Fused Love2D Windows Distribution: Offloading Media Files?

[Athrikesha]

Is the fused file the only method while going in for distribution of love2d games on windows?

I am okay with the method, but the .exe contains all the media files, which inflates the total size to around 300mb or even more when polished. I tried and minimized the audio and media files at the best compression and formats. And still predict that .exe size would exceed when scaling the game.

My question is can the media folder be made separate from the fused .exe while distributing the game ? Especially when i go in for publishing the game on platforms like steam etc. Please shed more light and help me understand more about coding bigger games with love2d.

Is there something i should know in this regard ?

ref: https://love2d.org/wiki/Game_Distribut ... Executable

[MrFariator]

You could distribute any resources (audio, images, video, etc) in a separate folder from your fused executable, and then at runtime mount these media folders, sure (see love.filesystem.mount, although I imagine this will be easier with löve 12.0). However, that is still probably more effort than it is worth, and it won't really cut down on the overall distribution size of your project. If you go looking on Steam, variety of games developed with löve just go with the fused approach and have no issues with it.

Here are some examples:
https://steamdb.info/depot/439491/ (1.15 GiB .exe)
https://steamdb.info/depot/2366971/ (625MiB .exe)
https://steamdb.info/depot/858711/ (301MiB .exe)
https://steamdb.info/depot/2373631/ (165MiB .exe)
https://steamdb.info/depot/2379781/ (53 MiB .exe)

In most cases, audio (and/or video) files are going to take the biggest chunks of any project's filesize, particularly if your textures aren't made for 4K resolutions.

Some cases where I could see having a separate media folder:
- Easy drop-and-replace mod support (although this can also be achieved with your game's save directory, without overwriting your game's files)
- Giving players an easier access to whatever media or content (eg. soundtrack) with less fuss (but if you decide to sell the soundtrack on Steam, those get "installed" separately anyway)
- Maybe smaller download size for game updates. Places like Steam and Epic Games Store tend to have mechanisms for "chunking" uploaded games, so players only need to download the files that changed. A fused executable in my experience kind of bypasses these (meaning you more or less download the whole .exe each time you update), but for a ~300MB or smaller title that isn't too bad. User's mileage may vary of course, depending on their internet speed.

[Athrikesha]

You could distribute any resources (audio, images, video, etc) in a separate folder from your fused executable, and then at runtime mount these media folders, sure (see love.filesystem.mount, although I imagine this will be easier with löve 12.0). However, that is still probably more effort than it is worth, and it won't really cut down on the overall distribution size of your project. If you go looking on Steam, variety of games developed with löve just go with the fused approach and have no issues with it.

Here are some examples:
https://steamdb.info/depot/439491/ (1.15 GiB .exe)
https://steamdb.info/depot/2366971/ (625MiB .exe)
https://steamdb.info/depot/858711/ (301MiB .exe)
https://steamdb.info/depot/2373631/ (165MiB .exe)
https://steamdb.info/depot/2379781/ (53 MiB .exe)

In most cases, audio (and/or video) files are going to take the biggest chunks of any project's filesize, particularly if your textures aren't made for 4K resolutions.

Some cases where I could see having a separate media folder:
- Easy drop-and-replace mod support (although this can also be achieved with your game's save directory, without overwriting your game's files)
- Giving players an easier access to whatever media or content (eg. soundtrack) with less fuss (but if you decide to sell the soundtrack on Steam, those get "installed" separately anyway)
- Maybe smaller download size for game updates. Places like Steam and Epic Games Store tend to have mechanisms for "chunking" uploaded games, so players only need to download the files that changed. A fused executable in my experience kind of bypasses these (meaning you more or less download the whole .exe each time you update), but for a ~300MB or smaller title that isn't too bad. User's mileage may vary of course, depending on their internet speed.

Thankyou for your kind reply.

The way i understand this is, "Do not care about production file size unless your fused .exe exceeds 1gb". But love2d definitely needs to address this better just in case.

[dusoft]

I mean what's not addressing it as recommended above? You can distribute assets as a separate ZIP (or even let your program download the separate ZIP from somewhere), then unzip it and mount it.

[MrFariator]

"Do not care about production file size unless your fused .exe exceeds 1gb"

I don't think there is anything specifically wrong with having it exceed 1gb either. Your project will ultimately be as large as it needs to be, and as small as you can make it. Löve itself can't influence that. There are many tricks and things you can do to reduce project size, but somewhere along the way you'll either start to sacrifice quality (lower audio quality, having fewer unique assets overall, smaller resolution textures, etc), or start requiring heavier and heavier compression algorithms that may take a while to unpack, at install or runtime.

