I've been pondering why Eternal X seems so much larger than Mk V was, when not a lot new has been added (though much has been greatly changed). One thing I suspect is that I've begun to use PNG instead of JPEG for my textures. Since textures are full of gradients and lots of details and are generally more photo-like than illustration-like, JPEG seems like it would get better compression ratios and bring the file size back down again. (The only other file size culprit would be the music, but that couldn't add more than a few dozen MB).
But Gregory tells me that JPEG loads much slower than PNG. However, I'm not sure how much of an issue this is, because loading times are *still* pretty long with PNG. (Also, Gregory - I tried out Aorta and converted my landscapes to DDS, since most lag I encounter is when loading landscapes, but the DDS files wouldn't display in-game. And yes I changed the MML to point to files ending in .dds instead of .jpg. Any ideas?). But then, the download package is already pretty big even with JPEG, too.
So, my question to you, the esteemed Marathoning public, is: what matters more to you? Having a less huge (but still big) download, or having less sluggish (but still slow) load times?
