Looking to get started with Unity again since things have slowed down enough to where I actually have the time to devote to learning an Engine. Anyways, I remember a whole ago that Unity created apk sizes for Android(maybe other platforms? I dont remember.) that were considered larger then average for games of similar types made using other means so that generally made people shy away from using Unity for smaller games. Is this still an issue or have advances been made to the point where you can bring the apk size down to more generally acceptable means with the release of Unity5 and now Unity2017? When searching for answers I usually just see results from 2011 to 2014ish. Im really just interested in creating mobile infinite runners, SHUMPS, Will be happy if I can release a tower defense game by the end of the year since im just a one man team so large games are far off the horizon.
Thanks for reading and any answers would be appreciated.
Games built in Unity will always be larger than those coded natively or using only the SDK for that platform due to the added size of .NET libraries that get included.
I would say that’s not something you should be worrying about, though. Since building and publishing is the last step in the process anyway, you’ve got a lot of other things you can focus on first and give Unity some extra time to trim those build sizes down even further. And if you get to the point where Unity’s build bloat is the biggest problem your game has, you either have an amazing game that people won’t care about a few extra MB, or you’re a skilled enough developer that you can go in any direction you want.
Hello World was about 8MB last time I tried. That’s the bulk of the engine code, unless your game is amazingly complicated, so just calculate assets on top of that. You’ve got 100MB + 2GB + 2GB storage if need be.
Is that with stripping enabled? My understanding is that Unity will strip out any assemblies you’re not using, so the inverse of this is that adding one line of code (no additional assets) that requires, for example, Linq and Regular Expressions will actually increase your build size by a noticeable amount due to the extra libraries now being included.
There was a great article on Gamasutra the other day that dug into this really deeply. Though it was focused on iOS and not Android, I imagine a lot of it carries over (not sure if Android has dual 32/64 bit builds).
Yes. I’ve seen better though, and around the same time a test scene with one building took about the same amount. I expected 6-8MB overhead (compressed APK) at that time.
Not sure how much applies, but the output sizes for both varied a lot between releases. A big thread about it always pops up every time they add bloat though, and it’s been weeks since I saw a new one
Hopefully they do tune it more towards the future since they seem to be putting more effots into 2D stuff along side 3D so thats pretty cool. Any articles you guys can link to reducing the size ourselves like Optimization and such? All in all it doesnt seem like something I really need to worry about anytime soon. Also any android specific books our courses that someone can recommend? Right now im doing the Learning Tutorials Unity has and I picked up the “Mastering Android Game Development” Book from Wajahut Karim for starters.
Mobile platforms are such fast-moving targets that I really just recommend reading every blog you can find on a new feature. But cookbook-style books are better than most, since they tend to cover platform-specific best practices.
I must confess I find this to be a weird statement. History shows us that games have not been getting smaller over time but have been progressively growing larger. Same applies to the hardware said games run on and the way they are distributed. Looking towards the future I’d be surprised if 8MB was of any significance in a few years.
By the way I say this as someone who was thoroughly shocked earlier this year when the Fallout 4 high definition texture pack DLC was released at a staggering 58GB bringing the entire game up to just under 100GB. Absolutely insane.
If I hadn’t already installed the Halo Master Chief Collection I’d be shocked too.
50GB game. 30-50GB day one patch. 30GB big patch. And then some more for good measure. Even know what’s in it I have trouble justifying the total installed size and their patch sizes.
Games under 100MB are no problems at all on modern mobile platforms, I think. At least on iOS the size of an update shows a much larger number than it actually downloads, so they have good delta updating. Memory is typically at 1GB or more on all 64-bit platforms, 32-bit mobiles are fading out of existence and people who cling to them aren’t after the latest top games anyway.
Two years from now I bet we’ll be able to demand 2GB of RAM in a mobile device without losing any significantly sized user base.
Agreed. Amazon’s current best selling tablet is their own Fire HD 8. Their developer docs suggests that the device receives an upgrade every two years of 512MB. Two years ago it was sitting on 1GB, now it currently sits on 1.5GB, and two years from now would definitely put it in line with your estimate.
