Acceptable game sizes

benny · Post by **benny** » Mon Mar 08, 2004 6:28 pm

@Dare2:

If it's just a small production, I think trackermusic (.xm/.mod) is a good alternativ to keep your filesize small.

Shannara · Post by **Shannara** » Tue Mar 09, 2004 1:18 am

or IT2 or any compressed mods mo3 etc to make file sizes smaller. Also, PNG is a lossy compression format.. so if you still care about image quality, go GIF or stay BMP (my 4 cents..)

Saboteur · Post by **Saboteur** » Tue Mar 09, 2004 1:26 am

Shannara wrote:or IT2 or any compressed mods mo3 etc to make file sizes smaller. Also, PNG is a lossy compression format.. so if you still care about image quality, go GIF or stay BMP (my 4 cents..)

No, it is don't true. PNG is a lossless compression format, and quality is exactly equal that original. And it's better that gif.

LarsG · Post by **LarsG** » Tue Mar 09, 2004 8:11 am

Yes.. if you care about the image quality (like you should when we're talking about prites etc.), then go for png...
For pictures, logo's etc... I'd suggest jpg...

For music.. try to get good music in tracker (or midi) format... If not, use ogg compression..

And if the game ends up at a total of 20 megs.. who cares?!? it usually means that the quality is better.. like more music, graphics etc...
(note: if the game is coded right that is..

)

benny · Post by **benny** » Tue Mar 09, 2004 9:00 am

LarsG wrote:...
And if the game ends up at a total of 20 megs.. who cares?!? it usually means that the quality is better.. like more music, graphics etc...
(note: if the game is coded right that is.. )

Yep, thats true. Maybe the majority of this community thinks that a cool game gets even cooler the less kilobytes it takes.
However, your final end-users do not really care about that (unless they have a poor modem-connection and it takes them more than 1 hour to download your game).
I got one reponse from a normal gamer who laughed at me when I proudly said that for example cavefligtht is just approx. 220kb.
:roll:
So, to put it short, I think normal gamers are more impressed by nice gfx / sfx / gameplay than a small game-size.

techjunkie · Post by **techjunkie** » Tue Mar 09, 2004 12:50 pm

Dare2 wrote:@techjunkie,

Will look at nero (same crew who do the cd burner?)

Yepp - same crew - cheap and one of the best wave editors in my opinion (for semipro use) - you need a MP3 add-on if you are going to work with MP3's directly...

GedB · Post by **GedB** » Tue Mar 09, 2004 1:38 pm

The creed of the bloat.

The thing is that the bloat just isn't necessary.

Dare2 has reduced his download from 4mb to .5 mb. He has done this without any reduction in presentation quality. It didn't take him very long, either.

The mark of a good craftsman are all the hidden little details that go unappreciated, but make a difference behind the scenes.

Now he can include even more grapthics and music, and that does make a difference to the normal gamer.

benny · Post by **benny** » Tue Mar 09, 2004 2:00 pm

GedB wrote:The creed of the bloat.

The thing is that the bloat just isn't necessary.

...
Now he can include even more grapthics and music, and that does make a difference to the normal gamer.

No doubt and I totally agree with you in this case ...
I did not want to excuse bloated files with my above statement!

Shannara · Post by **Shannara** » Tue Mar 09, 2004 7:22 pm

Yah, I think your right, I must of been thinking of a different image format

(viewtopic.php?t=6005&highlight=png)

Post by **Dare2** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 6:10 am

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the feedback.

I've decided to run with png (which gives better quality results than a jpg of same size on my trials), midi for music and mp3 for effects. Haven't worked out how to create an "ogg" file yet.

Also decided to try for 3mb, and I may have to pad it out to get there.

Thanks again.

dagcrack · Post by **dagcrack** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 7:44 am

Yup 5mb is like the max accepted size for me..

About using MP3.. beware that MP3 is licensed, so you can't use it for commercial proyects (I'll tell you the truth.. you can sell up to 1000 copys of your software, with out paying any license fees to MP3... while 1000+ you'll have to pay my friend!...) btw I think that OGG is gr8.

Again about the MP3... I dunno what kind of rules there is (I just know that your first 1000 copys are legal with out paying any license to them)

Laterz ;Daggy_

dagcrack · Post by **dagcrack** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 7:46 am

About "making OGGs" you could get a proggy called "Audio Conversion Wizard" you'll see how handy it is for converting from wav to ogg and many other well-known audio formats.

Post by **Dare2** » Thu Mar 11, 2004 7:52 am

@dagcrack.

Just checked that out (mp3 licencing) and found this site:

http://www.mp3licensing.com/help/

Seems like the format is owned by Thomson Fraunhofer.

Thanks for the headsup. Back to learning about ogg for me.

Johan_Haegg · Post by **Johan_Haegg** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 3:58 pm

I use BMP while developing and then convert to PNG/JPEG when its time to publish.
It IS possible to use large OGG-files, however you need to encode them with the original OGG-Vorbis encoder and with a few special parameters. I have only got it to work with 22.05kHz however.
The problem seems to be that PureBasic missinterprets the length of the file and stops after a while.
I dont have an example how to get this to work, but its 100% possible. Done it three times and its all about encodeing.