[casual_games] The 10 meg file limit

Fri Nov 18 11:59:11 EST 2005

I've got a simple to use tool chain - probably far less sophisticated 
than Tom's - that uses zlib to build a single binary containing all of 
my data.  It's not a big engineering effort and it makes data analysis, 
making a demo or preview release easier and once you have your data all 
in one place you find other things you can do.  I've used similar 
systems when I was working in mainstream gaming and the one thing big 
timer saver that I would recommend to anyone building such a scheme 
would be to make sure that your file system can also check for the 
existence of a file outside of the large data file so that, during dev., 
you can just drop new files into your root directory and go rather than 
waiting for a new data binary build.

My 2 cents,

Lennard Feddersen
CEO, Rusty Axe Games, Inc.
www.RustyAxe.com

Lennard at RustyAxe.com
P. 250-635-7623 F. 1-309-422-2466
3521 Dogwood, Terrace, BC, Canada, V8G-4Y7

Tom Park wrote:

> What everyone has been saying makes plenty of sense, but I was just 
> curious:
>
> How much engineering analysis/effort is put into the optimizing the 
> download size?
>
> For a small indie team of one or a few people, maybe it's just 
> impossible to justify spending much time to doing an analysis. Perhaps 
> the only effort that can be spent is ensuring that there's no unused 
> files included in the deliverable, and the rest is left to 
> the installer's compression.
>
> However, I'm wondering who can answer relevant questions about their 
> titles like:
> 1) What is the overhead of the installer?
> 2) What is the size of the executable versus the size of the assets?
> 3) If you use a custom scripting engine, what is the overhead of the 
> runtime module and how much space is saved by the scripts?
> 4) What is the ratio of the number of asset files to the total size of 
> the assets?
> 5) What is size distribution of the runtime assets?
>
> In my industry (mobile), there are hard limits to the download size 
> (e.g. 64K, 100K, 128K, etc), so you can imagine we are forced to put a 
> lot of engineering effort into the download size. We have a fairly 
> sophisticated build system and asset pipeline that must target 100's 
> of devices and their relative limits.
>
> Tom
>
>     ----- Original Message -----
>     *From:* Daniel Bernstein <mailto:danielb at sandlotgames.com>
>     *To:* george at infiknowledge.com <mailto:george at infiknowledge.com> ;
>     'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'
>     <mailto:casual_games at igda.org> ; mitzim at tikgames.com
>     <mailto:mitzim at tikgames.com>
>     *Sent:* Thursday, November 17, 2005 8:02 PM
>     *Subject:* RE: [casual_games] The 10 meg file limit
>
>     I completely agree that the 10 Meg download is arbitrary, although
>     if you have a web game, try to keep it under 2 MB. The expectation
>     is different when you are playing a game online vs. downloading.
>
>      
>
>     Daniel Bernstein
>
>     President/CEO
>
>     Sandlot Games
>
>      
>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>     *From:* casual_games-bounces at igda.org
>     <mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org>
>     [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] *On Behalf Of *George Donovan
>     *Sent:* Thursday, November 17, 2005 4:47 PM
>     *To:* mitzim at tikgames.com <mailto:mitzim at tikgames.com>; 'IGDA
>     Casual Games SIG Mailing List'
>     *Subject:* RE: [casual_games] The 10 meg file limit
>
>      
>
>     ISpy was over 100 megs and it did great on Real Arcade's channel.
>     I think there is a Risk of a game being downloaded less and
>     possibly having a higher conversion rate, but if the game is very
>     good, Word of Mouth will Rule and people will wait for it to play
>     and hopefully buy.
>
>      
>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>     *From:* casual_games-bounces at igda.org
>     [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] *On Behalf Of *Mitzi McGilvray
>     *Sent:* Thursday, November 17, 2005 8:45 PM
>     *To:* 'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'
>     *Subject:* RE: [casual_games] The 10 meg file limit
>
>      
>
>      
>
>     Go look at Fate from Wild Tangent.  It's a stunning game and it
>     blows the 10 MB boundary out the door.
>
>      
>
>      
>
>     We have one title that had a nice run on the Top 10 lists and it
>     was 15 MB. It's called Cinema Tycoon.  However, our rule of thumb
>     is still to stay within the 10 MB boundary as that is what our
>     partners have asked us for.  I wouldn't get to freaky about that
>     last MB.  I don't think that will make a big difference.
>
>      
>
>      
>
>     -Mitzi
>
>      
>
>     GM, Casual Games
>
>      
>
>     TikGames
>
>      
>
>     650.403.0123 x2005
>
>      
>
>      
>
>      
>
>      
>
>     ================================================
>
>      
>
>     In the past, there was an unwritten rule of casual games that you
>     shouldn't go over 10 megs for the download.  While it wasn't a
>     hard and fast rule - I had heard from a number of portals that
>     cracking ten megs would noticeably impact your sales and downloads.
>
>      
>
>     I'm wondering if you all think that is still the case -
>
>      
>
>     We just finished up a game and it weighs in at a hefty 11megs. 
>     Squeezing that last meg out looks like a very very difficult task
>     - I'm wondering if it is worth it.
>
>      
>
>     Thanks!
>
>     James Baker
>     Principal
>     WDDG/Inferno/Funtank
>     212-219-9222
>     james at wddg.com <mailto:james at wddg.com>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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