Is there a specific reason you might be concerned about the fused executable size? Is there some compression format you are thinking of using, that löve doesn't support out of the box?

You can always even just write a custom launcher script for your game, where you ship the love.exe, the required DLLs, and assets (code, audio, visuals) as-is. Your script would just pass the assets folder to the love.exe (like how you would test/develop a project on your local machine), and be done with it. When distributing on something like Steam, you can configure your project's launch options however you like or need (usually pointing to an .exe, but sometimes a launch script).

[Athrikesha]

Thank you for your extended support in the matter.

Because my game includes extended audio tracks of nature, say some 10 files of 10 MB each. Together with game assets, I had a 300 MB fused .exe file.

I was just thinking ahead and envisioned scaling the game horizontally to begin with. Given that I continuously record audio and prepare visuals, I thought it could exceed 1 GB somewhere in the near future. Maybe this is a naive over-engineering, but my doubt was genuine.

Why ship everything together, be it steam or any other publisher, and what could be softlimit of fused method approach to game distribution. And why doesnot love2ed have a line that mentioned offloading while distribution, that is to have an isolated media directloy for bigger games, that could maybe update/modify assets alone rather.

With gratitude

[darkfrei]

My question is can the media folder be made separate from the fused .exe while distributing the game ? Especially when i go in for publishing the game on platforms like steam etc. Please shed more light and help me understand more about coding bigger games with love2d.

Just mount the current folder:
https://love2d.org/w/index.php?title=lo ... ldid=29310

[MrFariator]

Because my game includes extended audio tracks of nature, say some 10 files of 10 MB each. Together with game assets, I had a 300 MB fused .exe file.

I was just thinking ahead and envisioned scaling the game horizontally to begin with. Given that I continuously record audio and prepare visuals, I thought it could exceed 1 GB somewhere in the near future. Maybe this is a naive over-engineering, but my doubt was genuine.

Sound indeed takes a bunch of space, and I can see big, looping nature tracks reaching such filesizes. You could always try chopping things down to different sections that might weave in and out, instead of relying on such big loops. Wind Waker for example kind of split its music into smaller self-contained sections, that the music playback could quickly jump into based on sound cues, as can be heard from this track. There are plenty other approaches games have taken over the years too, of course. But not knowing your game or design goals, I suppose it's up to you how to handle the sound engineering.

Why ship everything together

Simple: because it's easier. You could implement your own installer (you download an .exe that downloads the rest of the game), but that means you might have to setup filehosting yourself to serve that download. Why go through that trouble, when something like Steam already does that for you?

And if this is more about shipping everything together in a fused executable like with löve, it's again also simpler, and ultimately doesn't make much of a difference (other than maybe patching). People who download your game are still downloading your full game, regardless of how it's packaged. Patching might become a concern if you plan on doing a lot of post-release updates, but there is no guarantee that any given player will download those patches; they might just play whatever latest version, and dip out afterwards. As such, worrying about patching at this stage might be putting the cart before the horse.

be it steam or any other publisher, and what could be softlimit of fused method approach to game distribution.

Steamworks documentation mentions some best practices. However, unless you start hitting handful of gigabytes, you're unlikely to hit any real big issues with uploading a fused löve game to something like Steam.

However, places like itch.io do put a more strict filelimit (1GB, I believe). If you plan on distributing on places with limitations like that, then you need to plan accordingly (either cut down your project size, or develop an installer and serve the game files from your own website), because in such cases the total distribution size matters, not how things are packaged. If your project totals over 1GB, and you try to put it up on itch.io, it doesn't matter if it's fused or not; they will likely reject it outright. In this sort of situation your only option is the custom installer approach, if you can't compromise and shrink your project down somehow.

And why doesnot love2ed have a line that mentioned offloading while distribution, that is to have an isolated media directloy for bigger games, that could maybe update/modify assets alone rather.

See love.filesystem.mount, as has been mentioned before. Or even my other suggestions regarding using a custom launcher script. But, also like I've mentioned löve 12.0 will likely make this easier due to changes/additions to love.filesystem (12.0 is not officially out yet, but there are builds you can download to develop your game with).

All the tools you need are already there; so if you need them, use them.

[Athrikesha]

Great. Understood.

Thankyou all for the traction. Your replies form a valuable part of my learning.

Will look into the documents and the links provided; and sorry for the redundancy.