Game total filesize
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Game total filesize
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| Hi, I'm concerned with the size of my game. For now, it's rather small, but there's not much content in it yet (just a 30% finished engine and one 50% finished area). My current calculations show that the finished product will be 100 to 200 mb in size (that is if I don't zip it, but I doubt zipping it will make it much smaller because most of the size will come from png and ogg files, and these are already compressed). Is this too much for a download? What's the maximum size a game should be before most people would say, forget it, I'm not buying it because it would take too long to download? Opinions please. |
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| Personally, Providing I have enough information, screenshots and something telling me how long the dl will be, I have downloaded for 10hrs before. I just leave it running overnight! The only thing that puts me off dl'ing large files is when it's a shock that it's so large, ie.. No warning; or when the main reason for it taking so long is because the transfer rate is pitiful. and I only have 128M broadband. |
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| If you're talking about a commercial game then as long as the demo is only around 6mb then i think your ok, a lot of people equate size with quality (no jokes please!). If its a freebie then paradoxicaly i don't think you would get many takers. Just my opinion. |
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| Heh, I just discovered that for some of the PNG-24 images I'm using (colormaps), PNG-8 is more than enough... And it makes quite a difference (548k image reduced to 120k). So the total size may be a quite bit less than I initially expected . Still, the music will keep the file size pretty high I guess. |
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| I'm on 300k and I start thinking twice if it's over 20mb. The biggest bits tend to be music as 2 or 3 tunes will probably be 10mb or so. I would suggest making your game run with or without music and either have a music + game download and game download or a game download and an add music patch download. This way people can download the 20mb of game and if they want music they can download the additional xx mb if they want. |
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| FPS game with big textures and detailed levels + characters will be more than 20mb that's for sure... personally I don't mind if it's 200mb if it's good. It all depends if you're aiming for "shareware" "small & cutie" game genre where ppl expect simple and addictive games - which don't take ages to DL because those ppl probably don't have high speed connections. Hardcore Gamers otherhand might think that bigger the package, better the content... not true of course, but die-hard DOOM3 gamer probably don't want to DL small tetris-clone - even if it's under 1 meg. And of course big game DLs will eat your bandwidth quicly if you're going to distribute it from your own website. |
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| It's going to be a shareware rpg, playtime over 20 hours. It will probably cost $29 (not decided yet). I already tought about using a music pack, but imho you can't really play an rpg without the music, because the mood is so important. But still I'm considering it. Or maybe two downloads, one with "lite" music (mono and low quality), and a version with the full music, with the possibility to download the full music seperately. |
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| I'm on 512k and if something is more than about 25-30mb, then as I rule I wouldn't even bother unless it was something I desperately wanted - I was a bit dubious about downloading the MotoGP demo, and that's a bloody good game but it was nearly 200mb. A shareware game, over 200mb to download and costing $29? You might as well stop coding now because I very much doubt you'll get more than a handful of people willing to download and try it (and bear in mind that only 1-2% of those people will actually open their wallets for it, and that's if its really really good). You need to do some research (and I don't mean asking people here - the people here and their computer specs are not representative of the shareware market as a whole). |
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| It's worthwhile doing some market research... Look at large websites that host shareware games and work out the number of downloads in a month Vs. the size of the download. Personally I think 20mb would be my limit on a shareware title unless it looked awesome. |
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| A shareware game, over 200mb to download and costing $29? You might as well stop coding now because I very much doubt you'll get more than a handful of people willing to download and try it (and bear in mind that only 1-2% of those people will actually open their wallets for it, and that's if its really really good)." Well okay, I probably used the term shareware wrong... It will have a free demo (<10 mb probably, just the introduction/tutorial-part), and a full version that you need to pay for. Hopefully the demo will be good enough so that people will pay for the full version (everybody that played the development version told me that it's really good and that it looks very promising, but that's no indicator because I know most of them personally). The $29 is just my first thought, but it may well be something like $19. And possibly a discount for other blitz users :) You might as well stop coding now That is if you assume I'm only in it for the money ;) |
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