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What filesize is too large?

Up to what file size will you not download?

  • More than 10 MB

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • More than 100 MB

    Votes: 5 18.5%

  • More than 500 MB

    Votes: 11 40.7%

  • More than 1 GB

    Votes: 5 18.5%

  • I will download whatever as long as it looks good.

    Votes: 6 22.2%
  • Total voters
    27

DaSpirit

Mad Programmer
240
Posts
16
Years
We all know that Pokemon games have a considerably large file size. Unlike ROMS, which have palettes for compressed images and other limiting factors which most game developers are unlikely to program their games. Computers are (in a way) unlimited.

So I wonder, how high of a file size will turn you down?
 

the__end

Pixel Artist
141
Posts
13
Years
  • Seen Jun 9, 2016
if the game is finished and it looks good with allot of good reviews i would download even more then 1 GB but imo it shouldn't be that large...
it depends on the content the games offer...
for example how long is the gameplay?
are the graphics good enough compared to their size?
are all the sounds included really needed?
 

yaywalter

46
Posts
13
Years
  • Seen Aug 25, 2013
For a Pokemon fangame, 500+ MB is quite excessive and would make me think that the developers were incompetent. So I'd probably pass, unless it looked seriously amazing. Or it was 3D, in which case the size could be warranted.

Really though... anything above 250 MB for a 2D Gameboy-style Pokemon game would make me question whether the developers really knew what they were doing. I understand that using a program like RPG Maker is going to result in larger executables than, say, a ROM of an official Pokemon game. But still... it should be around 100-200 MB, tops.
 
Last edited:
PiaCRT

PiaCRT

[i]Orange Dev[/i]
936
Posts
13
Years
yaywalter said:
For a Pokemon fangame, 500+ MB is quite excessive and would make me think that the developers were incompetent. So I'd probably pass, unless it looked seriously amazing. Or it was 3D, in which case the size could be warranted.

Really though... anything above 250 MB for a 2D Gameboy-style Pokemon game would make me question whether the developers really knew what they were doing. I understand that using a program like RPG Maker is going to result in larger executables than, say, a ROM of an official Pokemon game. But still... it should be around 100-200 MB, tops.
Click to expand...

MP3 and WAV files take up a lot of space, and when you have over 100 songs in there trying to replicate Crystal version you have a 300mb game. That's just stereo-typing and probably not accurate whatsoever.

Anywho, I think as long as the game is good and can be deleted easily it's worth downloading at any size.
 

yaywalter

46
Posts
13
Years
  • Seen Aug 25, 2013
Evil Arms said:
MP3 and WAV files take up a lot of space, and when you have over 100 songs in there trying to replicate Crystal version you have a 300mb game. That's just stereo-typing and probably not accurate whatsoever.
Click to expand...

If the developers are using WAV files for the music, then that is definitely a sign that they don't know what they're doing.

WAV files are uncompressed, and are gigantic as a result. And even MP3 music is excessive for a Pokemon game unless you've got a talented musician on board for your project with the goal of producing an extravagant original soundtrack that is one of the game's biggest highlights.

If you're just using the official game music, or making unique variations of the official music, or even just going for a similar sound and style as the official music, MIDI is the way to go. And MIDI files are super tiny.

The game I'm developing will have a fairly large soundtrack, and it will almost certainly be under 100 MB, if not 50.
 

the__end

Pixel Artist
141
Posts
13
Years
  • Seen Jun 9, 2016
yaywalter said:
The game I'm developing will have a fairly large soundtrack, and it will almost certainly be under 100 MB, if not 50.
Click to expand...

and how long do you play until you finish your game?
you know the longer your game the bigger file size you will have...
ahh well if you use different graphics (buildings tiles, nature tiles...) or sounds that is... ^^

and i dont know whats wrong with downloading big games...
downloading 1GB is just a matter of minutes if you have an average i-net connection... ^^
 
PiaCRT

PiaCRT

[i]Orange Dev[/i]
936
Posts
13
Years
yaywalter said:
If the developers are using WAV files for the music, then that is definitely a sign that they don't know what they're doing.

