ngl I'm kinda confused why the game is 3GB large despite the fact it's a short game that takes 15 mins to finish.
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Also I think that’s pretty normal, the files aren’t very compressed, I just use what renpy outputs. So I don’t think it changes much after download. Other games you see are probably very similar, just more compressed distribution files. I could be wrong tho, if anyone knows why please lmk. I might compress them further in the future (if possible).
This ain't pixel art. Your last screenshot is 1280x720 and has a size of almost 1MB. This is madness. Learn how to use lossy webp. With compression 80 that screen is 48kb instead of 983kb. Even with placebo setting of 100, it only is 176kb.
Do a test sample. Create webp of 100 95 ... 50 and mix it in with the original. Cycle through the images in a way that you do not know which image is displayed. Try to tell the difference.
I’m assuming the last image that you’re talking about what’s on this page and yeah that’s because there’s a file size limit lol. It’s a little big because chara studio was doubling the render output for screenshots which I fixed for the next release. I’m actually redoing everything rn lol because I don’t like the way the appearence. But the chara studio resolution is 1440p and the quality does decrease drastically when it’s less. I haven’t messed with different image types because renpy only takes so many, and it automatically takes png so it was easy for me. I honestly don’t understand half of what you’re saying but I appreciate the help and I’ll look into it.
It is not lower quality in a practical sense. Those images are not created in a way to be pixel perfect to begin with. The render engine put dithering in this. It does not matter for quality, if the dithering is preserved or different dithering is re-created by uncompressing a lossy file format.
PNG is ok for a development master file. But for distribution it is misplaced perfectionism.
webp or jpeg for static images. The exceptions are buttons and stuff like that. As far as I know, renpy does not care for file endings, so you can exchange images easily.
webp is usually better, but in some constellations jpeg can be better. As a rule of thumb, you can make the file size 10% of the orignal size without visible quality loss. I made that screenshot 5% and had to look for the differences. There is some pixels different, but this does not automatically mean, the picture looks worse. As I mentioned, your rendering software did not create the pixels als pixel art. It used similar filling mechanisms to paint surfaces and "natural" color and lighting effects, as the rendering of a webp/jpg will use.
When using lower and lower qulaity settings, the lossy compression breaks down at the point where you can see distinct squares and before that, when continuous lines get fuzzy, like the ones between character and background.
So you would make a test with different samples in different quality settings. No change in resolution mind you. Only saving the png as a webp with slow settings a variation in the quality setting. You can try a blind test by cycling between two images in a way that you do not know which is which.
Oh, and webp has lossy and lossless compression. You want the lossy, where you can enter a quality number from 100 to 0. But I believe there are better guides about this out there.
And for renpy specifically, you can separate background and characters, depending how you do things. This saves a little and has other benefits, but it pales compared to the downsizing by switching from png to lossy webp.