Graphics

[Karl Becker]

> It's crucial to keep it from getting any bigger, because people  
> will download the smaller competitors first.  And only if they are  
> unhappy will they finally download mine.  Most C-based games of  
> this type are less than 1 MB stuffed.

Many shareware games are bigger than 1 MB stuffed nowadays, though,  
especially if it's something that's costing a decent amount of money.

> I did a bit of research not long ago at various download sites.  
> Comparing my download rates with some of the competition.  Even  
> though my game had better screenshots, a better description, equal  
> or better options, and an equal rating, it got less downloads.  The  
> only explanation was size.

That's ignoring play, word of mouth, advertising, etc.  A company  
like Freeverse will have a lot more pull from the get-go because  
people know them and are at their website for other reasons/games  
already.  With a smaller number of games offered (and a smaller  
advertising budget), the playing field is not quite level.

> I tried my darndest to get the whole kaboodle to be less than 1 MB  
> stuffed, but even with compressing all the graphics and whittling  
> away at various things, it's 3.5 MB stuffed.

It's really impossible to get it smaller than 1MB.  My KTA Tennis app  
zipped with Mac OS X 10.4 only shrinks to 1.1MB ... and that's not  
including most of the artwork / sound assets.

> I had hoped for a solution that didn't involve thousands of  
> additional objects :-(

I would like to know if this speeds up game execution a lot, so let  
us know if you try to implement it.

Also, can animated gifs be used as icons on buttons, or just static  
images?

Cheers,
Karl