Game Sizes ?

In your opinion,

What is "good" release download size for a casual game ??

If you watch at Real or BigFish, they're under 20MB, and some compo limit this too.

For a 56K modem it tooks around 1 hour(not very accurate) to download a game(this might be old standard, but some ppl still under low bandwidth).

However newer systems have their own download manager that can manage downloads and resume, so if it's not too big it should be ok anyway.

I used to think 5Mb but some top sellers have been up to 20Mb. Go over a certain small size and you'll loose the modem market imho, and it's still a BIG market. Also research shows modem downloaders are more likely to buy as they feel more "committed" after downloading it...

Well, if it were a 'casual' game, I wouldn't want to download more than 50MB. Inside of 25MB is fine by me. However, it does depend on what type of game it is. If it is a puzzle-type game/simple then within 10MB.

yoxola: @ 56K it's around 5mins per Mb, so 20Mb = 100mins = 1hour 40 mins i.e. a long time.

It really depends, if the user are browsing other pages, the speed get even lower, this is not a accurate calculation, in my country, boradband USED to be very expensive, now it's lot cheaper so it won't be major consideration.

It really depends on the game, but even with 2MBit DSL I prefer games 5-10 MB! If done right you can put a lot in there.

The only thing that really eats space is music. But you can always use tracker music (xm,mod,s3m) to minimize this issue... :)

Not if it's a decent connection. If you're really getting 56k, Yoxola was almost bang on. I've always used 20meg per hour as my estimate when downloading stuff.

It all depends on the game too, i wouldn't expect a huge download for a puzzle game but would for an fps at 20mb+ in size due to media.

I think we'll hit about 40Meg with Naked War.

I was on 56k a few weeks ago for about a month ... 5min is a little high ... 3-4 min will most likely be normal (~4kbyte/s of the max of 7kbyte/s)

Shooting for 25 meg myself, haven't got much choice.

When I finally get time to finish my game I'll be happy if it's under 30mb

Thanks for the input guys!

yeah sorry my mistake, more like 3.12mins per Mb maximum theoretical speed. Still, it's slow ... right?

Anyone want to improve the j2k loader by skidracer? That'll get our filesizes wayyyy down, however it's a bit slow to load and I'm not sure if its robust enough to use.

Sound takes just as much room, and frankly I haven't found a great mod musician at a cheap price yet.

Somebody told me this Music guy in OZ is pretty cheap - his stuff seems to be on the ball.

http://www.designyourw3.com/~yannis/

Get real. Nobodies going to want your game bad enough that they're likely to wait an hour. Plus that hour is only if all you do is stare at the download bar, and not do anything else in the mean time. Never mind having a worthless ISP that disconnects you whenever they feel like it. I've spent the last 5 days trying to succesfully download some Realtak audio drivers, which are only 24MB and I have a 512/512kb broadband connection (in theory). I doubt anyone is going to spend 5 days trying to get your game, unless it's digital crack.

If you have a game of that size, better shoot for coverdisc distribution.

When I was on dialup, I wouldn't touch anything over about 10MB - and only then if I *really* wanted it. Then again, I'm an impatient git. :)

We haven't had any complaints so far about file size. Not that there's much I can do about it.

Luckily our game will be freely distributable so we can put it on torrent sites, cover disks etc.

Yeah, using torrents are probably a good idea, at least then you can get it small peices at a time.

Also you could possibly have that digital crack advantage I was talking about earlier.