Someone can help this guy making this game...

[Ricardo Dawkins]

I played the game he linked at XNA forums and the gameplay is addictive. I plea that some of you C# programmer can help him building a version of that game for the Zune device.

Check his post at the XNA forums...
http://forums.xna.com/thread/61324.aspx

The game is Bloons Tower defense...
http://djxmmx.net/entertainment/game...asp?size=small

[Man.]

This game is ok, I came across it yesterday. The "bloons" game is better (you have to pop the bloons - very addictive).

I think it would be difficult to port the game and also it would be too big exceeding 16mb.

[jsedlak]

16mb is the amount of runtime memory a game can use, not the amount of space it can take up. Would definately fit within that limit.

The problem is that he is hiring someone and you are not allowed to use the 3.0CTP for commercial purposes according to the EULA.

[Ricardo Dawkins]

That small game will take 16MB of RAM. Someone needs to optimize the coding.

[jsedlak]

Originally Posted by Ricardo Dawkins

That small game will take 16MB of RAM. Someone needs to optimize the coding.

Uh... what?

[Ricardo Dawkins]

I mean the graphics and the gameplay on that flash game can't take 16MB of RAM, right ?

Those ballons are 2D sprites, the same as every graphics on the game. What can take more than 16MB from that game ?

[jsedlak]

Originally Posted by Ricardo Dawkins

I mean the graphics and the gameplay on that flash game can't take 16MB of RAM, right ?

Those ballons are 2D sprites, the same as every graphics on the game. What can take more than 16MB from that game ?

Nah. You can fit a 4000x3000 image into 5 megabytes of space. With replication and some compression that game can easily fit within the limits. GW3 uses a lot of sprites and fits fine.

[Omnidragon]

you do know that images cannot be compressed in memory right? not in RAM any way. the only way to reduced their size is to use vector graphics and have them as mathematical equations

[jsedlak]

Originally Posted by Omnidragon

you do know that images cannot be compressed in memory right? not in RAM any way. the only way to reduced their size is to use vector graphics and have them as mathematical equations

Yes, I meant compression using a program like Photoshop. For the backgrounds in GW3 I saved at least a megabyte so far by using some pretty tough jpeg compression. What is nice is that on the zune, you can't tell the difference.

[TheZMan]

Originally Posted by Omnidragon

you do know that images cannot be compressed in memory right? not in RAM any way. the only way to reduced their size is to use vector graphics and have them as mathematical equations

The only time an image needs to be expanded to full size is when it is rendered to the screen becuase at that point it has to fill all of the pixels.

But images are very commonly compressed in memory using exactly the same compression you see on disc. JPG, PNG and ZIP.

In addition there are speciality image compression file formats called DXT which are used heavily to reduce texture sizes on graphics cards. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S3_Texture_Compression

[lpxxfaintxx]

I love this game. Bloons Defense 2 is much better though, the one you posted is outdated.

[Omnidragon]

Originally Posted by jsedlak

Yes, I meant compression using a program like Photoshop. For the backgrounds in GW3 I saved at least a megabyte so far by using some pretty tough jpeg compression. What is nice is that on the zune, you can't tell the difference.

Yes i was taking specifically about RAM no HDD space. once an image is leaded into memory it is uncomrpessed out to its raw size. this is why we cant use things like TIFF's in XNA as is doesn't know how to uncompress them

[jsedlak]

Originally Posted by Omnidragon

Yes i was taking specifically about RAM no HDD space. once an image is leaded into memory it is uncomrpessed out to its raw size. this is why we cant use things like TIFF's in XNA as is doesn't know how to uncompress them

Except that JPEG isn't a lossless compression. Thus compressing an image and saving does do some good. However, when XNA takes over, it remains in that state and is not compressed unless you choose a compression option in the pipeline as ZMan discussed. However, I do not think DXT1 is available on Zune.

[TheZMan]

Originally Posted by Omnidragon

Yes i was taking specifically about RAM no HDD space. once an image is leaded into memory it is uncomrpessed out to its raw size.

As I put in my previous post this fact simply isn't true. Memory is just a place to store whatever you want you COULD quite happily store a compressed image.

But I think I get what you are saying now... in an XNA game the content pipeline will expand compressed images to their full uncompressed size. So a small jpg will turn into a large .xnb texture which in turn will take up a lot of RAM. (though in this case also more disc space)

The main reason for this is that GPUs need to be able to look up into a texture and grab pretty much any pixel at random depending on how you are drawing things and the angle of the camera. So storing in a compressed format like JPG or PNG is very inefficient as you would have to uncompress big chunks of the file just to get one pixel.

To deal with this we have .DXT files which are compressed AND allow fast random access lookup. In fact GPUs are optimised for this kind of texture. In this case the .xnb file and the footprint in RAM are smaller. You can use this by selecting the Texture processor and then the Texture format of DxtCompressed. Note that this is a lossy compression so you may get artifacts.

The problem can get even worse than expanding to full size. For 3d use it is advisable to use mip-maps (the default texture processor uses them). This creates a set of smaller images to prevent bad aliasing artifacts. So the resultant size is bigger than the raw image. But it improves the graphics by doing some preprocessing. A faster at runtime but bigger VS slower at runtime but smaller computer solution.

Originally Posted by Omnidragon

this is why we cant use things like TIFF's in XNA as is doesn't know how to uncompress them

Well XNA GS doesn't know how to uncompress TIFFs but this has nothing to do with the memory footprint. XNA framework itself doesn't understand any formats other than the texture and sprite output into .xnb files. The content processors are what converts from BMP JPG etc to that format. You could write yourself a TIF processor in under an hour since I'm pretty sure .Net can read them.

[jsedlak]

Btw ZMan, I don't think we can use DXT1 on the Zune...

[TheZMan]

Originally Posted by jsedlak

Btw ZMan, I don't think we can use DXT1 on the Zune...

That would make sense... I was really having a theoretical discussion with myself...

At the end of the day though its unlikley at this stage of the game that any of us have to worry about this stuff as the games are going to be very basic for a while at least.