Removed all default assets and deployed game without any assets, why is file size still so big?

[McKirity]

So I was playing around with RMMZ, and created a dummy project that I manually stripped bare of anything in the img, audio, and effects folders. There were no plugins, and I left the rest of the folders alone. When I deployed the barren project, I was surprised to find a considerable file size anyways. The Windows version was 254.6 MB, and the Mac version was a whopping 564.1 MB. For the Windows version, I was able to further strip it down by going into the locales folder and deleting everything but the en-US files, which reduced the file size to 207.9 MB (this isn't possible for the Mac version because of the way it 'exports'). Can anyone explain why these files are still so big despite the actual project folder itself being less than 6 MB?

For reference, a freshly made project without anything done to it is about 105 MB. Deploying this project without doing a single thing and not checking 'exclude unused files' at deployment is ~1 GB for windows and ~665 MB for Mac. No idea what kind of magic is going on with MacOS. Thanks in advance!

 

[TheoAllen]

My guess is it has to do with the engine they are using. NWJS. Now, I don't know why they have such a huge framework and if the newer NWJS has an even bigger size. Remember, the game is just a glorified HTML page with moving graphics using PIXI.

More than three years ago I tried to make an app using a plain HTML page and javascript embedded in it. The page itself is only about 100 KB. However, the browser blocked my JS to access the local files for "security reasons". The app wouldn't function without it. My choice was either to use Electron or NWJS. I tried NWJS. My plain HTML app from 100 KB had become 100 MB as a result.

If I recall correctly when I googled why (three years ago), it has something to do with "emulating their own operating system" to make it possible. So you bring the entire browser as an executable file to open the small HTML page. For example, my google chrome folder has 600 MB. But you don't need the browser to open your game.

 

[McKirity]

My guess is it has to do with the engine they are using. NWJS. Now, I don't know why they have such a huge framework and if the newer NWJS has an even bigger size. Remember, the game is just a glorified HTML page with moving graphics using PIXI.

More than three years ago I tried to make an app using a plain HTML page and javascript embedded in it. The page itself is only about 100 KB. However, the browser blocked my JS to access the local files for "security reasons". The app wouldn't function without it. My choice was either to use Electron or NWJS. I tried NWJS. My plain HTML app from 100 KB had become 100 MB as a result.

If I recall correctly when I googled why (three years ago), it has something to do with "emulating their own operating system" to make it possible. So you bring the entire browser as an executable file to open the small HTML page. For example, my google chrome folder has 600 MB. But you don't need the browser to open your game.

I'm not entirely sure what NWJS is, but at least I have a keyword I can now google!

I was honestly shocked when I saw those sizes after deploying everything. I compared them to games like Rakuen and To the Moon, which made heavy use of custom assets, and they only topped out at ~215 MB and ~512 MB respectively. But they were also built on the XP engine, which I guess is far less intensive than MZ? But then I also checked the Witch's House and Ib remakes and those were about 600 MB and 277 MB respectively, with both made on RPG Maker MV. Omori, another MV game, came in at a whopping 2 GB, but given that the average play time appears to be 21 hours (with completionist play times at 72 hours!!!) that isn't really an issue.

The file size worries me because it'll make playtesting difficult when the minimum size for Mac users is over 500 MB and Windows can ballon quite dramatically. I bought MZ because it was the newest engine, but now I'm wondering if I should go to MV instead.

 

[TheoAllen]

I'm not entirely sure what NWJS is, but at least I have a keyword I can now google!

Sorry for my technical talk. But if you want a less technical talk and TLDR. Here:
- RMMV and RMMZ games run on an HTML web page (this was done for portability since many OS can open a web page, or in case you want to make your game playable in a browser)
- Opening and running a web page requires a browser
- For obvious reasons, you don't want your app/game to require a browser to run (imagine launching a game on Steam)
- They bring the entire browser engine with them. So that when you launch the executable file (which was the browser engine), it launches your game.
- NWJS handles this part.

It is one of many reasons why I still like VXA.

 

[McKirity]

Sorry for my technical talk. But if you want a less technical talk and TLDR. Here:
- RMMV and RMMZ games run on an HTML web page (this was done for portability since many OS can open a web page, or in case you want to make your game playable in a browser)
- Opening and running a web page requires a browser
- For obvious reasons, you don't want your app/game to require a browser to run (imagine launching a game on Steam)
- They bring the entire browser engine with them. So that when you launch the executable file (which was the browser engine), it launches your game.
- NWJS handles this part.

It is one of many reasons why I still like VXA.

Ahhh okay I have a better idea of what's going on now. Thanks for explaining like I'm 5 haha. I briefly considered buy VXA when I was still trying to figure out which engine I should go for because everyone rated it so solidly, but it's over a decade old and I had an easier time finding plugins for MV/MZ, which is crucial given my obvious lack of coding skills. I'm probably gonna have to make another post asking how NWJS and the bloat in MZ affects it in terms of gameplay and other technical aspects. Thanks again!

 

[Andar]

I'm probably gonna have to make another post asking how NWJS and the bloat in MZ affects it in terms of gameplay and other technical aspects.

It doesn't - or at least should not as long as you're not using plugins that require nwjs (there are a few from SRD).

