Compress your files!!

[Xilef]

RPGMaker games are getting too big, not gameplay size, but file size. I keep seeing more and more RPGM games be well over 80mb, the limit for RPG Maker to compress is 128mb, I've seen people hit the limit and send people folders of uncompressed MP3's and graphics.

RPG Maker's Limit is 128mb
If you encrypt an RPG Maker project that is over 128mb in size it will encrypt some of it and stop, usually it will stop half way through the large files. Keep your game under 128mb! There are tricks to go over the limit but it is best to be under it anyway, file sizes puts some people off downloading games.

Spoiler: How to break the limit

Actually, there's a way to encrypt a game that is bigger than 128 MB though. If after you've tried to reduce your game size but it still exceeds 128 MB, there's still hope

Here are the steps to encrypt the game that is larger than 128 MB. This is useful for games that are large because of the graphics or , very unlikely, data files.

  1.) Encrypt the game as usual

  2.) When it's saying that it's working with the audio file, go to your game folder. You'll see the Game.rgssad file is already there. Copy and paste it somewhere else. Try to do this fast, since the rggsad file will be deleted once the making setup file process is done.

  3.) Now, you can copy your game folder and paste it somewhere. In your copied folder, delete graphic and data folders, and paste your Game.rgssad there. Also, don't forget to delete Game.rxproj file.

  4.) Your copied folder is now an encrypted version of your game. Just zip it, or do whatever you feel like doing.

I've faced this problem when I was working with Fluffy and the Gang. Scared the heck out of me though

Fileformats to use
GRAPHICS

• BMP - Use ONLY if you index your colours to a set pallette, it's best to avoid BMP altogether anyways. Do not use for title screens, panoramas or gameovers.
• PNG - Use for sprites, animations, icons, tilesets, windowskins, basically anything that needs transparency in it, that's generally materials that overlap other ones. Do not use for title screens, panoramas or gameovers. If you want to compress PNG further, you can index your colours like with BMP, although this loses general quality and alpha channels (Thanks Sol_Fury for that one)
• JPG/JPEG - Use only for title screens, panoramas or gameovers. Don't use for anything else as JPEG simply won't work with anything else.
• GIF - Just don't use.

AUDIO

• MP3 - Don't use MP3! It's very large in filesize as it store information that RPGMaker doesn't even need to use! See below for instructions on how to convert from MP3 to better formats.
• WAV - Gets waaaaay too big for full music tracks, if you are going to use WAV, keep it for sound effect that last under 2 seconds.
• MIDI - Best format for music, but you need to know how to compose MIDI to use it, also it can sound very electronicky in use.
• OGG - My personal favourite audio format! Way smaller than MP3 but same audio quality. In RMXP, OGG loads the track before playing, unlike MP3 which streams the track, so you may experience a short freeze in audio before it is played. In RMVX the track will stream with no loading pause. (Thanks Reives and Yeyinde for that)
  OGG can also be "tagged" at certain points in the track to loop with programs such as winvorbis, RPGMaker VX uses this and will recognise it for your own loop tagged OGG tracks. If you want this for RPGMaker XP, Cowlol has made a script that "retools" RPGMaker XP's audio library and can allow you to tag looping points in OGG tracks through the script itself. (Thanks Miek?)

Convert from MP3/WAV to OGG
Download Audacity, install it, open it then click on Project --> Import Audio, find your MP3 file and select that, go to File --> Export As OGG Vorbis and then continue through the obvious steps and you'll find that your file is compressed massively! If you want to further compress it, before you export to OGG vorbis lower the bitrate at the bottom left corner, this might lower the quality but it also lowers file size (Thanks Zekallinos)

RAR better than ZIP
The RPGMaker encryption doesn't compress very much, if you compress your game yourself into a .RAR file instead of the encryption or a .ZIP file you'll lower the download size as a whole, although for .RAR you may need an extra program to extract and compress the file. (Thanks Zekallinos)

 

[Reives]

Just a note on OGG:
While it is personally my favourite as well, it is important to note that unlike MP3, it loads the entire file at the start instead of streaming it as it goes. The result is a small (or perhaps not so small) freeze when the song starts to play. Most of the times it isn't that big of a deal; but if it is a scenario in which you can't allow that to happen for whatever reason, mp3 is still the best way to go for that.

 

[Sol_Fury]

If I may, I would like to share some things I've learned about using PNGs for getting file sizes down.

