trefoilknot on 11/4/2018 at 01:59
Perhaps a better metric would be cumulative size of all .mis files released in a year. Overall FM file size would be heavily contaminated by things like high rez textures, and custom objects/sounds/videos etc... but I'd imagine the sum of .mis file sizes would give a pretty accurate proxy for the total amount of playable content released in a given year. If I find some free time, I'll run the numbers myself (at the very least, to check my own intuition about the validity of such a metric).
Iceblade on 11/4/2018 at 03:24
That would provide an approximation of level size depending on how blue rooms and solid spaces between areas is counted byte-wise; and the impact of scripting on byte-size. Generally missions don't have large spaces between play areas, so this approximation should be fairly valid for most mission years with substantial numbers of missions. Of course, this would entail a far higher degree of time and effort due to having to install each FM and record its mission size with name and release year. A big stumbling block, however, will be updates to missions since these updates could alter the size appreciably from the original mission file at release. Campaigns with duplicated or upgraded missions within them would potentially interfere with the yearly total as well.
If you are interested, you should try checking Thief 2 for 2014, 2015, and 2016. There are only so many missions released and the campaigns were generally made of all new missions. These three years would also provide for zone for comparisons since the number of missions is so similar for those three years. Ideally, you would want to see a similar magnitude for those three years with 2015 (being 24 releases) have a greater file size total since each additional mission is supposed to contribute a lot to the total.
Then repeat for Thief 1 FMs from 1999 and 2000 (years with very similar numbers of new missions), where mission sizes were still limited by the engine and experience of the first authors. Of course, for the initial comparisons of recent vs early, we are assuming file structures (and thus file sizes) are similar between Thief 1 and New Dark Thief 2 for comparable play area/complexity. More direct comparisons can be made with a final dataset and making more apple to apple comparisons between Thief 2 numbers.
If mission size is so much larger over the past 5 years, then the recent years should give similar or greater totals than twice as many missions during the first two years. You should definitely find the average mission size for each of those missions for a more direct comparison, though. Your final values per year should be a combination of average mission size and mission size total.
Final Note: While Thief 1/G/2/ND are built in the same engine and will more than likely have very similar mission structures (and equivalent sizes per play area/complexity); TDS and TDM would not be usable as there is no simple and reliable way to adjust their file size to a dromed standard. At best, you could assume that the average playable area and scripting complexity for a mission released in TDS or TDM for a particular year would be similar to an average Thief 1/2 mission of that year. And thus you could use the average T1/2 mission size for those TDS/TDM missions.
Renault on 11/4/2018 at 05:59
Quote Posted by trefoilknot
I'd imagine the sum of .mis file sizes would give a pretty accurate proxy for the total amount of playable content released in a given year.
I'd be interested to know how you would even begin to determine that.
downwinder on 11/4/2018 at 07:14
i think common sense is more missions will start to come out due to new wave of people who joined board/making missions
i just hope it stays t1/g/2 for new dark
Yandros on 11/4/2018 at 12:06
There should be a bump in .mis file size for NewDark if for no other reason due to the 32bit vs 16bit lightmaps. However I don't know off hand if this is very significant.
trefoilknot on 11/4/2018 at 12:09
Quote Posted by Brethren
I'd be interested to know how you would even begin to determine that.
Probably by hand---download all of them, explore each zip file and record the size of the .mis. Perhaps it could be automated, but I wouldn't know how. It'd probably be a solid weekend of labor.
Iceblade on 11/4/2018 at 12:48
Quote Posted by Yandros
There should be a bump in .mis file size for NewDark if for no other reason due to the 32bit vs 16bit lightmaps. However I don't know off hand if this is very significant.
Couldn't you use the two 64-cubed contests to do a comparison? I guess that would depend on the complexity of the new dark levels in comparison to levels from the first contest. Of course you could still just open a variety of mission files and resave them with new dark dromed both before and reprocessing the mission file.
Also, automating this is the way to go. This automation could be done with two new functions in the darkloader code plus a bit of functionality addition/changes to the front end and maybe another function or two for data handling and output.
trefoilknot on 11/4/2018 at 13:53
A number of older missions have been updated for new dark; with a handful of those, it should be feasible to tease out the "fixed" and "variable" components of the file size bump (as long as they missions weren't dramatically altered in other ways).
But in any case, even if the metric were only viable for comparing among the post NewDark days, it still seems it'd be a useful one to track, but I'd need to learn more about its properties to be sure. Eg, does .mis size scale up linearly in mission scale/complexity? If not, the approach could be a disaster.
Renault on 11/4/2018 at 15:46
I'm getting lost now. What exactly is it that you guys are trying to track? Ricebug's original project is just to monitor the raw number of mission releases. Are you now trying to determine something like cumulative playable area in an FM, like square footage? I guess I don't see what summing up .mis file sizes really accomplishes.
trefoilknot on 11/4/2018 at 17:27
Well, it's an open question whether it would be a valid metric. Maybe it wouldn't measure much of anything. My intuition is that it would provide a decent approximation of the amount of playable content released per year. The previous discussion centered around the problems associated with just counting up N (eg campaigns, huge vs small missions, etc...); this approach could alleviate those concerns (while potentially introducing new ones). I'm not suggesting replacing the N measure, just supplementing it with something to capture a different dimension.
That said, there's lots of stuff I don't fully understand about the file structures. Do you have some reason to believe .mis file sizes wouldn't be at all informative in this respect?
