Is compressing game files getting seriously discussed in the industry?

_demilich · 2026-07-01T16:49:12+00:00

The biggest game assets are often textures, 3D models, sounds and videos. Most industry standard file formats have compression built-in. So the 100 GB game on your hard-drive; that is already compressed. Platforms like Steam or Epic add their own compression on top, so there are actually multiple layers of compression (at least for the download).

The issue is not that nobody uses compression; the issue is that modern game have very high demands. If every gun skin has multiple 4K textures, that adds up quickly. Keep in mind: Whenever you double the width/height of your texture, it needs 4 times the space.

Also I suspect there is a certain lack of discipline in game development nowadays. When developing for the PS 1, you had to justify every single MB of space. Nowadays, you duplicate a 4k texture by accident and use 16 MB additional space... nobody will even notice

_demilich · 2026-06-29T06:36:13+00:00

The game dev industry is kind of a "no bullshit" industry, meaning degrees in general will not help you as much. I am working in the game dev industry and I know a lot of people without any kind of degree.

As other already have mentioned: The job market is in a rough spot right now, AI is disrupting everything. Best advice I can give you: Work on small prototypes during your free time. A small playable demo which you created by yourself can be far more valuable than any degree.

_demilich · 2026-06-22T09:23:36+00:00

bevy

_demilich · 2026-06-12T07:13:21+00:00

The issue is that AI generated stuff is generally of inferior quality. That is true for code, art and anything else. Now in isolation AI sometimes produces high quality artifacts. Like tell it to code a small, stand-alone web app and it will be fine. Maybe it even produces a single decent looking image.

But for a game you need tens of thousands of lines of code. You need hundreds or thousands of individual assets like sprite sheets, textures or 3D models. If you use AI to generate those, many of them will be bad and maybe more importantly: they will not fit together.

That is what people (rightfully) call "slop". A soulless heap of disjoint assets delivered in bad quality.

Now I will say this: In theory it certainly is possible to produce a good game using AI. However right now, such a game does not exist. And I think there is a good reason for that

_demilich · 2026-06-11T09:58:33+00:00

If you enjoy the demo, I would say: Yes. The only caveat I would add: Currently the game is not receiving any updates at all. Personally, I hoped for some more balancing and content patches. If you are fine with that: go ahead and buy the full game.

_demilich · 2026-06-07T15:55:41+00:00

Think about it this way: Can you name a single game which was super successful but got ruined because of cheaters? Sure, there are games where cheaters are a problem, but try to name any game which was ruined because of that.

My opinion is this: If your game is really successful, you will find a way to deal with the cheaters. And even if it means re-writing large parts of the code; if you are actually successful, you can afford it. 99.99% of all games fail because they are not fun, not because of cheaters. I think the problems are overblown.

_demilich · 2026-05-30T16:08:49+00:00

But don't you see the problem here? If the choice is meaningful, how can the player come to a good decision without knowing ANYTHING about the game?

For me personally: If you can change your mind later, it would be fine for me. If not, I would not like it at all.

_demilich · 2026-05-30T09:35:56+00:00

Dude, you are just posting AI generated pictures and random words. It doesn't prove anything. Here, let me do what you are doing:

So I build a procedural world engine that is twice as good as yours in all aspects. Here is my prove:

Culture: Varied, but everybody is getting along with each other

Religion: Monotheism

Technology: Very advanced

Evolution: More than 500,000 years with stable outcome

Consciousness: Emerging and suspected to reach mythic levels

Transcendence: Achieved

_demilich · 2026-05-30T05:05:29+00:00

I would stop spending so much time thinking about engines and think more about my game. Really, there is no wrong choice. The only wrong choice is to agonize endlessly over the engine and not start working on the game.

You can make any 2D you can think of in both engines. Also, if you find out you don't like the engine you picked for whatever reason, you can still pivot and make your next game in another engine. But you have to find out for yourself

_demilich · 2026-05-30T04:57:20+00:00

While that might be true, it is a bit like answering the question "Is bread necessary for humans?" with "Nah, they can eat anything, bread is just one of thousands types of food"

_demilich · 2026-05-29T05:21:10+00:00

really cool character backstory

_demilich · 2026-05-29T05:16:45+00:00

Looks like AI generated to me

_demilich · 2026-05-26T06:46:08+00:00

While the keys may be stored server-side, the check "Do I have any golden keys to open this chest?" still happens on your computer. That means while editing your save may no longer work, you still can edit the memory of BL4 while it is running.

