms smoothly.

2: Android is less of a concern as my game's designed for gamepad/keyboard use (touch is disabled,) but Android IS capable of using spaces in file names, just like Windows.

3: Even in instances like with Windows where spaces ARE recognised, it's still better practice to name file names without spaces for reasons of clarity.

EG: A return for missing file name ActorFaceBattle.json is easier to understand that a return for missing file Actor%20Face%20Battle.json.

4: At my early stage of development the renaming to get rid of spaces now, will save me huge headaches later on down the line if I want a Mac release.


Many thanks, if anyone can confirm those points to me I'd really appreciate it.

2: EVERY operating system has an override for spaces, even MacOS and Linux - but those are handled differently than Windows, which means copying files with spaces even in a multi-OS-network will cause distortions in the filename - and any change in the filename will result in the file no longer being found.

Another example:
Under windows (and windows only) the filenames Abc.png and abc.png will open the same file - any other OS will detect that those are two different files, because A (Capital) is not the same letter as a (non-capital).

Many thanks Andar, so I would presume that Anroid was designed to recognise all Windows file naming conventions, but obviously Mac and Linux are too different at a fundamental level from Windows.

Any feedback on my other points? Because once I get confirmation that is the case I'm going to start renaming files to the non space format.

Well, knowing this now, I'll start naming files without spaces from now on.

Well I've changed most of my files now, but even with just a few there's the odd one I initially forgot, and had to go back for, so if someone had to change their whole game for this reason it'd be terrible, an absolute nightmare.

Frankly I feel that the documentation is poor - a warning regarding not using spaces should be in bold at the very beginning of the asset standards.

There's nothing to gain from using spaces in MV files and a hell of a lot to lose by using them, so why wouldn't they make that clear? I think it's an oversight that needs fixing in MV help documentation.

Even as a veteran of RM2K who read the MV manual before starting, I was still able to make this dreadful mistake by using spaces.

The game is called MV for Mobile Version - that includes iOS, so it doesn't matter if it's fine for Windows or Android naming files with spaces as before, they're still not telling us vital information.

As someone who has written technical safety manuals and documents professionally, I'd be ashamed to have missed that absolutely vital piece of information out. What would your customers be supposed to do without that vital fact? Just rely on dumb luck?

It could literally make or break a game and they don't even mention it in a detailed help file!

Wow thats really intresting, becouse I makeing games on mac and I have a lot of files called with space, and I for know soild my game in 40 examples and in 2 exidences I had situation with thah, I should change that imediently, but WHY THE F***K when i was creating my game on Mac i neve got the infomration about something is wrong with my f**** space in name files. Thats really really big mistake from KUDAWA studio.... :( I have game for 2h, that will be terrible to change this sh*t all and do not have any mistake with the events...

it has nothing to do with Kadokawa - those rules are there due to HTML5-base for the newer RMs, and the networking rules were in effect from before the internet even existed. You can still see that even under windows when trying to set names for network folders etc.