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[davidp]

What do you TIGers consider to be "ok" when it comes to file size of a flash game? I've just hit 2 megs when embedded 2 mp3 music tracks yesterday and I'm really bugged about it. If I remove them I land back on 1 meg, with approx. half game yet to complete, so I guess I'll hit 2 meg mark when I complete the whole game. And first half of the game isn't excatly finished yet, I'm still thinking of addsing some flair to it, so... I guess I'll end up with 3,5 - 4 megs when completed. Is this too much?

I don't know much about Flash gamers in general, but I don't mind loading a few megs for a flash game, but that's just me, I'm on broadband anyway so no biggie, but what about others who aren't so fortune with their connection?

[bateleur]

2MB is definitely acceptable, 4MB is towards the top end of acceptable. 8MB is too big and will make it harder to sell unless the game is something seriously epic.

[iffi]

It depends on how much I want to play the game, and how much I expect there to be in the game, but I usually prefer under 2-3MB (my connection isn't fast and my patience is low), especially if I plan on playing the game many times later. I'm willing to wait for a game up to 10MB to load, though, if it's compelling enough and if I won't be reloading it too often.
In other words, make it as small as possible without sacrificing the important elements.

[Skofo]

Newgrounds' upload limit is 10MB. I'd say you're fine as long as you stay under there.

[st33d]

Our guidelines from Miniclip were no more than 2mb.

From the large amount of traffic we get, we usually try to get things down to that sort of size as well.

A couple of tips with sound:

If you're in the IDE, right click on a sound, go to properties. Change compression to MP3, and change the bit rate to 16kbps. Do this for all the sound effects and for the music, set it to 20kbps. If the sound gets too mushy - up the kbps, but try to keep all the compression as MP3. It will massively decrease the file size.

If you're using FlashDevelop to compile the whole project, you should back up your sound effects and then create more compressed versions of them.

You can do this with Audacity (don't know about Mac) by loading in the sound (you should modify it at this point to balance the pitch, tempo and volume) and exporting it. When the file browser comes up, click on options and set a lower bit rate.

[davidp]

so far i've only changed 44mhz to 11mhz mp3, wasn't touching anything else. it still sounds decent and it went from 5 megs each file to 1 meg and then further compressed when embedded in flashdevelop.

i'll look into kpbs and decrease those two.

i need to decrease graphics too, which will be pain in the ass as i already minimized them, but heck... it has to be done.

[johanp]

Why load everything at once? Show the menu as fast as possible and start loading the game in the background. Don't load levels until you have to etc. No use having users waiting for stuff they'll never see.

[davidp]

seems like a reasonable idea, but i'll start thinking about it if i really hit more than 3,5 megs.

[moi]

It depends on what you want to do with the game.
If it's an indie game for TIgsource any size is acceptable (but then download is preferable to embedded).
If it's for selling a license to a portal then the smaller the better.
FGL doesn't allow uploads over 10 Mb but a lot of flash portals will hesitate above 2Mb. The problem isn't so much the time the user takes to download, it is the fact that bandwith costs money for portals.

[Average Software]

You people need to get your units right.

m = milli
M = mega
b = bits
B = bytes

The difference between these is several orders of magnitude, it's a big deal.

[Skofo]

I wish I were as smart as you, Average Software.

[eugeneius]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte

If we're having a pedantry competition, you should all be using mebibytes since you're not trying to sell me a hard drive.

Why load everything at once? Show the menu as fast as possible and start loading the game in the background. Don't load levels until you have to etc. No use having users waiting for stuff they'll never see.

Unless your game is seriously massive (50+ MiB?) this is probably more trouble than it's worth, for several reasons:

• Implementation. You need to write several more loading screens and mechanisms, define your external content formats, logic to keep track of what has been loaded and what hasn't, etc.
• Convention. People are used to preloading a Flash game, and having it react quickly after that. Loading before the game starts is accepted; loading between levels is unexpected and frustrating.
• If I open a Flash game in another tab and come back to play it later, I expect it to work whether I'm online or not (and regardless of whether the author's servers are still up).
• Sponsors usually want a single swf they can just throw online (afaik). Writing your game to rely on external dependencies may cause hassle, for you and for them.

Of course loading external resources can be used to great effect - updating content is easier, and you can do cool things with dynamic content (like this). But if it's just to save the user waiting for a pretty small download, I don't see it justifying the effort.

[Average Software]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte

If we're having a pedantry competition, you should all be using mebibytes since you're not trying to sell me a hard drive.

SInce the subject is a Flash game, I figured he meant megabits, since network throughput is measured in megabits per second.  This would be important to an embedded flash game.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

7 MB are the size of most of mine, the smaller they are the more sites they'll spread to, but the major ones [newgrounds, armorgames, kongregate] will all easily accept up to 10 and more if you ask them directly. My limit on newgrounds is 15MB for instance even though new accounts are limited to 10. They're all good about upping the limit if the game is worth it.

[davidp]

thanks guys, appreciate the input