[Jihgfed Pumpkinhead]

     How big do you think an indie-RPG should aim to be? How big would it have to be for you not to bother to download it?
     I ask because my game's size is starting to balloon up, and I want to know how aggressive I should be about keeping it down, and to what degree if any I should let concerns of size-economy impact the game's quality.
     Incidentally, I just downloaded "Dark Woods". 48 kb; now that's impressive (and it's a fun game, to boot).

[Bjorn]

A few meg can be ok, when it's a really large game. But generally I like it below 3 MB, and the smaller the better. As you'll guess, I am a modem user. :-)

[Modanung]

I think an RPG shouldn't be any larger than 5-10 MB. Ofcourse it needs to be worth downloading, no unnecessary extremely large data.

Dark Woods indeed has quite a high fun/size ratio. :)

Jup, I use the very same modem. :(
And Bjorn, why are you smiling to have a 56k connection?

[Adam]

us 56kers are just all patient people

but whatever size for your rpg is alright by me, beacuse i know about it and what not. If it was some unknown 10mb file id be unlikely to download it (unless it had good reviews).
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https://numbatlogic.com

[Suchiiben]

I'm a wacky DSL user. Below 100 mb for me. (So basically more than you'll ever produce, ha ha)

[Bjorn]

I wasn't smiling because I have a 56k connection, I was smiling because of the fun I had saying that people would guess I had...

[Jocke The Beast]

[entivore]

I wouldn't even notice if the file size was really small, cause I generally only check file size if the download is saying 1% for a long time or something.

For game length, I hope it would be at least 5-10 minutes worth, hehe
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*Only in darkness can one truely shine*

[grenideer]

My game's at 22 megs zipped, but there are a few unneccesarily large image files that haven't been optimized yet. Most of the size is the large music library.
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Diver Down

[Nephilim]

I've got DSL at home, so game size isn't really an issue for me, unless you're talking over 60 MB or so (and an Indie RPG game should be able to get in under that unless it is huge/graphics-heavy/sound-heavy/contains video).

Of course, it depends on the type of game. A game like Myst, which is inherently about the graphics and audio, warrants putting up with a larger download. A 60 MB text-based game, on the other hand, would make me quite skeptical.

The main thing that determines whether I am willing to download something is screenshots of the game in action (not shots out of cut-scenes, although those are nice to see, too). I am highly unlikely to download a game without seeing at least a few screenshots of the gameplay. Screenshots give you an idea of what the gameplay is like, what the interface looks like, and the general aesthetics of the game. Usually, that's what I look at most closely before deciding to commit to a download.

Also, I'm on a Mac, so that might change the dynamics a bit - not as many things out there to download (and less risk that a game is "dangerous" to install) - so when I find something, I might be more willing to check it out than I would be if I was looking around for indie Windows games.

FWIW.

[janus]

If the game is good, I'd put the limit at about 30MB for a demo and 120MB for a full game. If it's only halfway decent, the limit is half that. If it looks crappy, a quarter of that. I don't like wasting my time downloading some gigantic game to discover that it was coded shoddily, has uncompressed, ugly graphics, and has horrible gameplay.

[DarkDread]

I guess that would all depend on the type of RPG it is... how complete it is... what kind of space sucking features it might have, etc, etc... if someone had a NES quality 2D RPG for download, and the file size was 40MB, I would probably avoid it... that big, would make me skeptical... on the other hand, if they showed FF7 quality in-game graphics, and the download was 200MB, then I would probably still grab it.

It's all about what type of file size one expects, based on what the game is. So, 40MB might be out of the question for a short-medium length 2D RPG, but for something like FF7, 200MB seems about right (minus movies, of course).
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"Goth is a way for ugly people to be interesting."

[barok_lazee]

i got dsl, but i'm still skeptical on how much to download. 5-10 megs, same as modanung.

btw, nice avatar, entivore.

[Jihgfed Pumpkinhead]

     Okay. I was looking at a 10Mb ceiling myself, so that's what I'm going to aim for. Of course I'll try to keep it as low as I can.
     For "Rex of Rags" I'm looking to use a very big, overblown, cartoony, absurd sort of style, like you can see in this pseudo-screenshot (it's not really a screenshot because no engine was involved, it was just me plunking graphics down; that should be more or less what it'll look like, though (although the map editor is just about done; just need to include layering right now)).
     What I'm considering doing is giffing all the images in their large form, and then breaking them up into tiles in a sort of installation program (I know, I know, I was railing against installation programs before, but, well... looks like I'm a hypocrite). Since there's only 3 or 4 colours per image, giffing them is extremely efficient (just look at the screenshot above; 16Kb for a 640x480 image is pretty damn good). A large image compressed seems to be about six times smaller than the same image broken up into tiles and then compressed.
     Of course the problem with this is that I've then got the setup program doing quite a lot of stuff while the user sits there... perhaps I could do two downloads, one tiny one for modem users, where you have to sit through a lengthy setup, and one big one, that's pretty much unzip and let loose.
     I'll also look into this "djvu" format that promises so much. Anyone know anything about that?
     Well, I'll do some tests and see how it all turns out.

[Nephilim]