I wanted to ask you what was the best method for compressing very large Click games that you know of or have used yourself? by large, I mean possibly 100+ MB. I could always still use WinZip, but I don't know crap about WinRar or anything else since I've never used them before.
Any advice, and thanks!
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"Del Duio has received 0 trophies. Click here to see them all."
"To be a true ninja you must first pick the most stealthy of our assorted combat suits. Might I suggest the bright neon orange?"
DXF Games, coming next: Hasslevania 2- This Space for Rent!
It really depends on what you're compressing, though winRAR does some pretty good compression on zip's. (it is free it just nags you)
If it's all music, sound, or an exe then you probably won't get too much compression. Images and text get compressed best (AFAIK).
DaVince This fool just HAD to have a custom rating
Registered 04/09/2004
Points 7998
21st August, 2007 at 06:56:53 -
I recommend the following:
- Use UPX to compress the executable itself. The program is specialized in compressing executables, so you should be able to cut off a fair share of the filesize (I don't know how well it would compress the resources hidden in the exe though). http://upx.sourceforge.net/
- 7-zip is one of the better compression algorithms out there, but make sure you make it a self-extracting archive so ANYONE can unpack the game, even people who don't have 7-zip. http://7-zip.org/
- Clickteam's Install Creator compresses well, but installers... bleagh.
I wouldn't worry about file sizes being too big, past the 100mb marker the minute differences you'll get from other compression methods might not be worth it. Anything past 50mb for me is a ¨click and forget¨ download. I wouldn't worry about it too much. 7-zip or WinRar is all you'll need.
DaVince, how would I make a self-extracting 7-zip file? Is it something special, or an option on the program itself? (Sorry, I didn't have time to look it up elsewhere yet).
Thanks for your testing too
The bulk of the size is from wav files used for the voices. There are a lot of lines, maybe upwards of 150 by the time it's done. I even cut some out that weren't needed. I don't want to sacrifice them all, as it adds a lot of "B-Movieness" that I want.
--
"Del Duio has received 0 trophies. Click here to see them all."
"To be a true ninja you must first pick the most stealthy of our assorted combat suits. Might I suggest the bright neon orange?"
DXF Games, coming next: Hasslevania 2- This Space for Rent!
DaVince This fool just HAD to have a custom rating
Registered 04/09/2004
Points 7998
21st August, 2007 at 09:56:29 -
The bulk of the size is from wav files used for the voices. There are a lot of lines, maybe upwards of 150 by the time it's done. I even cut some out that weren't needed. I don't want to sacrifice them all, as it adds a lot of "B-Movieness" that I want.
Convert them to ogg or mp3 and have them played externally, like through an extension.
Yeah, convert your sounds to OGG. They are WAY smaller than wavs and the quality is almost exactly the same. Plus no licencing crap (unlike MP3). And MMF2/TGF2 can use OGGs without any additional extentions (as far as I know ).
Half because I'm an old fart, and we don't do change!
Half because I still use MMF1.5, and you can't have embedded OGG files with it can you? I need the sounds / voices to be part of the exe. I don't want to have Captain of the Guard or Undertown again with a million extra dependancy files inside the game's folder. I know a lot of "real" games do this, but if I can get everything inside one big .exe, I'd rather have that. (Excluding the cnc232.dll, of course, for those who don't have it already.)
I'm sure I'm probably wrong, but this is how I learn stuff- the hard way
--
"Del Duio has received 0 trophies. Click here to see them all."
"To be a true ninja you must first pick the most stealthy of our assorted combat suits. Might I suggest the bright neon orange?"
DXF Games, coming next: Hasslevania 2- This Space for Rent!
DaVince This fool just HAD to have a custom rating
Registered 04/09/2004
Points 7998
22nd August, 2007 at 08:18:15 -
Having external resources has some advantages though - it's more memory saving and will allow you to at least compress them well.
I know you're right, but it will also let people change the files if they wanted to. I want to try and get away from that kind of thing if I can. If in the end this thing is a ridiculous 200MB I'll look into external files if I have to. I already had somebody offer to mirror the eventual download who has a lot more bandwidth usage / day than I do with Sitesled, so maybe that big of a download wouldn't be a deal breaker in the long run.
--
"Del Duio has received 0 trophies. Click here to see them all."
"To be a true ninja you must first pick the most stealthy of our assorted combat suits. Might I suggest the bright neon orange?"
DXF Games, coming next: Hasslevania 2- This Space for Rent!
Actually i guess it wont matter much because the download will be compressed anyway. But i'm not entirely sure if a compressed wav is the same size as an mp3 or not.
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DaVince This fool just HAD to have a custom rating
Registered 04/09/2004
Points 7998
22nd August, 2007 at 16:45:23 -
Originally Posted by AndyUK [Ectoprods] Actually i guess it wont matter much because the download will be compressed anyway. But i'm not entirely sure if a compressed wav is the same size as an mp3 or not.
The mp3 and ogg compression algorithms are specially developed for sound, while zip, rar etcetera is kinda general purpose. So yes, it does matter somewhat.
Originally Posted by Phizzy [Ectoprods] Hmm? Well, what's the harm if some person replaces some voice acting with a wave file of them slapping their microphone with their cock?
AH HA!!
Hasslevania Mods!
Think of the possibilities!
Maybe in the sequel!
--
"Del Duio has received 0 trophies. Click here to see them all."
"To be a true ninja you must first pick the most stealthy of our assorted combat suits. Might I suggest the bright neon orange?"
DXF Games, coming next: Hasslevania 2- This Space for Rent!
Originally Posted by Bo Fu Don't think of external files as a bad thing. Even if a user replaces them, no biggie. They'll think you're a genius for making your game modifiable.
But then you'll have the extension overhead, i mean it could add mulitple kilobytes to the overall size. Terribly inefficient.
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