Post by redonihunter in Help!

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Is this a special limitation for web games? Or is it a limitation of butler?

1k files in an archive is ... nothing, like really. If you click the wrong buttons you have 6k files in an rpg maker game zip. I saw a project with over 30k files inside the archive.

That is what archives are very useful for. Bundeling files into one handy big file. Limiting the number of files inthere defeats the purpose. So what is going on here?

Of course at least for release, one should use special archive files for distribution and not clutter the file system with countless files, if possible. I know a game project in twine or whatever, that sports 10k files in a 10MB archive.

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No Time To Play1 year ago(+1)

It's a quality of life thing. People will have to load your game in a web browser, over a slow internet connection, on a machine with limited CPU and RAM. Our admins want games to be playable, and not just for well-off enthusiasts from developed countries.

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redonihunter1 year ago

You explain why a web game should not be big. Slow internet, low ram etc, Yeah. But file counter has not much bearing on this, quite to the contrary. Breaking it down into small chunks makes it more viable for weak clients. So in case of a book "game", you only need to have 1 book page in memory and transmit it over slow internet at a time.

The file counter limit inside a zip for html5 games is arbitrary. It was 500, years ago. Now is 1000. Why there is a limit I do not know. Or how this is handled. If the files are served separatly on demand, this is a server constraint, not a weak client contraint. If the whole project is served upfront, the number of files inside the zip should not be an issue, only the size of the project. Unless of course, the whole project is served upfront in all its tiny fragments, which would be the worst of both worlds.

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hechelion1 year ago (1 edit)

I'm not a web expert, nor do I work for itch, but I understand that the file limitation has to do with the cost of the server.

It is more expensive for the server to provide 1000 small files than a single large one.

Remember that when you run a web game, you do not download a zip in memory, otherwise you request individual files.

Therefore, the games that are downloaded do not have a file limit.

Surely you are going to tell me that 1000 or 2000 doesn't make much difference and you are right, on a small scale. But Itch is a company that is close to having almost a million games on its servers, for them, the volume of passing the limit to 2000 surely means a significant increase in the cost of the servers.

Edit: In your case it may happen that you have 2000 files and that each file is a page of a book, but there are people who will have 2000 files on the same level of a game. The problem with this type of limits is that in one case they do not make sense, but in other cases, they do and many times you must cut somewhere in between.

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redonihunter1 year ago (2 edits)

The explanation for the limit with weak clients did not fit my understanding of the technology.

As for your explanation. Here is the thing. The upload happens in a zip. For whatever reason. What does the server do whith that? Expand the zip afterwards or host a zip as a virtual place? Does the game get served as a whole or in tiny bits? From a quick google and what I experienced so far, games are served as a whole upfront, but I assume that is just because many games just load all their assets, and the tech could do it in tiny pieces on demand.

But either way, why would it cost more to serve the same amount of data, be it upfront or on demand? If you serve a 50MB game it will not get bigger, just because it is 2000 files instead of 1000. There is tiny amount of overhead of course, but bottome line is:

It is more expensive for the server to provide 1000 small files than a single large one.

Why? And on what scale? (Your statement is untrue, for all I know, but maybe I am mistaken) Hosting costs are typically in transferred volume and not in number of served files. Especially if they keep it in a zip. Then you do not even put extra strain on the file allocation table.

If you search for html5 game file limit you will learn quickly that this is an itch.io peculiarity. It has no technical, nor financial reasoning.

You can dig up an old statement from leafo, it seems to be a concern for the export of some engines that do this bad. Like rpg maker or whatever. If you develop directly in html5 this does not seem to happen (abundance of files). The recommendation or chain of logic as I understood, is this. If you have so many files, you better provide your game as a download - since your game dev tools were optimised for that, and not html5.

And while internet connection is not an issue, certain browsers might be very bad at handling 10k files for one web page. (Or rather, if the game were developed directly in html5 and does indeed would have so many files, than it would run well. But what I see is this loading all at the start, and html5 is not made for that. Loading only the parts of the game you actually play would be a good idea. But small time indie devs more often than not just hit export on their file hungry rpgmaker engine and that thing initializes with all files and defeats the purpose. Or so I suspect).

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hechelion1 year ago

As I already told you, I am not an expert in web development. Downloading 1000 files or just 1, if they weigh the same, it should have the same download value.

But I do understand that 1000 files consume more IO than just one.

Normally we do not worry about IO or IOPS in webhosting, but if you have a server with hundreds of thousands of games, possibly it is something to take into account (For some reason, web hosting places a limit on these values), for That's what I made my comment to you.

I don't know if this is the reason or not, I don't work at Itch, I'm just pointing out that if there is a difference and that maybe it's a reason why Itch placed a limit on the number of files, I'm not claiming that that is the reason.

If you want to know the real reason, the only one who could explain that to you is the admin, all the rest are just speculations.

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redonihunter1 year ago(+1)

The concerns are for the client side. You can read the reason for this file limit on itch here 5 year old thread about the problem

It is an arbitrary limit. In my own words, it is a litmus test for bad engine exports to deter low quality web games.

Do try to google html5 game file limit, as I wrote previously. Half the search results refer to itch specifically, the othter results are about size constraints.

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hechelion1 year ago(+1)

Oki, I didn't know that information, I believed that the limit on the number of files was due to the resources of the itch servers.

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