Allegorithmic’s programs to make game file sizes smaller

That is, if some new programs by a lesser-known company become the industry standard for making games. At the Games Developers Conference (GDC) of the London Games Festival, the company known as Allegorithmic claimed that it could reduce the texture file sizes in games by up to 70 percent.

The two programs, known as ProFX and MaP Zone 2, should potentially lessen the file sizes of textures even while the files keep the same quality as current texture files today. A show of their programs’ capabilities came in the form of a demo for RoboBlitz, which is coming out for Xbox Live Arcade. With a 50 MB cap on the file size for these game, file sizes did have to be lessened, and according to the report, the game ran well on its Unreal 3 engine with only a 280kb size for the overall texture files.

What does this mean to us? First, that can potentially mean more content, should it become and industry standard. Since file sizes for those textures could be reduced from 1GB of textures to 300MB, hypothetically speaking, that could mean additional missions or quests or at least more places to explore for new games. Of course, not every game uses that many textures, which leads to the second, more impressive point. Smaller file sizes means a faster download for certain games, and that’s definitely a plus.

Of course, now we have to wait and see what the industry will do with this interesting development.

Thanks to Badam for the tip!

That is, if some new programs by a lesser-known company become the industry standard for making games. At the Games Developers Conference (GDC) of the London Games Festival, the company known as Allegorithmic claimed that it could reduce the texture file sizes in games by up to 70 percent.

The two programs, known as ProFX and MaP Zone 2, should potentially lessen the file sizes of textures even while the files keep the same quality as current texture files today. A show of their programs’ capabilities came in the form of a demo for RoboBlitz, which is coming out for Xbox Live Arcade. With a 50 MB cap on the file size for these game, file sizes did have to be lessened, and according to the report, the game ran well on its Unreal 3 engine with only a 280kb size for the overall texture files.

What does this mean to us? First, that can potentially mean more content, should it become and industry standard. Since file sizes for those textures could be reduced from 1GB of textures to 300MB, hypothetically speaking, that could mean additional missions or quests or at least more places to explore for new games. Of course, not every game uses that many textures, which leads to the second, more impressive point. Smaller file sizes means a faster download for certain games, and that’s definitely a plus.

Of course, now we have to wait and see what the industry will do with this interesting development.

Thanks to Badam for the tip!