I've been klicking for going on 8 years now and during such time I have been, on paper, creating a science fiction action shooter. Three months ago I started work on the project. Now that I am completely finished the game engine, 90% of the graphics, all of the storyline. and finished the menus; I have come to a small problem. Only one of the 20 missions is 8.5MB in size! My question is this...Should I complete the game as is, or should I break it up into single mission downloads?
I wouldn't worry about it. You're better off releasing a single awesome long-lasting game than a bunch of single-mission games. 56Kers might be out of luck... but that's the breaks for not upgrading. At some point you have to draw the line concerning who you're going to support.
Are you talking about the size of an executable version of the first level, or the cca file? Because if it's the former, yeah, that's pretty insane. Broadband or not, I don't think too many people will want to download a 170 meg Click game. If it's the cca, it might shrink down to 20-30 megs when all's said and done, which is still pretty absurd, but if it's worth it, I guess it's worth it.
Are you sure adding another level will add another 8 mb to the filesize? You say 90% graphics are done ... are all the graphics (or almost) featured in level one? In that case reuse will not add much to concurrent levels.
If level one features a theme that will go on in say the next 2 levels and then a change in the theme, the filesize will also not grow that much.
I think a game have to be very good if the size is more than 50 mb. Think about that.
And, you could make a 56k friendly version without eg music that could be added as an addon package (same for eg videoclips if any etc etc), or just split up the game into say 5 mb chunks with eg winzip or something similar. There are a lot of options.
First I would build another level and see how much that raised the filesize.
How about splitting it into different various RAR files and then uploading them so the user can download them in small segments. Then they could put them all together and unRAR them and install the game!
Or how ever that stuff goes.
CRUSH!!
Pete Nattress Cheesy Bits img src/uploads/sccheesegif
Registered 23/09/2002
Points 4811
5th March, 2004 at 11:45:53 -
yeah, chamzel, the problem with that is they still have to download the whole game before they play it. if it was split into seperately downloadable levels, they need only download one level and decide whehter they want the rest.
Well, if Aaron has a CDR in his computer he could buy a large stock of CDs for really cheap and sell them for about $10-15, thus covering shipping and the cost of the CD?
Well, if the game uses mp3s or mods which are of a large file size, get rid of them. And perhaps decrease the colours of the ingame graphics, say, from 16 million to the 2nd highest.
Don't restrict your game just to satisfy slow downloaders. Make is as good as you want, as huge as you want. If it's good, people will download. In theory. It's probably best to have a one level demo first though, so if people like it they'll download the full game.
Don't worry, I'm having the same problem with my Zombies Now game. One level is 15mb, but it's a good idea to make as many of the objects Global as you can, saves on file-size.
im on 56k modem, even if it is around 170mb id still download it.
a few things thatll help you cut down the size:
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+ Crop all images
+ delete unescarry objects
+ use backdrops for platform's and such instead of actuve objects
+ instead of using Hidden counters, use Alterable values
+ If youre using lots of detectors try and make them as small as possible
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Also, when its zipped there might be a huge difference in size.
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