Adventure Game Studio

AGS Support => Beginners' Technical Questions => Topic started by: Joe on Thu 31/07/2008 18:09:48

Title: What do I have to do to make my game a fewer size?
Post by: Joe on Thu 31/07/2008 18:09:48
I don't know if the topic subject is correctly expressed.

What I mean is that games I compile with ags are really big (like 30mb) and I see other games compiles with ags with the same image cuality or even better which are not big at all (5mb).

Do you know what I have to do?
Title: Re: What do I have to do to make my game a fewer size?
Post by: Darth Mandarb on Thu 31/07/2008 18:16:54
I think you posted in here by mistake?

Anyway ...

There are several factors that can contribute to this;

1) Are you using Bitmaps for your graphics
2) Are you using higher quality sound files
3) Are you zipping the file

Image quality isn't noticeably different between a png and bmp but the file size is vastly different.  Since you reference "image Quality" in your message I'm guessing this is your problem.
Title: Re: What do I have to do to make my game a fewer size?
Post by: BOYD1981 on Thu 31/07/2008 21:39:07
does the graphics format used for backgrounds really make any difference to the size as AGS converts them all to it's own format anyway?
but ofcourse, a 32 bit background/game is going to be bigger than a 16 or 8 bit, so if your backgrounds are using less than 256 colours then make sure you save them as 8bit and only use 32 bit if you absolutely must.
Title: Re: What do I have to do to make my game a fewer size?
Post by: Gilbert on Fri 01/08/2008 01:53:36
I don't know why people still talk about using a compressed image format for smaller game size. :P

The format of the original image files has no impact on the size of an AGS game. The backgrounds and the sprites (well, you can choose not to compress the sprites in the editor, though there shouldn't be much reason not to compress them now) are all compressed in their own format in an AGS game.

Using compressed formats like PNG would save your own HDD space when you're developig your own game though.

And, though the image format doesn't matter, like BOYD mentioned, the colour depth does matter. So, use 32-bit only when it is really needed. 16-bit would be enough in most cases (I won't suggest using 8-bit as it could be hard to handle for people not familiar with it).
Title: Re: What do I have to do to make my game a fewer size?
Post by: DoorKnobHandle on Fri 01/08/2008 02:06:49
Quote from: Joe Carl on Thu 31/07/2008 18:09:48
What I mean is that games I compile with ags are really big (like 30mb) [...]

In addition to what has been said, 30mb is not big at all.
Title: Re: What do I have to do to make my game a fewer size?
Post by: Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens on Fri 01/08/2008 03:58:54
Moving this to Beginner's Tech.
Title: Re: What do I have to do to make my game a fewer size?
Post by: LeChuck on Fri 01/08/2008 11:16:42
Quote from: Gilbot V7000a on Fri 01/08/2008 01:53:36So, use 32-bit only when it is really needed. 16-bit would be enough in most cases (I won't suggest using 8-bit as it could be hard to handle for people not familiar with it).

Crap, I don't know why I never cared about the bit settings. My sprite file is 80 god damn megs now. Did anyone ever write a program that would convert the sprite file to whatever bitsize?

Converting thousands of sprites might take a little while if done manually. Plus I might be able to run the game in 16-bit mode without sprites disappearing randomly throughout the game. I'm not actually making a game that needs 32-bit but it somehow accidentally got left at 32-bit while doing a transparency test and now almost all sprites are 32-bit...  :o