Why does this 8-bit style game take 1,5 GB of space?

[omolano]

I'm not complaining, just curious. Why does this game take so much space when its graphics consist of 2D 8-bit style sprites and backgrounds? The graphics should take only a few MB at most.

Now, I'm not asking for the game to take less than 1 MB as if it were a real NES game. I know the desktop version of Unity (the engine used for this game) takes around 40 MB all by itself, and I guess the music is not realtime chip music, so the music will probably be in MP3 format or similar, instead of being played "live" by any chip or software synth (that's why the music can be played with a digital filter to make it sound "underwater" when the character dives into the water, which an original NES couldn't do), but still, even with the whole soundtrack in MP3 format, 1,5 GB seems too much.

The game doesn't have voices or videos. If games with complex 3D graphics and textures, digitally recorded orchestral music and even voice acting could fit in a single 650 MB CD, why does this game take more than double that amount? Where does all that storage go?

Again, I'm not complaining, I love the game, its graphics style and its music. I'm just puzzled as to how games are so big nowadays, even when using 8-bit style pixelated graphics, which should take little space to store.

[Leoscar]

Well the entire game is basically done twice. You'll understand as you play.

[Crawling Chaos]

Yeah, if you complete first act of the game you will undesrstand what's the deal. Or just watch the trailer, however it might break the impression.

[omolano]

Well, I still haven't finished it, but I do know there is a "16-bit style" section to this game. Still, not a reason to take 1,5 GB. Graphics from 16-bit games still don't take such a huge amount of storage.

[redking]

The stages have 2 or 3 songs each and there are more areas than the ones that you discover on your way to deliver the scroll, so the music is probably a big contribution.

There is also DLC.

[Evilnapkin]

I'm guessing the assets were done for HD, old games were so small because they were for 640x480.

[Alex]

Yeah, you're trying to compare an 8-bit game to a game that is trying to duplicate the aesthetic with over 4 times the pixels. Of course it's going to be larger. Plus, the sprites are more detailed which mean that, even spites with the same pixel dimensions would still take up more space. There are also more of them, allowing for more detailed backgrounds and more fluid animations than were possible in the 8-bit era.

And that's just the graphics! Even one of those amazing songs from the soundtrack is several times larger than the entire ROM for the NES Ninja Gaiden which clearly inspired this game. Then, there are all the extra lines of code to handle the game logic for the far more complex systems and movesets this game allows.

In short: the assets don't need to be compressed all to hell in order to fit within the limitations of the hardware at the time (and, in fact, have been expanded to take advantage of the hardware of today), so yeah, it's going to be a bigger game.

[Tsuki Zero]

The music could have been easily solved with Midi + Custom Soundfont. A lot of games used that to save space, for example Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles on the Nintendo DS both used small wav files for individual notes, and the MIDI acted as a "map" for how the WAVs would be played, so you had really high quality soundtrack without taking 99% of the cart space.

[Melodia]

Why is this a big deal? In 2019 if 1.5 GB is so much that you're hurting for space, you need a new HD.

[Tsuki Zero]

Originally posted by Melodia:

Why is this a big deal? In 2019 if 1.5 GB is so much that you're hurting for space, you need a new HD.

Take a look at Blaster Master Zero (and Blaster Master Zero 2, and Mighty Gunvolt Burst). Those games have almost as much graphical detail and also uses retraux music, but maybe (yes, I'm not 100% sure) the music in those are in MIDI+SF2 format while sound is in WAV format.

Now, music has a number of formats to consider, such as the aforementioned MIDI+SF2 combo, there's also WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC, etc. Depending on the kind of game you are making you do not want the music to be of a format that will take too much space. For anything retraux, over 2x the size of the game as a whole is already too much in most cases. I feel this is one of such cases.

[Lawlrus]

Originally posted by Tsukiyomaru Zero:

Take a look at Blaster Master Zero (and Blaster Master Zero 2, and Mighty Gunvolt Burst). Those games have almost as much graphical detail and also uses retraux music, but maybe (yes, I'm not 100% sure) the music in those are in MIDI+SF2 format while sound is in WAV format.

Now, music has a number of formats to consider, such as the aforementioned MIDI+SF2 combo, there's also WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC, etc. Depending on the kind of game you are making you do not want the music to be of a format that will take too much space. For anything retraux, over 2x the size of the game as a whole is already too much in most cases. I feel this is one of such cases.

I mean... you're technically correct in saying that there are other (arguably better) ways to supply music for a game that also serve to keep the size down. That said, this is a PC game released like a year ago, so... why in the world does it matter?
If this was going to be released for the SNES or something, audio formats and compression would be a large consideration, but for this case, 1.5GB is absolutely nothing.

If you're just asking out of curiosity for design choices, I'd say the answer is pretty simple: less than 2 gigs is nothing, so the devs wouldn't have put a lot of effort into keeping audio file sizes down.

[Melodia]

Not to mention, audio streaming is likely far easier to implement than a synth implementation, especially considering the instant shifting the music goes through or the filter added for being in water (I assume it's a filter, it may just be different audio all together)

[Tsuki Zero]

I'd say it would be worth considering the idea of making a development, at first for testing purposes, towards synth implementation. If it all goes well, then that could replace the current in-game OST.

Using the "X is nothing" argument just because technology evolved isn't good either, mind you, since if optimization can happen then it is better to take it sooner than later, since you never know when it will come to bite you back.

[Melodia]

Why waste money on unneeded development time to save a little bit of space? I'm boggled that anyone things a dev would do that a year and a half after the game is done.

In fact, I'd say having the game be a bit bigger could actually be a helpful marketing tool -- I'd wager there's more people who would look at a tiny file size and skip it over the type wondering why it's "so big".

[Lawlrus]

Originally posted by Tsukiyomaru Zero:

I'd say it would be worth considering the idea of making a development, at first for testing purposes, towards synth implementation. If it all goes well, then that could replace the current in-game OST.

Define "worth" as you use it here. Because what you're proposing takes time and money, so how is that effort and expense going to be recouped (made worth it) for the devs?

Originally posted by Tsukiyomaru Zero:

Using the "X is nothing" argument just because technology evolved isn't good either, mind you, since if optimization can happen then it is better to take it sooner than later, since you never know when it will come to bite you back.

In many cases I'd agree with you, but in this case we absolutely do know when it will "come to bite you back" because in this case, that is never. A current release taking up 2 gigs is not going to bite anyone unless we get bombed back to the stone age and have no electricity to run our rigs.
I understand the point you're trying to make, that optimization is never a bad thing. And as far as focusing solely on the tech goes, I agree. But this is the real world, and you have to take into account cost, man hours, debugging, support, etc. The game came out well over 12 months ago, any major changes that happen now are either going to be DLC, or bug fixes. Anything else simply makes zero sense.

[Player 2]

You're not even factoring the actual game code and other assets.