Hi Scott,
Recently you gave me a useful tip for creating duplicates (not siblings) from a textual script using "costume duplicate player". This has been working great except for one problem. As students are developing their scripts, their project files keep growing rapidly in size. We start off with a 'template' project that is about 300 kB. Each round of program development and debugging usually involves creating and destroying multiple 'duplicates' using the above method. Before long, the project files are many MB in size, even after all players have been cleared from the playfield and the trashcan has been emptied. Loading and saving project files gets slower and slower.
I've discovered this happens even if the duplicates are created using the halo icon, rather than the textual script. Each duplicate that is ever created seems to leave a 'ghost' that take up about 130 kB of storage. In the process of debugging their scripts, students typically create and destroy dozens of 'duplicates', leading to multi-MB file sizes. This growth in file size seems to happen only with 'duplicates', not with 'siblings'.
Is there some way to do garbage collection to get rid of these 'ghosts' so we can keep the file sizes manageable?
Thanks, --Mark