How do you optimize your game?

Well, for "optimize", I mean reducing the size of the game. For graphic assets, I know we can use TinyPNG or PNG Crush or similar tools to reduce the size. What about audio? Do you compress it to reduce the file size? Because compressing an audio file would reduce its quality as well.
Long story short, can you let me know what you do to optimize your game?

Thank you for your time!

You don't automatically lose audio quality if you commpress them. Try this site.
But I think there is another way to keep the audio size down, but it means being prepared to be a bit 'heretical', for want of a better word.

Take the title track. I know a lot of title tracks are 3 - 4 minutes long. How much of that does your player actually ever hear? Maybe a minute first time round, but after that - just the few seconds it take to load up the screen and hit 'Continue', then select the save file. Compare the difference in file size between at 3:30 minute track and an 1:30 looping track. Then the ordinary battle track. Again, there are plenty out there at 2 minutes plus. But does your average troop take that long to defeat? Maybe the first time, but after that? Again consider having a 1:30 minute looping track. Ditto for towns. Obviously things like boss battle tracks will be longer.

Depends, and maybe yes. But, if you're using an "already low quality" music like retro-like music but in ogg, or a converted version of midi which it's usually already "low quality" in term of mixing / mastering / whatever you call it (especially if you're using convenient tool like solmire), I'd say don't worry much about it. An alternative would be using MIDI instead, but it ain't work in MV.

Also Kes has a point of using short track instead of longer track. My music resources are no more than 2 mins, except maybe one or two. Having only not longer than 2 mins music track helps.

:guffaw:

I'll let you know, if I ever get my monster below 2 GB.

:dizzy:

Honestly I think it's just a question of finding alternative ways of doing things, discerning ways to do more with less like Kes suggested.

For example, I am intending to turn my "Lore Notes" on various word docs, into flavor text to expand upon the game world's lore, that the player can access by reading books.

Originally, I was going to use images of parchment, & then simply write in the flavor text. Instead, I chose to use the parchment image as a backdrop, with a text crawl that goes over it.

I did this for a couple of reasons, 1) It makes editing, altering, & spellchecking the text much easier & 2) I don't have to worry about the limitations of the parchment image versus legibility of font size.

The consequence of the decision though is a reduction in the total number of picture files for my books, because unless I want specific images in the parchment, all of my "books" can use the same blank parchment base picture. It's a little thing, but it adds up.

Personally, I optimize the game by reducing all image files to as small as possible, and removing every single image that isnt used by ME. This including removal of the iconset, windowskin, and all that default crap. Due to removing these assets, the default codebase also has to be edited, or else it tries to use those assets. Then, I can remove around 3/4 of the mv codebase, because its not used anymore. Then the js files can be minified and put into as little number of files as possible. Certain 'data' files can also be removed, as can some of the default library javascript files, like pixi-tilemap (absolutely no use unless you have game maps..).

Anyway, my point is:- it completely depends on your game. Its very unlikely that most rm users have a need for going as far as I do. But its always best to get as low as possible imo. That should mean looking at EVERYTHING that is within your projects main folder, and seeing what can be removed, reduced, or replaced.

Honestly I've been cutting down my project's size more and more. Started out at 500MB, now it's down to 230MB.

Mostly it's the RTP that is taking up space. I manually remove anything that I don't use. The biggest culprit is the RTP having two files of the same sound effect, so I deleted all of the m4a ones and left the ogg files. Make sure you're using ogg files because that's one way to reduce filesize. Audio files will always be the biggest part, so make sure you comb through what you don't use and remove it.

Also I have someone optimizing my game when it comes to loading graphics. Right now my game takes up 1GB of RAM which is quite a lot, so he's trying to program it in a way that it dumps the files once they're not needed anymore to improve memory usage.

IMO, 1GB Ram is fine. Like, really, thats nothing to worry about. Yes, having it use less might be ideal, but thats always going to be the case. I mean, on my pc I have had a default mv project's ram usage climb and climb and climb, just from sitting idle on the title scene for a long period of time. IMO, It depends on your game, and if the content can justify the ram usage, then dont worry about it. :)

With that said, if your using 1gb ram and your game doesnt have much content loaded at a time, or doesnt have parallel events, or events in general, then that should certainly be looked into.

Thank you all! :D