Sir Gary Bummer
patreon
Poll #30 To HD or not to HD
🕑 Added 2025-11-06 09:44:48 +0000 UTCHeyo!
Got a question for you about your preferences on quality vs size.
I'll need to give a little background information for this poll. When making renders, they are created as png files at sizes that usually range from 1.5MB to 2.5 MB or so.
I convert these to webp images with a minimum of compression added in, this reduces file size by ~75%. For a specific example, in episode 7 the original images are 1,81 GB, while the compressed images are 416 MB. Quite the difference, yeah?
I have, however, not been all that happy with the quality. I've made various attempts at using sharpness filters, since otherwise facial features and skin textures sometimes disappear entirely.
A large reason why I've been so concerned with size is that it's rather difficult to upload larger sized files to share with others. Well, since I now pay for Gofile, that's actually not much of an issue anymore, so I've been thinking that I might want to change the images to lossless compression instead.
Lossless compression maintains a much higher quality, but only reduces file size by something like ~33%. For example, if I do that for episode 7 the size might go from 416 MB to anywhere between 800-1300 MB. Don't know exactly since I haven't tried it yet, lossless compression takes a lot longer.
In other words, I expect the total file size of the game to double.
The question then is as thus: Do you guys want the higher quality at the cost of size? Or do you prefer things as they are? In theory I could try doing both in separate projects, but that's honestly really annoying and I'd prefer not to. I'll put an option for both on the poll anyway, but I will not make any promises.
I still have the pngs for every episode except the first one, not sure where those went, so I could take a day to redo the compression of every image in the game. The earlier episodes might not see much change, since my rendering skills were subpar back then, but later ones would look significantly better.
Comments
Sir Gary Bummer
I generally agree, it's mostly that uploading anything larger than 5GB is often impossible without paying for a service, which I wasn't doing initially, so I was a bit stuck in that mindset. For games that I play though, for sure prefer to get good quality renders. But the game is now over 5GB anyway, so yeah, may as well go for broke. I think this game might actually reach towards 15GB by the end if I do lossless compression. Also, the animations won't change, they're already as high quality as I can make them currently. Talking about internet speeds makes me miss the best part of living Riga. Paid 20 euro a month for 500mbps, and that was the stable and reputable option, could've gotten it for even cheaper with other providers.
Jameson Huddle
Unless the downloads are getting into ridiculous territory (upwards of 15 gigs for a renpy game would have me seriously checking reviews) quality is always preferable. I forget which games I follow have working android versions since I don't use them. (Either through emulators or official versions). There is a chance higher quality animations would not load on low end devices, probably just phones but if someone is running an ancient laptop maybe them too. If Internet companies around the US were not so happy ripping people off then this would be much easier, as is I physically cannot get higher than 75 mbps strung to my house currently, inside of Houston city limits. People in actually rural areas are often stuck with satellite options.
Sir Gary Bummer
Realized that a quick example may be in order, here you go: https://store4.gofile.io/download/direct/b86c613d-7ade-4e6d-b865-73a407992d84/Compression%20examples.zip Two images compressed with added sharpness filter, and the same two with lossless compression.
