JRE Download Size

Performance Tuning
#81

[quote]Preston, you are confusing the average user with people who 1) are above average and 2) are hardcore gamers.

The sad reality is that the people you describe above are not the majority of computer users.
[/quote]
I don’t think the majority of computer users are in any way the majority of game customers, no matter of the game’s budget target.

It all depends on what type of games we talk about. Is it low end PC compatible games, or modern 3d games? Judging by the traffic in the 3d forums here I’d say most of the Javagaming people are interested in modern 3d games.

People who buy full price games are potential customers of good low budget games, too. Jeff thinks that casual gamers tend to favorite free games. I think the same.

Top seller games like Jedi Knight II and III don’t just address hardcore gamers. Clearly they adress the mass market. People won’t play Jedi-Knight with an “out-of-date everything” PC and they won’t be able to enjoy the game if they don’t download several patches (6 to 9 MB).
Take a look at the current PC games chart, please. 80% of those titles you won’t be able to play with an outdated PC: they are best selling games, require a new DirectX version in order to play (up to 35 MB download) and several ones need new OpenGL drivers, some even require a Geforce2 updwards, and most of them have cool multi-player mode, so goot Internet needed.

[quote]An indie has to decide the minimum acceptable target and then expect to support a couple of grades below that. Indies have to assume that the majority of customers will have out-of-date everything (gfx card drivers, service packs, the works). And most importantly, indies have to keep download sizes as small as is reasonable. Failure to do any of that means lost sales. Period.
[/quote]
Depends on the game type, as said. Modern 3d low budget games won’t run in an acceptable way on low level PCs anway. The target audience will be able to download 10+ MB without a problem.
You could say that independent developers which try to do such kind of games won’t earn money anyway. Well, let’s wait and see.

Btw in order to play any one game of the well known Realone.Arcade (download size vary from ~1 MB to ~400 MB) you need to download their DRM client sized 5 MB first.

#82

In approximately 2 years’ time (finger in air) this will all be irrelevant anyway - the broadband market will have reached critical mass and the hardware will be GF2/1GHz or above - but it’s the here and now that’s the problem. It’s my personal belief that Sun are not going to attract C++ programmers to convert to Java in any great numbers for a whole bunch of reasons along the lines of familiarity, inertia, myths, FUD, comfort and risk; and therefore they need to subvert the underground programming movement - the little developers, the indies - to build up a new generation of programmers. I have to say that otherwise they are doing a fantastic job, by giving away the JDK for free and getting it onto a bunch of new hardware next year; but right now, at a critical growth period in a key industry, this is still something of an obstacle and there’s a case of head-buried-in-the-sand over it.

As I say, in 2 years it won’t matter - but that means building in 2 years’ time, not now, and there’s plenty of distractions for disillusioned Java developers.

Cas :slight_smile:

#83

[quote]In approximately 2 years’ time (finger in air) this will all be irrelevant anyway - the broadband market will have reached critical mass and the hardware will be GF2/1GHz or above - but it’s the here and now that’s the problem.
[/quote]
According to my informations a 1-2 GHz / GF2++ PC with Internet is the de facto standard today for a usual full price PC game.

Well, an anecdote: half a year ago (~) my team and me finished a full price PC game, category Strategy & Simulation. The game’s target audience is life sim fans, family, and such. Not hardcore gamers.
The game’s box recommends an 1 GHz PC and a GF2 type graphics cards. Then it’s playable well. The game can’t be played on an “out-of-date everything” PC.

The local & english version of the game sells well so far; since it’s no action game it’s more of a long seller. By the end of the year it’s probably going to reach “top seller” status. During the first two months it’s been in the local charts (just top 15, so nothing special).

Since then two patches have been released, 10 MB and 8 MB (btw C++ sucks). Sadly they’re neccessary in order to finish the game happily. The patch is just available online from the publisher’s portal, as usual.
The game’s official demo is 120 MB, and please remember: the game’s audience is not hardcore players and those who decided to do this demo (Publisher) know the market better than I do.

Well, today there’s a large game market with 1GHz/GF2 and higher PC users. Also usually they have no problem to download large sized demos, patches, graphic card drivers, etc.

