I compiled my game today and its size is 48Mb ZIPPED, the previous version was 36Mb and the difference are some few events and 502Kb in pictures (In fact, all the current pictures together sizes a bit less than 6Mb, unzipped)
Once unzipped, all the game files sizes 116Mb. The same game with the same resources in other game development frameworks will size less than 15Mb.
For example, when compiled as a zip file, with all the resources and the executable, its adds the file ffmpeg.dll; a library used to play videos… … … … my game don’t have any videos but the executable will not run unless the library is in the same directory.
None of this have any sense to me and I don’t even trust in the usefulness of the 90% of the libraries packed with the game.
I don’t understand how half Megabyte in pictures and some text can translate in a difference of 14Mb between compiled versions (ZIPPED). At this rate my game will be like 1Gb unzipped when I finally design all the levels and add the music (I can’t even imagine how painful it will be to upload and download all the data to compile it with the online packaging service)
Why this happens? Is there a way to achieve a smaller size for Windows executables?
I’m honestly considering a subscription to GDevelop, but those compiled sizes scares me.
In case you are using GD5 Beta, the huge size is due to the fact that your game is exported as a website which is embedded into Electron to make it run on a desktop PC without a webserver. Electron is basically a stripped down version of the Chrome browser. Its size alone is around 50MB (game content not included).
You could also check if there are unused images in the resources screen. There is an option in the context menu to remove all unused images. This might also help reducing the size a bit.
At the time of publishing this post I had already deleted all unused pictures and the compiled size keeps exponetially increasing.
I googled and read about Electron and get the idea: chromium framework is a big 100Mb beast. That don’t fits my expectations of an elegant, bit-sized package for a minimallist-looking game… but at this stage I guess I can make some yoga and mantration and learn to accept the circumstances even when the universe don’t favor me… because, you know, there are continents of starving people and I’m making a 2D game for fun.
Anyway, hope there will be a future when someone makes a lightweight wrapper for HTML5. Everything I can do by now is keep my resources being a 0.1% of the total size of the executable.
Not only that, but imagine that you wait half a day to upload and wait for the compilation finish sometime even 24 hours with other online build services I’ve been using and then at the very end at 99% you get COMPILATION FAILED, SEE THE LOGS
Then you going to need a mantra for sure
I unsuccesful tried to compile for Android troughout the online service during the last week , and ALWAYS get “compilation failed”.
One thing is having to accept the HUGE compiled size of executables, but being unable to compile the game I created with the Compilgames GDevelop software begins to seem too much.
I’m not sure about GDevelop anymore… I like a lot of things of it but is so unstable I’m afraid to finish my game and being stuck without any chance to PROPERLY distribute it.
I don’t mind to pay for a subscription, but I need to pay for something that runs smoothly.
EDIT: I learn in another thread the compilation error for Android is a bug that will be fixed in the next version, by now bug is avoidable setting the icons for the app (yeaah, that sounds like eating rice because I need to paint a house), so I guess the world will not explode soon [/stopRanting]
