Any other good methods to reduce file size?

[James]

I want to reduce the game file size as much as possible with minimum quality loss, currently I use.

.ogg - as music files
.png - as image files with JCC to reduce it into.jpg.
WinRAR Zip - through Build Distributions


Are there any other additional methods or tips programmers use to reduce file size even more that they can share with me?
I'm pretty new at this, so I probably won't know a lot of the basic stuff.

[PyTom]

If you're hardcore enough to use JCC, you can cut a lot out of the common directory. For example, you can cut out the themes you aren't using, the .rpy files, 00developer.rpym, the layouts you're not using, and so on.

[James]

If you're hardcore enough to use JCC, you can cut a lot out of the common directory. For example, you can cut out the themes you aren't using, the .rpy files, 00developer.rpym, the layouts you're not using, and so on.

Thanks PyTom, I didn't realize you could remove some of the data. Time to make a back up and go crazy with the delete button and hope the game will still run.

Seeing how you made the whole engine, is it possible for you to make a short list of things that's probably safe to delete?

Interesting method making music files smaller
Using a audio mixing program and reducing some of the song's length, volume, and dynamics. I think I saved a good 8mb of space just using this method.

[Midnighticequeen]

I want to reduce the game file size as much as possible with minimum quality loss, currently I use.

You sound exactly like me! Another way to shrink down the file size is to shrink the window size of your game. Generally, the smaller the image the smaller the file size. You can make your game workable with a smaller screen size and/or using less colors in your artwork.
You could also try saving your images in different formats to see which one gives the most quality with the smallest size

I'm still trying to figure out how to make my own games as small as possible without losing quality. I don't have much to add after that.

[pondrthis]

Reducing a song's volume/dynamics shouldn't decrease the filesize lossless-ly... unless OGG works in mysterious ways, which I suppose it might. Oggs probably use some variant on the wavelet/singular value decomposition frequency breakdown techniques, so I suppose decreasing the volume might push a few more coefficients below the threshold... but that would result in some nasty loss in quality. Regardless, making things quieter convolutes the signal into lower-resolution due to the fixed dynamic range and bit depth.

LESS TECHNICAL: Changing the volume of music either doesn't compress it or causes hefty loss, I wouldn't recommend it. Trimming the music is a very effective way to reduce the filesize though.

EDIT: Your game is called "The Alumnus" with a black-and-gold logo. Let's go 'Dores! I myself am an alumnus from that alma mater. Well, and a student. Graduate student.

[Aleema]

Interesting method making music files smaller
Using a audio mixing program and reducing some of the song's length, volume, and dynamics. I think I saved a good 8mb of space just using this method.

To be honest, that probably had way more to do with the original compression of the song, rather than the volume or dynamics in the song. Kevin McLeod's songs, for instance, are very high quality and come in almost 15mb standard sizes per song. Simply compressing it to 44khz would chop that more than in half.

[pondrthis]

Yeah, if the sampling frequency is more than 44khz, that's a horrible waste. People can't hear frequencies above 20khz, so 44 (as just above double, the required sampling frequency to hear 20khz) is tuned to human capabilities. Dropping the sampling rate to 44k is highly recommended if your audio isn't already there.

[jack_norton]

For song, a good method I've seen (though not used myself) is to split it. Usually most songs can be cut in parts (I don't know the right English words for this). Then you could use music.queue to "rebuild" the song: intro1.ogg,loop1,transition,loop1,transition,end. I think you could save lot of space this way without losing music quality.

[Snowflower]

I am having issues reducing the media files' size. I've already deleted so many media files to reduce the # of them. But I can't seem to get their size to reduce. Right now, their file size overwhelms the game file. 60%+ of the game size. ((

I have them in mp3 because I don't want the file to drastically change in quality. Any ideas?

[sake-bento]

I have them in mp3 because I don't want the file to drastically change in quality. Any ideas?

Convert to .OGG. There's a decent size reduction, but you won't lose that much quality. In fact, unless you work with audio every day, you probably won't even hear the difference. You can use Audacity to convert to .OGG files.

[Snowflower]

I have just converted all of my mp3 files to ogg.

However, the cumulative file size only decreased by .2 mb... Majority of the media files' sizes increased, only couple decreased. Wouldn't it be better to just keep them as the mp3 if the size decrease was not even significant? Because the qualities of the files changed... hmmm...

[Radhreni]

I think it's already been debunked upthread, but just in case...please, please, please do not squash the dynamics to try and save space. All it will do is mutilate the sound.

Then again, my ear might be more sensitive than normal to these things.

[LVUER]

I know small sized for down-loadable games is pretty important, free games or commercial. But how small do you want to achieve anyway? How big is one game that start to make people to not wanting to download your game? With internet speed right now, I think even 30MBs could be downloaded easily (though still takes sometime to complete). And 30MBs is big enough to make all kinds of crazy game with crazy content (as long as you avoid FMV).

[Snowflower]

With internet speed right now, I think even 30MBs could be downloaded easily (though still takes sometime to complete). And 30MBs is big enough to make all kinds of crazy game with crazy content (as long as you avoid FMV).

Umm... Currently the file is 100MBs+

This is the progress file size, not the actual. & the media file is 60+

[LVUER]

How long each music file? Actually, you don't need all 3-5 minutes of each song track for your game. 1 minute or less is already enough, I think. Don't look at those Japanese VN since each of those games takes a whopping 600MBs to 1GB. They have luxury of space.