I don’t say independent developers could reach all of these game customers: they don’t have got the marketing power and propaganda people. However the market is there from a technical point of view. Also a 14 MB sized JRE won’t hinder a low budget Java game designed for a 1-2 GHz/GF2++ PC.

#84

Yes, for a full price game. However, indys (usually) aim lower… at about 4-5 years old hardware. Right now that’s about 500mhz, 128mb (256 if you are lucky) and maybe a geforce (or something similar crappy like a gf2mx).

Fortunately even older hardware (6 years and older) doesn’t matter, because hardware is build to die after that time. Only geeks keep such old stuff for building a router or a fileserver.

Right now I know more than 50 shareware games and there was only one game (duh forgot it’s name) wich needed better hardware.

#85

Well, but that’s a totally different chapter. Others clearly said here in the discussion that the “game customer market” would be 1 GHz / GF2 based in just about two years. That’s wrong: it’s today (nearly yesterday actually).

If we talk about your mentioned “Shareware” games and low spec games in general, then that’s another chapter, too. Several times I repeated that it depends on the game type you intend to do and sell.
If you aim at the Shareware games market: why should you bother to use a modern Jogl binding or Xith engine, shadows and all that high computing stuff if you can’t use it anyway for your target platform?

Some tend to say that all those computers users out there in the world with out-of-date-anything-PCs would be potential customers of low-budget games. Why should they be more of a potential customer than the average full price game buyer? To my experience I’d say the opposite is true. Those who are already ready to invest money in games, mostly have a good hardware (the 1 GHz++ / GF2++ market) and buy full price games anway. They’re the customers whom low-budget high-tec games will have to aim at.

Well, the problem is how to make them aware of such games. There should be one ore more low-budget games portal sites which offers good reviews, links etc. to the majority of low-budget games. They should be linked to from any major portal so that anyone interested in buying a low-budget (high tec :slight_smile: game would find it straight away. Like the few magazines for full price PC games. Those “normal” PC games mag should review low-budget games more intensievly. However usually they sum up the “top ten” of low-budget games once a year and usually they severely criticize them. Also they tend to be quite strange anyway. :frowning:
Again, that’s no technical problem (JRE), it’s a marketing problem.

So, I would like to sum up: if I would say that the JRE was too big, I should add it’s too big for low-budget low-spec games (the n-th Tetris clone). For low-budget high-spec games (modern 3d) it isn’t.

#86

[quote]This is not the reality of the consumer market.

Over and over again we have to iterate this: the JRE is not only too large for most people, it’s also too much hassle for most people.
[/quote]
From reading lots of posts very rapidly to try and catch up… it looks like several people here have definitions of “most people” that differ only in that they are looking at different markets. And just saying “the end-consumer” is of course no definition at all (as any marketing person would confirm).

I can see a good, well-defined, relevant market for which Cas’s statements are true. I can also see the same for anyone arguing that “most people” are accustomed to massive regular graphics driver downloads - what’s not really been mentioned is that ignorant users usually (eventually) phone the vendor to complain, who passes the buck to the HW manufacturer (or tells them what to do directly if they’re nice), who says “DOWNLOAD THE LATEST F****ING VERSION, MORON!”, or words to that effect. (This of course is why the rest of us suffer moronic tech support with a checklist of 30 items that they HAVE to read out before they will even listen to us telling them what is broken!). What I’ve noticed is that especially the most ignorant of users will write down what they’re told, and keep applying those steps every time they get a problem with their computer; in the case of updating drivers, this actually tends to work very often.

#87

[quote]now if you could only force the jws do upgrade the jre if you app needs it
[/quote]
Your wish is my command ****Pooof ***

(It already does that for you. As well as managing the JREs so the user doesn’t need to worry about which one is sued for which app. :slight_smile: )

#88

What happens if the user uninstalls the jre ( or jre’s ) which i found on his machine when he installed my game ?

He starts my application and the application fails to starts because the jre is missing.

It would be much much easier if the jre has a base set and new applications can install some other modules to the base jre?

