Minimizing game deployment file size?

[kennysaurs]

So I tested out deploying/exporting a test game I have with all the built in and pre-order resources and the size ended up being over 1 GB. I checked what's taking up most of the space and the two biggest ones were the audio, with over 600MB and the images, with over 300MB. Also, I noticed that the audio files have duplicates in two different file types, OGG and M4A.

Questions: 

Do I have to keep both types of audio files of the same name to make my game work correctly on all platforms?

Will there be an option/program to help minimize the total file size in any way?

What would be a good average file size for an average RPG Maker game?

As for now, I plan to manually delete all the files that my game isn't using.

 

[Felix Trapper]

I believe M4A audio files are only necessary for android use. If you are planning on just having it played on the PC, you only need to keep the .ogg

 

[djDarkX]

Delete the music/images you don't need (music will be chosen by what is best used by the export option) and export.  The filesize will dramatically get reduced.  I trimmed a project from 331MB down to 93MB by doing this.  I left the two copies of the music and sound effects in the project folder since the export function automagically doesn't include the ones it doesn't need for the export so it'll get reduced from whatever your projects current total size is.

 

[Kes]

Another thing you could do is put all the skill animation sheets (I mean the ones usednin the Animation tab) through tinypng.com This brings that folder down from 52Mb to 10.5Mb.

 

[Lakaroth]

Guys, with MAC i removed almost everything, an empty game just with a character on map, is 100MB!!!

The project folder is 5,9MB
That's crazy....

 

[Ultima2876]

Will there be an option/program to help minimize the total file size in any way?

I made a tool to help with this: http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/47985-mvstripper-remove-unused-assets-from-your-mv-project/

Still working on updating it

EDIT: Tinypng is also a great idea. I was tinkering with that earlier on myself and the results are pretty great - specifically, it makes almost no visual difference and you'll save 80% of the space on those animations. Also works really well for battlebacks, titles and parallax bgs - not so much for tilesets and characters. I'm actually drafting up ways to integrate it into my tool above... (along with pngcrush).

 

[marcelox]

My problem is that I am using a ton of the resources. The latest alpha of my game sits as a 289MB android file, that's with me removing all the unused stuff...

 

[Ultima2876]

Your best bet is probably to tinypng/pngcrush as much as possible, and reduce music quality too. Run a tool like windirstat/Disk Inventory X to find out what is using the most space in your project, and work from there!

 

[marcelox]

compressing pngs is fine since it doesnt degrade the quality (from what I understand it just recodes the file, unlike jpg in which degradation is the nature of that compression.)

however, lowering the quality of the music files is a little risky. Lower quality music is easy to notice, but if you have no other choice it's better than removing chunks of your game. I would say leave the music reduction until your game is done and you have removed all unused resources, then you can go about reducing the quality of music. but careful when reducing music from important scenes or musics that will play all the time, since those are the most important pieces of music, they should not be messed with too much. That's my 2 cents and nothing more.

 

[Ultima2876]

If you're targeting mobile, most players won't care if the music quality is 128kbps instead of 192kbps. And most won't mind mono instead of stereo - very common trick in the mobile and web games industry!

Be careful with tinypng; it is actually lossy compression so in some cases it _can_ ruin your images.

 

[marcelox]

128 is fine, I was thinking you were talking about real compression like 48k, that crap's really noticeable, even though it becomes very small in size. mono is a great idea.

 

[astracat111]

I hate to bring this topic up but I thought I had something important to add....A more experienced programmer will understand this better, but on the forums of http://www.html5gamedevs.com/ there was someone talking about how packaging an html5 game as an exe will mean higher file sizes. I don't know for the life of me why this is. They were talking also about crosswalk and android deployment, saying the same thing. 


There should be a way, though, to package the index.html and all of it's files into a deployable exe file in a way other than the default rpg maker mv deployment...


Since it is an html5 game you could use a guide like this one: 


https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/576/method-to-create-a-single-html-exe-file


It includes making a .bat file. This won't protect your game files, though, like Enigma will, but it should allow you to make a smaller game [for pc]. If you use the default rpg maker game files only, I don't think there's a point in trying to protect one's files anyway. 


EDIT: Oh I remember why now, actually it's because in that EXE it generates for windows it's including an entire copy of chromium/webkit or whatever to run the game.