"Big" Games...
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/"Big" Games...
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| I know this is kind of a silly topic but i'm just curious... I was looking at some games i have bought at the store and looked on the CD, i checked the size see how much room it took.. and it filled it up !?!?! i mean for a game like Red Alert 1? can't you make that in blitz3D in less than 10mb because the graphics arnt' "Uptodate" and you can optomize each guy to less than a kilobyte? I was just wondering is there a compressison difference between compilers? Another thing i was looking at also is, that it has tons of other files... I know when you compile a game in blitz it'll put your .exe and you put your media files in the same folder but isn't that kinda easy to reach for the consumer? can't he just modify that with a click of a button and ruin your game? so i went googling for the answer and found packers that'll put your exe in one file... but then i was thinking to myself... if i were to sell a game and distributed a CD with only 1 file on it how would the consumer feel? would he think he may have gotten ripped off? Are there other ways to put your media with a compiled .exe without putting it in a single .exe? I don't know but is there a way to use your own format in blitz? I know just some silly questions lol but i'm curious cuz i'm thinking i am ready to move onto making a commercial game sometime soon... *(maybe)* heheh! |
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| Weren't there plenty of movies already in RA1? Well it's for sure that the .exe files don't take the whole disk space! Where did you look for that btw? Because Windows will always tell you that there's no space on the CD since it's fixed. Try burning a 2 mb file on a CD and fix it. Why don't you use a packer? It creates a .pak file for all your media, some even have the possibility of encryption. I think it's ok to have 2 files or so. Most games don't have many more. And if you'll put your savegames and the documentation in the same folder it'll look a bit more :) Good luck with your commercial game ;) |
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| Auctually you can use Subfolders in your Blitz Project as well so everything doesn't have to be in the same directory. Also you can use a free PAK maker like PAKmaker to control PAK files and keep one for music and one for graphics if you wished. But you know this is a valid question... I had noticed the same thing on a few games like Fire Warrior and such... :) -RZ |
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| When you start creating bigger games then you'll want to store a lot of gameplay-data in external files, not just graphics but especially databases. This alows you to change and tweak many aspects of your game externally on the fly without needing to find that 'energy=99' value SOMEWHERE in your code & recompile your entire game... Also you could start using a level editor for example to create err... levels! and such. This alows you to supply your gamers with new / additional level-packs and so on - without having to change any code or recompile your game again (re-install etc). Once you decide to store certain data in external files, the first thing you'll need to do is define the file-format, wich makes it hard for users to read or change them. Using PAKmaker for example is a good way of prevent users to rip your graphics or models and rape your game.. Imagine beavis & butthead shooting bananas out of their noses at the moon from the back of a chewbaka using a banana on a thursday morning.. nasty... oh well, there goes therapy... Also you'll have to take loading-speed into account. Depending on the type & amount of data and the packer you use. It could be faster in some cases to simply load 1 Mb of raw data in stead of loading 400Kb of compressed data, store that temporarily into memory, uncompress it, make it available to your game, and then get rid of the old 400kb data... I used these old tricks with Simcity 1. For example, if i had only $123 left I would search for that '123' number in my save-file and change it to $1.000.000 so I could continue building ;) These days it's a bit more complex though. :) Perhaps another reason why games could be so large is that they sometimes store the same graphics but for different screen-resolutions. Altough I don't believe this is actually true for EVERY graphic in a game...?! my 2 cents.. Danny |
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| The reason why commercial games (of the type bought in shops that have taken years by dozens of people to make) are so large is quite simply one of the media content of the game (in most cases). The actual code is usually very small in comparison, with the remainder being taken up by sound effects, music and graphics for each of the detail/quality settings that a player is allowed to use (this includes both sound and graphics). As an example, my shareware game Rockfall is approximately 24MB in size (not including the HTML instructions). The game EXE is only 1.7MB (7%), the sound effects and music are 9MB (40%) and the graphics are 5MB (21%). Obviously they are figures for a very small project. You can expect figures for media being much higher in commercial games, as different levels will have different sounds, there's usually a lot more music and the inclusion of speech. |