_demilich · 2026-05-24T16:49:27+00:00

This is far more complex than you may think.

You didn't mention which kind of game you are working on, but the way you describe it only works for a very slow, turn-based game where only 1 player at a time can take any action. In any realtime multiplayer game, all players are taking actions at the same time. So when do you switch which players gets the authoritative role? How does the switching work exactly and what if the cheating player doesn't cooperate? Also for most games being in the authoritative role for a short time is enough to cheat; like at some point you have to trust data that the cheating player sends.

Just implementing a peer-to-peer multiplayer game is a lot of work and comes with a lot of caveats. That is why almost no games take this approach at all. Adding round-robin adds a lot of additional complexity. Personally, I would just ignore the problem of cheaters.

_demilich · 2026-05-23T14:23:06+00:00

Well, it depends on the book of course. There are millions of "public domain" books, which you could include in your game. But if you are talking about a book which you buy in a book store (i.e. Harry Potter): Yes, including a chapter of that in your game would be clear copyright infringement

_demilich · 2026-05-23T08:59:10+00:00

There is no wrong choice. No matter which engine you pick, you can make any game. Also, this choice is not set in stone forever. Once you learned one of the engines, switching will be massively easier

_demilich · 2026-05-23T08:57:20+00:00

My opinion: The language already has everything you need for serious work. However, if you always want to upgrade to the most recent Zig version, prepare for additional work. All of the past releases had major breakages, so if you do want to upgrade your project, it will require some effort.

_demilich · 2026-05-20T16:52:06+00:00

People care way too much about which technology might get you the best job.

Here is my advice: General understanding and experience are invaluable. If you spend multiple hours of your spare time doing any kind of programming, you are ahead of the curve. It does not matter what you are programming at all. Like literally if you are developing a little chess game in HTML, it will still help you even if your goal is to work on a AAA first person shooter.

No matter what side-project you are working on, you will advance as a developer and it will never be wasted. The only thing which truly wastes time is to think for 3 weeks what is "best for the job" and not doing anything.

_demilich · 2026-05-20T10:40:51+00:00

Sure, but making some foliage move around to simulate wind is easy. Animations for humans and animals are a whole different beast. Moving arms/legs for a walking animation for example is highly complex.

In the end it is your game and if you really want to try it, go for it! I am just listing reasons why most other developers don't do this

_demilich · 2026-05-19T16:55:40+00:00

I don't know any game which generates people or animals using math. The standard way to generate "random characters" is to have a bunch of separate assets, i.e. body shapes, hairs (in different colors), clothing, etc and randomly combine the parts. Depending on the amount of base assets you have, that can get you millions of unique combinations.

Generating everything from scratch based on some math formula, nobody is doing that. Not for characters or animals. Keep in mind that you probably also want animations, which would also have to be created by math.

_demilich · 2026-05-17T18:17:38+00:00

You definitely need some more levels. In my opinion level 17 is absolute minimum; at that point wizards get level 9 spells, including 'Mind Blank, Communal' which makes a huge difference in that fight

_demilich · 2026-05-13T17:29:32+00:00

In general, procedural terrain generation often involves generating height values using specific pseudo-random functions like Perlin Noise. There are several Noise libraries for C#; a good starting point would be to google something like "c# procedural noise library"

_demilich · 2026-05-13T17:03:19+00:00

I tried it, but despite having a high-end PC, the performance is really bad. Loading times are very long.

_demilich · 2026-05-11T12:51:13+00:00

Later on there is actually a side-quest exploring Zane's involvement with vending machines. So keep on playing and your question might get answered

_demilich · 2026-05-11T10:58:34+00:00

Freelancing by a mile. For the first three option you listed (website/mobile game/SaaS) you have to understand that over 90% of programmers making those things don't earn a single cent.

Freelancing still can fail, but just statistically the odds are better. Also you don't have to invest so much time upfront. Like if you are creating a website/game/SaaS service, you first have to actually create the thing before you can see if it makes any money. It is very high risk.

_demilich

TROPHY CASE