Acceptable download size/time for web games?

rumblesushi

Hello,

I'm about to start work on my first web game, and would like to get some opinions on loading times etc.

I guess instead of download size, a more concrete question would be what would you consider to be an acceptable loading time before the game starts?

Also, would you prefer a heftier initial download time, where all assets are loaded (apart from music, which is streamed), but from there on there is pretty much no loading, all assets for all levels are loaded, or would you prefer staggered loading?

IE a very quick initial load, then a loading time for each level?

For a larger game with many levels, I think the second option would be necessary, but for a racing game with just a few tracks I think it would be possible to load everything in at once. Which would you prefer?

And also, what about RAM usage? You guys perhaps aren't the best people to ask for that, as most of you have beast PC's with 6 gigs of RAM etc

But surely almost everyone has at least 1 gig of RAM these days right?

So would you say up to 512 megs would be an acceptable amount of RAM to use for a web game?

Cheers,
RumbleSushi

ZacD

Really, it depends, if its a casual fun game, maybe 10 seconds, if its an intense cool FPS, more than 1 minute would be fine (kinda cool side scroller, some where inbetween).

I prefer 1 big load, then at most a 5-10 second load between maps.

Yeah 1 gig of ram seems to be common, most new basic computers have 3 or 4 now.

ebagg

If the game is good I don't care about size or time of the download.

Kwramm

I'm in China... staggered content all the way. The net is super slow here. Unless I can get a quick glance at the contents (i.e. see if the game is fun) I don't bother at all with big downloads.

I guess the same might be true for other people with slow internet (e.g. netbooks or anything else hooked up to mobile internet).

CrazyButcher

as for hardware, the unity-webplayer statistics are quite nice and reflect casual players well

http://unity3d.com/webplayer/hwstats/pages/web-2010Q1.html

so RAM wise you can probably assume 1 GB or more (ie. 512 for game max, that's a shitload anyway), but 3 or 4 is definitely too much. Besides it's very unlikely you ever need that much RAM with games. Rest looks like some sort of dual-core and a dx9 sm2 card with 128 MB are a good minimum.

rumblesushi

Thanks for the replies.

I think for the average game then, I'll load in all the code and models initially, which should only take a few seconds, then per level I'll load in the textures used per level, sound effects, then stream the music etc.

That should really mean an initial load of about 5 seconds or so, then probably around 10 seconds per level, for the textures to load and models to be parsed etc.

I guess only if it's a very simple game with hardly any textures per level shall I load everything in at once, say if I can load everything in under 20 seconds, it could be worth doing that.

As for RAM usage, I think I'll be using around 256 megs on average, but possibly up to 512 megs on a particularly big level with decent texture variety.

I think that's OK seeing as 83.6% of users have over 768 megs of ram, over 50% of that being in the 1 to 3 gig range - according to the Unity stats.

Though 14% have only 512 megs of RAM, which is surprising actually, I thought it would be even less than that, computers with only 512 megs of RAM are pretty old.

If the RAM usage is up to 512 megs, I guess I'll put a disclaimer, saying 1 gig or more recommended.