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| now that clears things up a lot! thanks guys for your help... hehe, i think i'll get that PAK maker... don't want pple to be shooting bannas at monkeys in my game :-S... I was looking at them CD's again and found that most of it was media. (on RA1 anyways) but then i got to thinkin again... why does RA1 take up so much i mean the quality on those graphics arn't that great, i guess it could be that different resolution size heh i guesss somethings are to remain a mystery... Yah i'm still pretty new to blitz only made a couple games so i really don't know if i'm ready for a big commercial game yet... maybe some more practice on my graphics and such would help before i move on... Thanks again every1 for your help!!! |
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| Game I'm working on at work is 300 meg. 20 mg of code, scripts, ect. rest is graphics, mostly textures, and sounds. |
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| how will you distribute that? i know people with cable would download it (mabey) but what about 56k users? you going to sell it on CD or something? |
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| Thats an interesting thought... Were can i upload my game if i want it to be completly free? And how do i Copyright it? Is it as simple as just writing "Copyright blablabla"? Will it be Copyrighted then? Can Blitz take my game and store on some server or do i have to buy a server of my own just to let people download my game for free? |
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| Anything you create is automatically copyrighted in most countries but you can put a copyright agreement into the installation procedure. There are free hosters, where you can put it online. |
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| >And how do i Copyright it? Is it as simple as just >writing "Copyright blablabla"? Will it be Copyrighted >then? Copy right is governed by international treaties and automatically lies with the author. By displaying 'Copyright (c) 2004 Your Name here' you are just letting people know that you are the author, which is a good thing to do. copyright deals with duplication, but not customer use. For defining specific customer use, you should include an agreement when selling a license. In this context, it is important that you understand the difference between selling the 'game' and selling a 'license'. If you sell the game, you are selling your copyright to whatever content and code you have created. If you sell a license, you are generally selling the ability to 'play the game', which may or may not include an agreement(end user license agreement) regarding the use of the license. Andy |
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| Writing "Copyright (c) 2994" is meaningless. You have to use the recognised Copyright symbol (©) for it to carry any weight. And a 'c' in brackets is not it. |
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| Ok thank you very much! I'll do all that if i ever finish any of my started projekts =) |
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| I was looking at them CD's again and found that most of it was media. (on RA1 anyways) but then i got to thinkin again... why does RA1 take up so much i mean the quality on those graphics arn't that great, i guess it could be that different resolution size heh i guesss somethings are to remain a mystery... It doesn't take up all the space on the CD...the CD just doesn't contain any records for available free space. CDs contain file allocation tables...sort of a directory of where things are on the CD...a burnable CD-ROM will contain records pointing out the unused space (even if they can't be used anymore)...a pressed CD (like a music or game CD) doesn't have this as such records are left off the master during the duplicateing process...as there are no records of free unused space, the CD-ROM reports that the CD is completely full... |
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| all right thanks for clearing that up for me MSW :-) btw how do you do that (c)? the official copyright symbol? |
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| how do you do that (c)? the official copyright symbol? In Windows, © is Alt-0169 (while holding down Alt, press 0, 1, 6, 9 in succession on the num pad then release Alt). Running charmap.exe (located in different locations within the \Windows directory depending on your version of Windows) shows it, all the other extended characters, and their Alt codes: just the thing for proper quotation marks, bullets, en-dashes, ®, ™, etc. |
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| It won't be downloadable, stores only. |
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| It won't be downloadable, stores only. Until a Russian named Ivan get's hold of it ;) |
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| hehe |
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| Actually, we have a 'distributer' in russia. Our games don't get pirated all that often, being budget release titles. |
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| wendell - thank you for that tidbit dude - I had no idea that little proggy existed. What a time saver for me!!!!!! |
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