So many question, so less time 8)

#89

I’ve not read all of the above so I apologise if I covering old ground, however… Isn’t the market that Indie Gamers are trying to hit very similar to the market that Flash Games on websites are trying to hit. A click, a game and some fun.

The only difference seems to be that Java allows you to make games with a little more depth which will hopefully get the punter to part with their cash.

If this is the market (and I’m not saying it definitely is), then isn’t Web Start you’re monkey? You click on a link webstart pops up and gets you what ever you need to play. Alright it might take a while but so does getting the latest plugin for whatever…

One thing I would like to see is some very light weight webstart plugin for browsers just so the user doesn’t have to actively download much…

Oh, and in general I totally agree about the size of Java to download based on a dial up connection, but then I don’t spose those folk with dial ups would find it very easier to download upteen other plugins.

Kev

#90

I should now direct everyone’s attention to the Webstart stats thread. We have prominently always offered both the Windows and Java Webstart download next to each other. The Webstart demo is noticably several MB smaller than the Win32 version. But notice how there are nine times as many Win32 launches as Webstart launches. It’s just very easy to go on about how great Webstart is but the figures tell us the real facts. I’d have lost 90% of my sales if I delivered via Webstart at this point in time (conversion rate between Win32 and Webstart versions is similar).

Cas :slight_smile:

#91

I also read up a bit in this thread. Cas made a good point above that webstart is written in Java. When I typed the above I thought someone most have already brought the point up. Why isn’t there a webstart plugin for each platform written in their native tongue. That’d make life much easier for the end user wouldn’t it?

that doesn’t actually follow does it? If you hadn’t offered a Windows version nothing to say that the people who used the Win32 version wouldn’t have used the webstart one instead.

Kev

#92

I’ve got a statistic for everything, and while I am now unable to measure what happens if I remove my Win32 demo (as my affiliates are spreading that about too) I can tell you that of the 35% of users who were asked to download OpenGL drivers to make the game work, only 1% actually bother.

Besides, guess what happens when you click on a JNLP link when you don’t have Webstart installed? Yes, that’s right, it downloads an XML file which does nothing. So then you start having to stick platform specific code on web pages to try and get the Java plug-in. Oh no! That’s precisely the opposite of the WORA dream!

Lest we all forget, Flash is the de facto format for interactive web content now, and the reason is that Flash is distributed along with the operating system. (The fact that it’s better at doing what it does helps of course but no-one would have cared if it weren’t ubiquitous)

So: faced with the cold hard stats, could anyone possibly say with a straight face that Webstart is currently a good deployment mechanism? And given that you’d lose a lot of credibility by trying to argue otherwise, what would the collective’s easy quick-fix interim solution consist of?

Cas :slight_smile:

#93

Seems thats a more scary problem, that people can’t be bother to download GL drivers.

I still don’t quite go with your stats that webstart is bad because more people downloaded your win32 distribution, but that aside your logic is sound, clicking on a JNLP link and being faced with nothing but a XML page is utterly useless.

As above, the solution would seem to be to have a native plugin which orchestrates the download itself (via JNLP or what ever other method you’d like to reinvent). Better still would to have the plugin available on every platform before you get there (e.g. ship it with the machine) but that doesn’t seem possible since most machines are already shipped ;). I suppose it would be possible to write a deployment app in Flash if you really wanted to?

At the end of the day tho, the only thing that seems to make your end customers happy is to have a tiny download. If thats the case then a binary distribution of just the bits you need seems to be the only thing you can do.

Cas, out of interest, why did you consider webstart knowing that it would require you users to get a JRE? You already has a JET compiled small binary didn’t you? EDIT: Oh, I only every played the webstart version, was there an installer with the Win32 version?

Kev

#94

We believe very strongly in Webstart’s idea (but not the current implementation). And we also believe in getting the game out to Linux (and one day Mac…) users, and Webstart does all this for us.

The download doesn’t have to be tiny, it just has to reflect the amount of game you’re getting. If I downloaded 24MB of stuff and got Alien Flux I’d be annoyed because it doesn’t seem to have 24MB of content. At the end of the day though it’s simply not our responsibility to get the JRE into the hands of users - we just don’t have the resources to make it happen - and we just want a temporary interim solution.

