Level Design Acceptable map file sizes?

[Seanchaoz]

Heyo!

I was wondering what the general stance on map file sizes is these days. I have a project brewing that has a fair amount of very complex combined meshes, which has bloated the file size up considerably. Currently the map is sitting at 187 mb, and I still need to do some very large floor combining. At the current rate things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if the end result closes in on 300 mb.

Now I know in the pre-workshop days, maintaining small file sizes was pretty important because people had to sit and wait for downloads in-game. But with the workshop automatically pre-loading the maps, it feels like not such a big deal anymore. Or?

The thing is I don't have to make those combined meshes (entire buildings), but not doing so is going to make the workflow extremely painful and cumbersome, since I need to re-use a lot of them in many places across the map, and some of those combined structures consist of 100+ single meshes.

How do people feel about this subject? Would love to hear some feedback from you guys and girls.

 

[-MGS- Sniper]

my maps normally hit around 300mb and when cooked go down to around 130mb.


TW Blackforest is around 500mb


I think personally anything upto 500 is fine maybe even above, yes it can be slow to download but once downloaded its all good, people have to wait for a game which is 20gb + to download so 500 odd for a map is not going to hurt providing its worth the download


my 2 cents anyways

 

[Seanchaoz]

Good feedback, Sniper! Thanks that puts my mind more at ease.

I agree that it shouldn't be a big deal waiting for an extra ~500 mb download these days, especially not on the workshop but I just wanted some second opinions.

I haven't tried cooking the map yet, so not sure if that will reduce the size. All of the combined stuff are made using meshes from the official TW maps. I thought cooking mostly only dealt with custom imported stuff or have I misunderstood that?

 

[GiantTurkeyFish]

I agree with Sniper.

I personally don't mind about the map file size. If I see a map with bunch of custom assets, I expect it to be a bigger download. As long as the map is fun to play and worth the download, I can care less about map file space.

 

[KillMaster]

I

 

[Seanchaoz]

It's a good rant, Killmaster, very agreeable.

I guess it's mostly an issue for people with very slow internet (yes, some of those actually still exist), who want to start playing a map right now. But that just brings us back to Sniper's argument; you had to download ~20 something gigabytes in the first place to just install the game, so give us a break for making you download another 300, 500, 800 mb or whatever for a free custom map

To be honest, stressing over map sizes is just being pedantic. Before workshop was supported I think it was a valid complaint to some extent, but now it's just impatient nit-picking.

 

[KillMaster]

It's a good rant, Killmaster, very agreeable.

I guess it's mostly an issue for people with very slow internet (yes, some of those actually still exist), who want to start playing a map right now. But that just brings us back to Sniper's argument; you had to download ~20 something gigabytes in the first place to just install the game, so give us a break for making you download another 300, 500, 800 mb or whatever for a free custom map

To be honest, stressing over map sizes is just being pedantic. Before workshop was supported I think it was a valid complaint to some extent, but now it's just impatient nit-picking.

I completely agree, and if people are just being picky then there

 

[Pwnstarr6]

I do understand why maps have to be so big, and I appreciate the work you guys put into your projects to make them awesome and unique.

As a player I think the problem with huge sizes is that it takes some teammates up to an hour to download and some people don't have the data for it they say. I have a few maps on my server on the verge of 1gb and its a bit inconvenient to have to have everyone leave and subscribe to workshop, then reboot the game, but I don't think anyone has much of a problem after the initial time. Overall people just seem to want maps they can load quickly and play quickly with no issues.

 

[13tisa13]

its a bit inconvenient to have to have everyone leave and subscribe to workshop, then reboot the game,

Actually you can set your server to download the maps from workshop and people joining will auto download from the workshop itself so there is no need for redirect anymore.(or installing the maps in MAPS folder)
Also another good thing about it is if you update your server on a daily bases you will always have the latest version of any map,cause your server will auto download the new version as soon as it comes on the workshop.
Really cool feature I must say,and simple to set up...more here under"Setting up Steam Workshop for servers": http://wiki.tripwireinteractive.com/index.php?title=Dedicated_Server_(Killing_Floor_2)

 

[Pwnstarr6]

I like more maps than the workshop has to offer, and the workshop caused a lot of drops and errors when I did switch to it for a couple of weeks so I prefer my own private redirect.

 

[[TW]Swag]

The engine has a limit of about 500MB in which case you will get an error message warning. That limit is mostly useful in console scenarios.

A lot of the map size is the encoded light and shadow maps. I personally would suggest trying to keep the map file size beneath 300MB. It's not a hard limit, just a suggestion. Since Steam Workshop supports multiple files, putting the combined meshes, MICs, etc in a supporting package(s) is a doable thing.

 

[KillMaster]

The engine has a limit of about 500MB in which case you will get an error message warning. That limit is mostly useful in console scenarios.

A lot of the map size is the encoded light and shadow maps. I personally would suggest trying to keep the map file size beneath 300MB. It's not a hard limit, just a suggestion. Since Steam Workshop supports multiple files, putting the combined meshes, MICs, etc in a supporting package(s) is a doable thing.

See that

 

[13tisa13]

Splitting the workshop items is actually very logical.
Say you upload the map of 350Mb to workshop...everybody downloaded it.
But then you updated 1 texture.
So you upload another 350Mb to workshop and everyone has to download it.

If however you split your files into materials,textures,models,sounds and maps you would only need to update the file that you changed plus map info.
That way everybody else would also just need to download only the new part.
That's at least how workshop was imagined to work and it does make a lot of sense.
However not sure how Killing floor servers have it set up these days...but in the past you had to group everything in the .kfm and that means ofc a big download every time.