If you deploy to web, nothing of that will be included in your game - but the resulting folder will only function if you place it into a webserver (either a real one or a simulated local one) and access the adress with a browser.

The main purpose of the engine executable and its files is to handle and override the security features that usually prevent a local access through a regular webbrowser, without opening your browser to malware attacks by websites (which are the reason why these functions are blocked by regular browsers)

 

[Kes]

@Andar But what if you don't want to make a browser game? Is it not possible to disable some part of the system to avoid the huge download size?

 

[TheoAllen]

@Kes as I have previously said, your game is bundled with a "custom browser". Even with everything stripped out (the resources), it is still a browser. Even with bloat files removed, or just one index.html, it is still +100MB. Now, if you ask me how to debloat MV/MZ, I know nothing about it. If it could at all.

Unlike VXA and older engines, they are using Windows functions to make it work.

 

[NamEtag]

Sorry for my technical talk. But if you want a less technical talk and TLDR. Here:
- RMMV and RMMZ games run on an HTML web page (this was done for portability since many OS can open a web page, or in case you want to make your game playable in a browser)
- Opening and running a web page requires a browser
- For obvious reasons, you don't want your app/game to require a browser to run (imagine launching a game on Steam)
- They bring the entire browser engine with them. So that when you launch the executable file (which was the browser engine), it launches your game.
- NWJS handles this part.

It is one of many reasons why I still like VXA.

This is the kind of stuff I was expecting in the "why should I pick X engine" threads.

 

[Kes]

@TheoAllen Thanks for the clarification. I was horrified on moving from VX Ace to MZ to see such a huge increase in file size. It seems that there is nothing that one can do about it.

 

[Andar]

But what if you don't want to make a browser game?

The function of MV and MZ is to create browsergames - that is what HTML5-based means.

Any game made with MV and MZ will always be a browsergame - that is why you need that big an executable to run it anywhere else.
But it is one of the very few ways a hobby-developer can develop on multiple OS, exactly because executables for HTML exists for almost every OS (although they are usually called browsers).

 

[ATT_Turan]

Is it not possible to disable some part of the system to avoid the huge download size?

Just to put out a quick opinion...without knowing your target market, these really aren't "huge download sizes" from the perspective of modern computer software.

Visual novels that, mechanically, don't do anything are hundreds of megabytes. It is completely standard for actual video games, even ones with cartoony/anime graphics, to take tens of gigabytes. By comparison to pretty much anything in my Steam library, 1-2 GB is basically nothing

And when it's pretty standard for people who intend to play video games to have hard drives with a capacity of one or more terabytes, that amount is a pretty insignificant percentage of space.

 

[Shaz]

I've moved this thread to MZ Support. Thank you.

I think it's better here, because it's definitely specific to the engine.

 

[Kes]

@ATT_Turan your assessment of the hardware used by people is true for many (though not all) players in the West. However, I know that my games have been bought in the past by people in other parts of the world where such a spec is the stuff of dreams and/or their internet connections are slow so that downloads take forever. I had hoped to keep things a bit more accessible, but it looks like that's not to be.

 

[ATT_Turan]

@Kes I'm not sure modern computer specs are quite so limited as "the West" - Japan and China are pretty prolific gaming countries that take up a large portion of non-West populace

But I understand and acknowledge your point. You can always split your download into multipart zip/rar files to let people more successfully complete the downloads a piece at a time.

 

[TheoAllen]

@ATT_Turan as someone who lives in a third-world country, I can vouch for what Kes said. A stable internet connection is still a dream in most areas (I live in the capital city though, so I don't have that problem). When a website said the download speed would be capped at 2 Mb/s unless you pay for premium, we would just laugh because it won't even touch 1 Mb/s.

And while the computer specs continue to improve, the economy isn't. Some people can't just afford to either buy a PC or upgrade their old one.

Personally, I don't mind an RM game around 500 ~ 800 MB, but when it reached 1 GB onward, I would question if the dev couldn't optimize the size, using FLAC or 320kbps audio or wav, or if it includes voice acting, or if they put their fave cat video in their game that has nothing to do with the game.

 

[ATT_Turan]

@TheoAllen Again, I wasn't disputing what Kes said, I'm aware there are countries where the Internet is laughable.

I just don't know how much can be done to cater to/accommodate residents of those countries without going back to older Maker engines and possibly losing out on features that would make your game appealing to first-world residents.

No, like, insult was intended if something I said came off that way.

 

[TheoAllen]

@ATT_Turan it's a fair point. But my point is about optimization. If you can reduce the size rather than split the download to cater to third-world people while not sacrificing the features, you should do that. So far, you can't do anything about the 200 MB minimum size, but you can control the rest. Do you really need your game to be 1 GB+ or can you compress or reduce some of them? Sometimes, I have a feeling because a computer is getting more advanced, most developers forgot how to optimize their software/game.

 

[Kes]

@ATT_Turan My battle on the file size of games goes back a long way. For me it has always been one of the most important accessibility issues, and was kicked off by reading a post (in 2012?) of someone boasting that their icon file was already up to 5Mb.
@TheoAllen Does FLAC retain the ogg format? afaik that's the only format recognized by MZ.

 

[TheoAllen]

No idea. Never tried.