NW.js file size

I always thought of what a great idea it is to be able to export the games in a desktop NW.js version so i can test it without any tedious uploading on some server and can send the file for friends to try out whenever i make any updates but it made me wonder why it has to create such a huge file?

I mean, just by exporting a empty project it creates a folder that has 737 MB and just the win64 version from it has 134 MB...

So my question is, will this ever be reduced to a smaller size?

Or can i expect one day an alternative export option where i can open and play the game offline on my desktop without it being over 100 MB big?

You might take a look at W10 universal apps.

It loads a version of Chromium with it which accounts for a big portion of it. If all you want to do is run games locally why not just use Firefox?

Of the 134mb most of it is the chromium web browser. If anything I imagine it will only get bigger with newer updates.

Last I looked it's not trivial to build it from the source code to tinker with ways it can be reduced. I'm not sure it'd be worth scirra's time to cut features from it because someone would miss it, not to mention that from update to update the way to remove a feature may change. What we have is an html5 game enigine that allows any browser feature to be used, so nothing short of a full browser will support it all.

It could be possible to make a smaller runtime with a graphics library and a small JavaScript enigine and then reinventing the wheel for any other feature needed. There is probably no interest in doing this officially. Unofficially it could be done but the issue of someone to make it and support it is a problem, as well as that could be considered curcumventing the personal licience exe export.

Miu3

You could use winrar. Winrar has a selfextracting archive where you can start a program from that archive after extracting.

The archive has only about a third of the size and is one big exe file.

I've been experimenting with other game engines lately, and I do feel that this is one aspect of a native exporter that is advantageous. Having your game come out at Construct's 130mb (Windows) up to 180mb(!) (Mac) versus Godot's ~20mb (both Mac and Windows) is somewhat painful.

Don't take me wrong: I love working in Construct. Still, after trying out other engines in the past few months I am starting to see definite advantages of a native platform export option without having to rely anymore on a third-party browser wrapper to run my games.

Also frustrating at times is that the NW.js export will not allow us to export for one particular platform only. It generates 5 versions, which I think is unnecessary.

For my next few projects I am planning to use Construct when web-only output is required. For the desktop platforms I am strongly considering to make the switch to Godot. It depends a bit on the upcoming news on Construct 3. I still have a couple of months before I start work on the next desktop project.

The overhead is around ~60mb with default compression settings - less if you use specialist compression tools like RAR. So if you're worried about the download size, that's a more realistic overhead. If you're worried about the size on disk, why? Modern desktop systems have hundreds of gigabytes of storage.

In my view this doesn't matter. If you're making a small, casual game, why not just put it in the browser? If you're making a larger game, 60mb isn't much, especially when modern PC games are tens of gigabytes big.

The overhead is around ~60mb with default compression settings - less if you use specialist compression tools like RAR. So if you're worried about the download size, that's a more realistic overhead. If you're worried about the size on disk, why? Modern desktop systems have hundreds of gigabytes of storage.

In my view this doesn't matter. If you're making a small, casual game, why not just put it in the browser? If you're making a larger game, 60mb isn't much, especially when modern PC games are tens of gigabytes big.

I started doing this stuff in 8-bit times, and Construct's rather large overhead for small scale desktop games never sat right with me. After playing around in Godot I do see the point of native exporters in this regard.

Mind, I see the advantages of Construct's approach. But I really think file size, the browser wrapper, and the need to rely on third-party tools to convert the project to work on desktop and mobile platforms are the main downsides when working on smaller games in Construct. I agree it doesn't matter that much when developing medium and larger sized games with a relative large amount of media assets.

I do not agree with your point about small games. I do not want to rely on a browser platform to release a game, and the additional file size overhead for mobile devices is a bit painful to swallow compared to other engines and dev environments that I have been checking out lately. I think it is just one natural caveat of Construct's export workflow - offset by other advantages, of course.

Having said that, it's kinda nice to see a similar small project in Godot be compiled to ~17mb<->24mb, and after compressing the resulting file is ~3.8mb up to ~6mb (platform dependent) versus the compressed ~36mb of the Construct version that blows up to a whopping ~120 up to 180mb depending on the platform.

Anyway...

I admit I might be making a mountain out of a molehill. More importantly, I sincerely hope for Construct 3 to have a proper timeline. That's really the main reason why I have been checking out the competition these past few months. Crossing fingers