Does anyone here plan the size of their game or the quality or music or sound as part of their game design? I suppose most beginners wouldn''t crank out a 500MB game but without optimizing I''m sure many more professional games will start to get large fast. I was looking at game downloads from CNET.com and that "filter by file size" option got me thinking. I know that even my more simple games would be at least 5MB in size. You need to consider music quality, sound quality, how fancy your graphics and sprites are going to get and, of course, how much cinematics you''re going to include. The last one especially will prevent 56K-ers from downloading. So how many people take the above into consideration when they''re designing their game? How do you come to a certain music/sound quality? Do you ever decide that cinematics are too large to include in a game that''s designed for a "non-professional" audience? Anyone ever redo their sprites for a lower frame-rate animation? Or is the file size just something you get at the end that''s not really important to you?

I would think that this is more a question of your market. If it is sitting on the store shelf, who cares, better quality is better, more content is better (mass market wise). If your intended market is shareware/download only, then size becomes a factor. This can go a few ways. Small niche game created by a hardcore gamer for hardcore gamers: Most will have decent download bandwidth, and most will not like your game if you skimp on things simply because you wanted to keep their download small. Shareware for the masses: Multiplayer or singleplayer? Multiplyaer: Necessary bandwidth to play? That should factor in to your decision. SIngle player: Now you have to think about the 56kers.

My general thought: MAke a fully funtional version of your game, but keep out the cinematics and high quality glitz that GREATLY increase the size of your code base. Also release in parrallel both: Full Glitz version and Glitz music package and glitz graphics package and cionematics cutscene 1 and 2 and 3....

Let your game just skip cutscenes if they are not present, maybe mentioning that it is available at www.yoursite.com. Let the packages be downloadable seperately but seemless installed into your game (i.e. check for files before cutscenes). Now you have 1.)included low bandwidth users 2.)Given more options for the mass market 3.)Convinced some people to come back to your site (so you can advertise part 2 while they''re there).

Anyway, Just some thoughts off the top of my head.

--OctDev

....and let''s not forget if you develop for a certain media type that only allows a certain ammount of data e.g. a cartridge.

That makes you pretty much have to let that decide some design...

- Captain

all things must be taken into account as size =[-$]to
overall [+$]
aswell as if a game was big cool graphics ,sound etc=[big ram game]
only a limited amount of units would be sold (eg.PC[who ever had "the masheen" would be able to run this sort of game),thus cutting most of the market off ,this inter =[-$]
so bottim line is 1.[+$]
2.[-$]
the truth be told if you good at what you do ,you should know how to get the max resolt for the least cost of (MB).
have you ever herd of a compresser??

rivit

Yep. This is all assuming compressors are used. Any professional game out there is compressed. Even still, sizes can get ridiculous.

For example, I don''t know if I''d download a game that''s 200MB unless I''ve heard some really, REALLY nice things about it or the screenshots make me drool. On the other hand, if the screenshots suck but I see potential in the game and it''s less than a Meg then yes, I''ll download it and try it out.

That''s the reason that I''d try to make sure any game I make uses the minimum amount of cinematics and small music and sound files at a reasonably low quality.

You know... the source code for most games (the important code, excluding content (graphics, sounds, movies, text)) rarely even scratch the 50mb mark....


Zaptruder

Any geek will appreciate any kind of decent game if it is tightly packaged and doesnt take much space

Whenever I see a "low-quality" game with so-so graphics that take 5mb or more I cringe (and I''m on a cable modem).

For me, that''s never been a problem. As I''ve mainly worked on tile based 2D games, with a little compression, you can fit a whole lot in a little space. Likewize, since I''ve been working with mainly prorgrammers, our art and sound resources have been pretty small.

I think, at least on a beginner level, that obtaining the content is a bigger barrier than content size.

However, I think that a lot of size planning does happen. Though I''d guess a lot of it is guesstimation. "Well, we want fifty levels, and our demo level is of size XXXX, that means we''ll need so much space." And then use that, and a little padding, to determine the size of your game.

Now, as far as demos go, I hate ones that have large movies in them. Nothing worse than wanting to see how a game plays and discovering you spent 4 days downloading a movie.
Grrrrrr.....

In the only substantial game I''ve made, I used simple 8-bit graphics, MIDI music and minimal sound effects to keep the whole thing down to 600kB, making it quick to download, as well as fitting on a floppy. I have a 33k modem here, so I don''t often download anything more than a few MB. For a non-commercial game, it should be easy to keep the size down to this sort of size.

quote: Original post by Zaptrudr
You know... the source code for most games (the important code, excluding content (graphics, sounds, movies, text)) rarely even scratch the 50mb mark....


Zaptruder

50 megs of code?? You''re mad!

The quake 3 source is under 4 megs. The freespace 2 code is 16.5

Anything more would be uncivilized.