Long time without posting… It’s time to hit the road again. 
After the end of the Lex Venture project, it is time to review my past practices and try to get to (much) better game producing methodologies.
So, let’s start with the “Download” aspect of your game – it means everything related to the process of getting your game into the user machine. For the casual audience, it also means different issues for the two dominant distribution models available for indie developers: the Downloadable and the Online Models.
Downloadable Model
I would say, aim for 20 MB of download size. If you can’t, then for 25 MB. If it is needed, then 30 MB. More than that, either you gonna do an art-stuffed hidden objects game, or you are just taking risks. There is a point where the casual player just give up if download size is too large. Because there are so many games alike, they can pick what will arrive faster.
Sometimes, a different file format can save you a couple of MB on download size. We were using PNGs on the beginning but we switched to TGAs later on the pipeline. Even with a much larger file size on disk space – average 450kb on PNG against 4 MB on TGA – the compressed size after using LZMA algorithm on the setup package dropped to 400kb on PNG against 200kb on TGA.
Your SDK footprint on the game’s EXE should not be ignored also. For Lex Venture, we used the .NET Framework and it was a mistake – on the process of bundling the DLLs (to ensure execution even on systems without the framework installed), the footprint got to a whooping 7 MB! For the casual market, 7 MB could be a full game!
Also, consider that lighter versions of your game could be player on browsers –for example, the PopCap Framework browser plug-in or OSAkit technology. Both are ActiveX based and will allow you to distribute demo versions just like web games. When picking the technology and planning art, check if your basic assets and DLLs footprint won’t render web version impossible even with less art and levels!
Online Model
The future of PC (and Mac) casual games lies on Flash technology. More and more portals require Flash versions, and most of them will only publish Flash games (like Miniclip). As more the band broadens, Internet connection become ubiquitous, and the processing power increases to support fast software rendering, Flash will be increasingly dominant as a platform for PC games.
The “Download” issues on Flash games relates to streaming and browser cache. Flash has streaming capacities and you can implement in a way the player could start the first stage before the game assets are downloaded completely. But on the other hand, the user cache may expire before his next visit to the site, and the assets needed to start the game will have to be re-downloaded every time.
Posted by Tex Pine 
