(answered)Too many sprites...?

[o v e n]

I'm curious if the art style for your game will be similar to your avatar. Hope so.

Yes. Yes yes yes. Yes exactly. Keeping it really simple and expressive. Have to stop misplacing my sepia palette.

[Tempus]

I'm not sure whether it's allowed to be used as such, but you maybe Google Drive would be a good place to store the game and release it. You get 5GB of free storage there (or maybe it's 10... I can't be bothered checking XD) Again though, I don't know whether that's against the ToS. Also, moddb / indiedb have free profile pages you can create post media, blog, and upload files -- I don't know the file size limit is there, but I doubt it's below 2GB.

Also, I'd guess that in most projects, provided the images are saved correctly, it's the music that's the heaviest on file size. At the very least, finding out the image to music file size ratio would be useful in helping decide where to look when making changes. Recently, I seem to recall reading about audio files with variable bit rates -- portions of the music with low activity (like a single tone drone or silence) would be encoded with a low bit rate, while the more busy sections with multiple instruments and swift changes in dynamics would be encoded with relatively higher bit rates. That's about the extent of my knowledge on the subject though... I have no idea of the potential savings (I imagine it'd be more effective for varied audio like classical music, for example) nor whether Ren'Py supports playback of such files.

[o v e n]

The one thing that always enthralled me with VN/dating sims (or even games like Persona and Harvest moon, where the illustrated sprites that came with the dialogue were independent from the actual character avatars) was studying the different expressions of the characters as you interacted with them.

I enjoy the same thing... although something I've really noticed is that expressions are context-dependent. An expression that seems to specifically mean "bored-but-too-polite-to-tell-you" in one scene will be somehow transformed to "quietly-angry-but-going-to-kill-you-in-your-sleep" in another scene. Basically, the same exact same graphic can mean different things in the context of different dialog. Don't get me wrong -- Persona 3/4, Disgaea, etc. do have a fair number of sprites, but the emotions they express are much higher in number. For example, I remember enjoying how much mileage they got out of P4 Yosuke's "yyyyeeeEEEsh" face. Most of the time it was used in a light comical manner, but other times it was used in sadness, anger, or frustration. Notice that it's really the same expression modified even for certain ... dramatic changes in wardrobe.

One thing that is important, though, is that every sprite is visually interesting. In those games I found myself admiring the sprites because the same sprites continued to be interesting to look at all through the game. Personally I think the biggest limitation is the amount of work it takes to do all the expressions/clothes, rather than file size.

That is really a very perfect point! Wow. I shall... re-evaluate this from a new perspective then.

I'm not sure if I could ever pull off the detail of Personas 3 and 4; that WOULD require quite a bit of work and I'm keeping the art direction fairly simple - but to make up for it the sprites aren't static. They turn their heads. They slump their shoulders. They get WAY UP CLOSE to the invisible fourth wall when they're angry. I know a lot of placement tricks could eliminate the need for so many individual images, but I really REALLY want to avoid static/copy/paste expression on unmoving bodies.

Oooooo, yes, excellent suggestions.

And yeah, hahaha, the music was the first to get the redux. Hooooly cow, the music. @_@ As the soundtrack is static-y old piano not unlike a grammophone, low quality is more a mood-setter than anything. The size difference between mp3 and WAV alone is astounding.

[TrickWithAKnife]

Composite works by putting together layers on the fly.
So, for example, if you have two hats that are different colours, perhaps you can do the hats as a separate layer. That way you don't have to redo every single sprite with the second hat.

Of course, this may not work for unique poses.

I'll give you an example: I had a character with 6 hair styles, 11 expressions, 10 tshirts, 10 shirts, 3 scarves (including none), and 8 pairs of pants.
6 x 11 x 10 x 10 x 3 x 8 = 158,400.
Making that many sprites would be madness, but far more realistic using compositing, especially considering many of the clothing items were just colour variations of others.

[o v e n]

Oho, I seeeeee. Yes that would be useful for static posing. I'd go to TOWN with something like that for avatar-customization. >D