I increased the demo to 10.3MB, so prospective punters didn't have to do anything onerous like download another huge file to play the full version, as you may recall a week or so ago.

The short story is:

There's not been any appreciable change in download rate.

Sales aren't any better though although of course it's a bit early to tell with the new version as only a thousand people have downloaded it in the last week or so. I'm going to tweak it one last time then leave it alone for a bit so I can get on with Invasion of the Jellies; the last tweak will see the full version batching hiscores, using joystick controls, and the demo ending at the end of level 5 just as the boss Tringle appears but before you get to shoot it.

Cas :)

"but before you get to shoot it."

Heh... that's nasty, but it might work.

Oh and don't forget the single slot save funktion :)

I'm looking forward to the joystick support. Some people have a dual analog joystick, but I don't. I bought my Gravis Xterminator years before they finally made a dual one and I refuse to buy another joystick. Besides, I really like using a combination of thumb analog and the mouse. Will the next update support that at the same time?

Are you measuring only completed downloads or just initiated downloads or total bandwidth? A few weeks ago one ASP member made a post showing that completed downloads decreased as a percentage of initiated downloads as file size increased. I think it was something like a 10% reduction in completed downloads for each doubling in file size.

Also, is this experiment just for your own web site, or are you measuring downloads from other sites like download.com? And do those other sites display the current file size? Casual downloaders on download sites tend to be less tolerant of large downloads vs. people that visit indie sites directly.

Originally posted by Dexterity
I think it was something like a 10% reduction in completed downloads for each doubling in file size.
So if I, like, made the game 8192 times bigger 1 in 4 people would still download it?

Funky. :)

Originally posted by Lerc
So if I, like, made the game 8192 times bigger 1 in 4 people would still download it? No. More like 3 out of 4 people that decided to actually download it (despite its huge size) would eventually get bored of waiting and cancel the download before it completes. The result is not only have you wasted bandwidth (possibly a lot of it), but you don't have the slightest chance of converting these people (since their demo download never finished).

@prinsec: Why not to check out this document here:
http://www.sharewaregaming.com/article/news_template.php?title=Downloads%20and%20Conversions&src=numbers.ini
after that, the info you give will have true value :)

So far, completed downloads are holding up just fine. There is a tiny drop but it's not as significant as I feared it might be. It'll take some good analysis in a month or two to really get a feel for it but there is a small snag, being that traffic to my site gradually increases every day regardless, so it'll have to be measured against a backdrop of increasing exposure.

Download.com downloads are still going strong at many hundreds a week. We're nearly at the 10k mark from there; the stats show me that about realistically this means 5k of completed downloads.

Had a small flurry of sales as well just now. A whole 3 copies over the weekend!

Cas :)

Ah - and a quick note on the horrors of losing 10% of my sales:

Even if I do lose approximately 10% of my downloads through doubling the filesize, I'm willing to bet that the extra incentive of not having to download anything extra to play the full game is going to balance that factor somewhat. Add to this the fact I now have access to all the graphics in the full version which means I can show it off better in the nag screens etc.

But the biggest mitigating factor is the load of extra work I had to put in to keep the demo and full version separate. Twice as many builds, twice as many tests, twice as many uploads over my painfully slow ISDN, loads more bits of code to tweak and maintain. If my time was money (which it should be!) I've spent far, far more making the demo than I will ever lose from having a bigger download! Food for thought.

Cas :)