WAV files are uncompressed, and are gigantic as a result. And even MP3 music is excessive for a Pokemon game unless you've got a talented musician on board for your project with the goal of producing an extravagant original soundtrack that is one of the game's biggest highlights.

If you're just using the official game music, or making unique variations of the official music, or even just going for a similar sound and style as the official music, MIDI is the way to go. And MIDI files are super tiny.

The game I'm developing will have a fairly large soundtrack, and it will almost certainly be under 100 MB, if not 50.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but I kind of enjoy the 8-bit music in full quality, not some piano medley in a MIDI file. Maybe you could make 2 versions, one with MIDIs and one with your MP3/WAV files for downloading.

On an unrelated note, a lot of the default sound effects are .WAV formet :P
 

yaywalter

46
Posts
13
Years
  • Seen Aug 25, 2013
the__end said:
and how long do you play until you finish your game?
you know the longer your game the bigger file size you will have...
ahh well if you use different graphics (buildings tiles, nature tiles...) or sounds that is... ^^

and i dont know whats wrong with downloading big games...
downloading 1GB is just a matter of minutes if you have an average i-net connection... ^^
Click to expand...

I don't know where you live, but here in the United States, the average internet connection isn't capable of downloading 1 GB in just a matter of minutes. About half an hour would be more likely. And the trend of people just tethering to their smartphones as their primary internet connection means a lot of people have extremely low data caps to deal with, so downloading 1 GB could mean using as much as half of their data allowance for the whole month.

And my game's gonna be about the length of FireRed/LeafGreen. So not exactly short.

Evil Arms said:
Sorry, but I kind of enjoy the 8-bit music in full quality, not some piano medley in a MIDI file. Maybe you could make 2 versions, one with MIDIs and one with your MP3/WAV files for downloading.

On an unrelated note, a lot of the default sound effects are .WAV formet :P
Click to expand...

8-bit music aren't stored as MP3s in the first place, they use tiny synthesizer formats more similar to MIDI than they are to MP3s. If you want your 8-bit music in full quality, you'd seek out these obscure formats instead of MP3 or MIDI. But MIDI isn't restricted to just piano, and is capable of producing a pretty decent rendition of these 8-bit tunes. You're able to record the exact output of these 8-bit songs as an MP3, but the MP3 version would be thousands of times the size of the original 8-bit version. You used Crystal version as an example earlier, but do you know how much data the entire soundtrack for that game takes up in its original non-MP3 form? 103.7 kilobytes, or about 1 kb per song.

The smartest solution then would be to include MIDI music with your game by default, so that it's a nice and small download. Then offer an optional MP3 soundtrack download available for people who would prefer a richer soundtrack to accompany the game. Or, if you've got the skill, add the ability to play the original chiptune music from the official games, that way you've got an extremely small download with music that sounds more accurate than even the MP3 versions do.
 
Last edited:
PiaCRT

PiaCRT

[i]Orange Dev[/i]
936
Posts
13
Years
yaywalter said:
The smartest solution then would be to include MIDI music with your game by default, so that it's a nice and small download. Then offer an optional MP3 soundtrack download available for people who would prefer a richer soundtrack to accompany the game.
Click to expand...

That's basically what I said...
I wonder if it actually possible to get RMXP to play a .gbs file. It would quite interesting to see in action. I don't think there are enough people interested in the Gameboy games for that, though.

On topic,
I think the sounds and music are the only things that take up a ton of space. Obviously if you need them, images are going to end up taking some space too, but I can't imagine them taking up 50MB+ of data.
 
FL

FL

Pokémon Island Creator
2,444
Posts
13
Years
  • Seen Apr 22, 2024
Less than 100 MB. If you have animated sprites, so this can be have more 200 MB. If you have videos, then you can have more 200 MB.

My full game only has 38 MB (now I know ways to make it less than 30 MB) and some players have more than 150 hours in theirs savefiles. Some people with more than 50 hours didn't even explorate all the places.

Evil Arms said:
I think the sounds and music are the only things that take up a ton of space. Obviously if you need them, images are going to end up taking some space too, but I can't imagine them taking up 50MB+ of data.
Click to expand...
Think about animated sprites for every one of 649 pokémon, plus shinies.
 

