Why is this demo almost 9GB big?

[Adam Beckett]

... it is a serious question. I lack any sense of humor.

Especially, seeing the in-game screenshots on the Steam Store page. None of the assets can occupy Gigabytes of space?

I get, that this is probably the 'full' dev build. Even if so - that is not an answer.

I can fit all the games from 1980-1990 on a 8GB compressed thumb drive.

Had interest in the title before. Now, not so much. "Programming" ... it is the first step in making 'video games'? Is it not? It used to be?

[Cuddlefission]

There's a lot of archive footage in the game, actually - clips from interviews with WW2 veterans, photography from the period, and so on. That stuff adds up fairly quickly.

(this isn't idle speculation, to be clear, I went through the demo folders and that's where most of those gigabytes lived)

[Birdman850]

Cuddlefission a écrit :

There's a lot of archive footage in the game, actually - clips from interviews with WW2 veterans, photography from the period, and so on. That stuff adds up fairly quickly.

(this isn't idle speculation, to be clear, I went through the demo folders and that's where most of those gigabytes lived)

You are correct! its the photos and videos.

Birdman850
Test Lead

[CV60]

I'm the guy responsible for most of the images and video you see in the game. Our design decision to use a substantial number of photos is driven by our goal of trying to help the player experience, within the significant limits imposed by a computer game, some of the reality of a company commander in WWII. We attempt to achieve this by involving as many of the player's senses as possible. The music, sound effects, and artwork is all aimed and trying to mentally put the player into the role of a company commander. As part of this effort, we made extensive use of videos and photographs to help immerse the player into this role. Wanting the photos to be as immersive as possible, required them to both be in color, and as high quality as possible. This, of course, comes at the cost of increased size. While we could have used compression to reduce the size of the images, we believe that the non-compression of the photos provides not only the best quality (and therefore most immersive) image, but one that is of near-archival quality, which appealed to the amateur historians among the team. FWIW, the complete game will have about 1900 images total, with a digital footprint of 6.8 GB of interactive fiction images and 1.2 GB of unit images. There will also be some videos of interviews with WWII vets, as well as snippets from historical WWII movies. Finally, because some of the game concepts in Burden of Command (BoC) are unique, and the game uses “permadeath” or “Dead is Dead”, we have some tutorial videos to help the player learn how to play the game before sending his pixeltrüppen into combat.

[vakarr]

I like the music and video clips. I have a 1080X3480 resolution (or whatever it is i.e. spread across two screens) and am unable to zoom in on screens like the Dieppe landing screens that you are supposed to be able to zoom on, so I can't read them. Interesting that Dieppe is chosen as there was, I think, only one American soldier there.

[vakarr]

By the way, I never heard nebelwerfers sound like that before, they really do sound scary, not like the sound that is usually used. They really do sound like their nick names.

[Adam Beckett]

Thank you all, for your sincere answers and explaining.

Since I did not download the demo, I was not able to see the folders and have an informed opinion.

I assumed - wrongly - the 'worst': that this game demo, is another of these common cases of 'Unity3d' or Unreal SDK , raw dev-build dumps' on users. Something that 'should' otherwise fit in a shoe ... or boot, in this case.

My apologies.

[CV60]

Vakarr-IRT your question on the image of the Dieppe raid. I believe you are referring to an image we have in the game from a YANK magazine, (vol. 1, #12, published 2 Sept 1942) article on the August 1942 Dieppe raid. There were 50 US Rangers on that raid. We included that article because the BoC game is trying to get the player into the mindset of a Company commander in WWII. This article would have been of very high interest to troops doing amphibious training in Virginia in the Fall of 1942. By including it, we are hopefully, in a small way, getting the player to "step in the shoes" of actual WWII participants.
[addendum/correction: 50 US Rangers were assigned to Dieppe, but only 15 actually landed. The remainder didn't land due to their portion of the landing being called off]
CV60
Historical Media Team Lead

[GreenTreeGames]

vakarr a écrit :

By the way, I never heard nebelwerfers sound like that before, they really do sound scary, not like the sound that is usually used. They really do sound like their nick names.

This will make our audio director very happy. We had vets and history nerrds working hard with him to get authentic sounds. Not saying we got it all right but God we tried LO.L.

Let me share your post with him in case he has comments.
Luke (lead)

[GreenTreeGames]

Adam Beckett a écrit :

Thank you all, for your sincere answers and explaining.

Since I did not download the demo, I was not able to see the folders and have an informed opinion.

I assumed - wrongly - the 'worst': that this game demo, is another of these common cases of 'Unity3d' or Unreal SDK , raw dev-build dumps' on users. Something that 'should' otherwise fit in a shoe ... or boot, in this case.

My apologies. :47_thumb_up: :TerribleFace:

Ha damned if you do and damned if you don't because we are entirely written in PYTHON. The insanity. I looked at Unity back in day and didn't see fit at time. Stupid me. Would have save some years of development as opposed to building custom engine :-( But I guess on the upside less bloat LOL!

Yeah the historical media team is... well.. fanatical :-) We all love history and connecting to those who served (and died) in the past. The photos help that connect we think.

Luke (lead)

[GreenTreeGames]

Cuddlefission a écrit :

There's a lot of archive footage in the game, actually - clips from interviews with WW2 veterans, photography from the period, and so on. That stuff adds up fairly quickly.

(this isn't idle speculation, to be clear, I went through the demo folders and that's where most of those gigabytes lived)

Sneaky! Not too many sneak peeks though or you'll have less surprises in the main campaign LOL.

Man insane work to find some of those photos, especialy Vichy. Wow. Italian not easy either.

[CV60]

vakarr a écrit :

By the way, I never heard nebelwerfers sound like that before, they really do sound scary, not like the sound that is usually used. They really do sound like their nick names.

Just to add to GreenTreeGames' post: The sound of the Nebelwerfers is based on an audio recording we found that was made by the British Army of an actual Nebelwerfer bombardment. We also had some German propaganda movies we took aspects of the sound from.

[Adam Beckett]

I have to chime in, one last time.

Finally, downloaded the demo ... and this game is the very opposite, of what I was blindly accusing it of. How wrong I was!

This looks like great game code!

How do I 'know', as a player?

I am running it on a low-spec Linux MiniPC with low-end Intel iGPU in 1440p @60FPS. I see the code execution in the terminal. Scales evenly over all cpu cores(!) while still easy on the resources.

Might even install it on my Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 - just to see if it might run on those too.

Well done!

[GreenTreeGames]

Adam Beckett a écrit :

I have to chime in, one last time.

Finally, downloaded the demo ... and this game is the very opposite, of what I was blindly accusing it of. How wrong I was!

This looks like great game code!

How do I 'know', as a player?

I am running it on a low-spec Linux MiniPC with low-end Intel iGPU in 1440p @60FPS. I see the code execution in the terminal. Scales evenly over all cpu cores(!) while still easy on the resources.

Might even install it on my Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 - just to see if it might run on those too.

Well done!

:47_thumb_up: :TerribleFace:

Adam, you are a gent. Most mortals would not be so gracious in your various replies. And to post publicly. Helps us quite a bit honestly since you validate and we only claim ;-)

Thanks on the programming. Though the big scenarios will probably not be so friendly to your FPS I'm afraid ;-) We tried to stay 40FPS generally but things can get a bit tricky at times. Still a work in progress.

Looking forward to your further feedback here or on our Discord. Just keeping setting your expectations mindset to "small indie being overly ambitious perhaps but for a good cause (we think)." Luke