If you're using any good art program, you should have the option to reduce to a palleted image. 256 colors is the best option, you just have to import and set the transparency and the translucency.
Otherwise, if you have Alpha Channel transparency, you can reduce the colors to 64K or 32K colors, which still reduces big graphics quite a bit, without a noticeable drop in quality. It keeps the Alpha Channel but because it excludes unnecessary colors, it goes quite a bit smaller.
I've personally got through and used these on my project and it's pulled the file size down by a decent amount. I usually get around about a 30% reduction on big animation files that way.

 

[Zekallinos]

While converting to OGG with audacity, you may want to change the bitrate(bottom-left corner) to a lower amount. The file size change is rather big, but it's hard to hear the difference.

PNGout can be convenient. You can always zip your game into a .rar, don't need to use the self-extractor of RMXP.

 

[mawk]

In addition, .OGGs can be tagged in programs such as WinVorbis to loop to a certain point in the song after it's played for so long. As it stands, only VX (and quite probably AGM when it's released) will recognize these tags, but Cowlol has created a script to retool XP's Audio library, allowing you to select looping points for .OGG files through the script itself.

 

[Xilef]

I've added all these points into the top X_X
If everyone contributes their knowledge of compressing files we can probably get a 128mb game down to 16mb XD XD XD

 

[Yeyinde]

I'd like to note that the .ogg loading pause only applies to RMXP; RMVX supports the streamed playback of .oggs.

 

[Xilef]

Okay I've added that info into it. I am learning a few things from this!

 

[hima]

Actually, there's a way to encrypt a game that is bigger than 128 MB though. If after you've tried to reduce your game size but it still exceeds 128 MB, there's still hope

Here are the steps to encrypt the game that is larger than 128 MB. This is useful for games that are large because of the graphics or , very unlikely, data files.

  1.) Encrypt the game as usual

  2.) When it's saying that it's working with the audio file, go to your game folder. You'll see the Game.rgssad file is already there. Copy and paste it somewhere else. Try to do this fast, since the rggsad file will be deleted once the making setup file process is done.

  3.) Now, you can copy your game folder and paste it somewhere. In your copied folder, delete graphic and data folders, and paste your Game.rgssad there. Also, don't forget to delete Game.rxproj file.

  4.) Your copied folder is now an encrypted version of your game. Just zip it, or do whatever you feel like doing.

I've faced this problem when I was working with Fluffy and the Gang. Scared the heck out of me though

 

[Marcus]

Fuck this shit.  What, do you guys live in the stone age or something?  I have cable modem for a reason; so I can download big ass files.

If you're worried about some faggot on the internet stealing your precious rpg maker graphics then stop.  No one cares about your dumb sprites and music and the community is so small that if they ever claimed it was theirs someone would find out about it.

Just zip or rar your damn files.  You don't have to worry about any dumb size limits or shit like that.  I live in the year 2008 and I want to hear uncompressed bad quality music and art that isn't 256 colors.  Jesus Christ, what is this, 1999?  Fucking hell.

 

[Sol_Fury]

A lot of the graphics I've been using, though, has less than 256 colors and even using the 32 bit reduction trick shows no loss at all, so it's humanly impossible to tell the difference. It's having the cake and eating it

That's the basis of all my compression so far - nothing is "obviously" worse quality or whatever. It's all sounding and looking good - just at a more palatable size. There's people who won't download a big file for every person that is willing, too, so it is catering to that part of the audience. Which I can appreciate. Not everyone has a high speed connection.

 

[Marcus]

i don't even remember posting in this topic!

 

[Xilef]

I quoted your post hima. It's at top.

Also, can I add: Marcus suggests strongly to Zip and Rar your damn files.

 

[Mikee]

Just a note on OGG:
While it is personally my favourite as well, it is important to note that unlike MP3, it loads the entire file at the start instead of streaming it as it goes. The result is a small (or perhaps not so small) freeze when the song starts to play. Most of the times it isn't that big of a deal; but if it is a scenario in which you can't allow that to happen for whatever reason, mp3 is still the best way to go for that.

Wow.  I've been recording music for three years now.  (I'm an acoustic artist.  I have music on iTunes actually)  I had no idea that file extensions for music could do things like that.  It's crazy how you think you know so much then something so simple pops up and you can only scratch your head and go "hmm."

Anyway.  Thanks for this little tut.  Not bad at all.

 

[Atoa]

I personally preffer .wma than .ogg
the quality is a bit lower. but it really smaller.
I've converted an 2MB mp3 to an 500kb wma without losing much quality.

And the worst part, i've made an script using poccil's audio module to resume map music after an battle so it don't restart, and it don't work with .ogg =/