A one word answer to a question I’ve asked would do the trick.

Cas :slight_smile:

#95

Again it depends on the game genres we talk about.

Those customers who want to play low-end MAME type games don’t need a high end graphics card, that’s right…
Those customers who want to play high-end 3d games (no matter what budget it is) already have got a new OpenGL 1.4 driver installed (or 1.3 in case of Ogl-unfriendly ATI).

Coming from the full price games market I still fail to see why the low-end PC market would be the main target for independent developers? The 1++ GHz / GF2++ PC market is full with game customers who look for good new games (and in contrast to casual gamers they’re ready to pay for). Also I know so many of them who are really sick of those mega complex games which take you two weeks to get just started. Give’ em high-end low-budget games. :slight_smile:

IMHO independent developers don’t need to restrict themselves to low-end games.

#96

[quote]Besides, guess what happens when you click on a JNLP link when you don’t have Webstart installed? Yes, that’s right, it downloads an XML file which does nothing. So then you start having to stick platform specific code on web pages to try and get the Java plug-in. Oh no! That’s precisely the opposite of the WORA dream!
[/quote]
The platform specific code you are taling about IS irriating - only because broswer standards are so bad… but if it works… If your stats say that your market is 98% Windows users I think this code is worth it. It’s not like using it will lock out everyone else. So long as Linux and Mac users can still get at it.
Linux = more experienced in general (my assumption) So if you tell them on the page, “If it doesn’t work go here and install the JRE” they are morelikely to deal with it.
Mac = less experienced in general (another assumption) But of course they have Web Start already, so it’s no big deal. Except if they only have Java 1.3.1… I’m not sure that Apple provides a proper URL and mechansim for Web Start to do it’s thing and download the upgraded JRE.

#97

[quote]ISo: faced with the cold hard stats, could anyone possibly say with a straight face that Webstart is currently a good deployment mechanism? And given that you’d lose a lot of credibility by trying to argue otherwise, what would the collective’s easy quick-fix interim solution consist of?

Cas :slight_smile:
[/quote]
Sorry Cas. You have some numbers. What you DON’T have in an incontrovertible conclusion. There is a world of distance from statistics to their interpretation and interpretation is very hard and very error prone.

As i posted elsewhere I can see at least 2 confounding factors in your study. The first is that your Win32 download is different from the Web Start one in that its an exe. We have no way of measuring how much “exe prejudice” is effecting your numbers.

Secondly, as you have already commented, you have the Win32 download directly linked from other sites but I assume you don’t have the webstart linked in the same way from the same sites? if so, the entire difference could simply be a popularity difference between your own site and one of your affiliates.

Thats just two of many things that could be influencing what is fundamentally a highly uncontrolled study. In the end you must be very careful when interpreting the results of any study to avoid the fallacy of confusing correlation with causality (as you seem to be here.) Its a mistake too many people make too often.

#98

This is why I prefer logic to stats, however, logically speaking, Cas still makes a very good point. JNLP or rather webstart being in Java means you have to have java before it can go and get Java for you.

Are there any plans for a native web start implementation?

I actually started considering a Java 1.1.x version of webstart that could run as an applet (since everyone gets an old VM built in anyway). You’d have to do some signing but I think it works on the later 1.1.6 stuff. This way you go to the applet, it runs webstart and you’re off…

Kev

#99

[quote]This is why I prefer logic to stats, however, logically speaking, Cas still makes a very good point. JNLP or rather webstart being in Java means you have to have java before it can go and get Java for you.

Are there any plans for a native web start implementation?
[/quote]
Not from Sun. You could start a project though to do an OpenSource native JNLP client. All the info is available.

JWS, good or bad, serves the clientele it was created for well (enterprise IT groups.) Java is the easiest platform because it handles all the security and HTML stuff that otherwise you are going to have to write yourself :confused:

The issue with doing a 1.1 (MSVM) version is only that by the time you have it done MSVM may well be history.

#100

It might be history legally, but it’ll still be resident on loads of users home machines won’t it?

Kev