DaSpirit

Mad Programmer
240
Posts
16
Years
yaywalter said:
I don't know where you live, but here in the United States, the average internet connection isn't capable of downloading 1 GB in just a matter of minutes. About half an hour would be more likely. And the trend of people just tethering to their smartphones as their primary internet connection means a lot of people have extremely low data caps to deal with, so downloading 1 GB could mean using as much as half of their data allowance for the whole month.

And my game's gonna be about the length of FireRed/LeafGreen. So not exactly short.

8-bit music aren't stored as MP3s in the first place, they use tiny synthesizer formats more similar to MIDI than they are to MP3s. If you want your 8-bit music in full quality, you'd seek out these obscure formats instead of MP3 or MIDI. But MIDI isn't restricted to just piano, and is capable of producing a pretty decent rendition of these 8-bit tunes. You're able to record the exact output of these 8-bit songs as an MP3, but the MP3 version would be thousands of times the size of the original 8-bit version. You used Crystal version as an example earlier, but do you know how much data the entire soundtrack for that game takes up in its original non-MP3 form? 103.7 kilobytes, or about 1 kb per song.

The smartest solution then would be to include MIDI music with your game by default, so that it's a nice and small download. Then offer an optional MP3 soundtrack download available for people who would prefer a richer soundtrack to accompany the game. Or, if you've got the skill, add the ability to play the original chiptune music from the official games, that way you've got an extremely small download with music that sounds more accurate than even the MP3 versions do.
Click to expand...

OR you could use .ogg, since it is compressed and not waste your time trying to make 2 versions of the same song. Wikipedia says that RPG Maker already supports it, no clue why anyone would ever use .mp3 instead. The .ogg file type was created for the sole reason of making streaming easier.

Someone should get all of the BW2 Pokemon animations in a folder and see how much those take up alone because with those frames and that many sprites, fan games that use them are probably going to be large.

Some places in Europe have really fast internet, the worlds fastest internet is somewhere there. And is the trend really tethering? None of my friends do that here and most of them have unlimited plans so I don't think it would be a problem for them either.
 
Last edited:

the__end

Pixel Artist
141
Posts
13
Years
  • Seen Jun 9, 2016
yaywalter said:
I don't know where you live, but here in the United States, the average internet connection isn't capable of downloading 1 GB in just a matter of minutes. About half an hour would be more likely. And the trend of people just tethering to their smartphones as their primary internet connection means a lot of people have extremely low data caps to deal with, so downloading 1 GB could mean using as much as half of their data allowance for the whole month.

And my game's gonna be about the length of FireRed/LeafGreen. So not exactly short.



8-bit music aren't stored as MP3s in the first place, they use tiny synthesizer formats more similar to MIDI than they are to MP3s. If you want your 8-bit music in full quality, you'd seek out these obscure formats instead of MP3 or MIDI. But MIDI isn't restricted to just piano, and is capable of producing a pretty decent rendition of these 8-bit tunes. You're able to record the exact output of these 8-bit songs as an MP3, but the MP3 version would be thousands of times the size of the original 8-bit version. You used Crystal version as an example earlier, but do you know how much data the entire soundtrack for that game takes up in its original non-MP3 form? 103.7 kilobytes, or about 1 kb per song.

The smartest solution then would be to include MIDI music with your game by default, so that it's a nice and small download. Then offer an optional MP3 soundtrack download available for people who would prefer a richer soundtrack to accompany the game. Or, if you've got the skill, add the ability to play the original chiptune music from the official games, that way you've got an extremely small download with music that sounds more accurate than even the MP3 versions do.
Click to expand...
well i live in germany and have an i-net connection of 32000 kbit/s...
i download 1gb in 5-10 min from file sharing sites like rapidshare... ^^
and these days you cant find a internet provider here which offer lower speed then 16k kbit/s so that is average for me...
with this speed you should be able to downlaod 1GB in 10-15 min so its realy just a matter of minutes... :P
and who uses their mobile i-net connection for downloading stuff should blame themselves... <.<

by the way...
for using midi files you need someone who converts all the sounds you make (or have) into midi...
so why should i bother someone just to make the file size 200-300 mb less?
after all the games are for free and if the people playing have fun they should be grateful and dont cry about the size... <.<
 
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