Thought id say nothing but i dont particulary care, so Ill say it anyway, from what ive seen (I cant be assed downloading the download, im on 56k dial up so sue me) I got a few people in Fan PS mirc channel to dcc me some of the textures and texture files from the MB download to confirm a sudden suspicion i got teh moment i saw the size of the download, From what i saw was (while all the chaff was trimmed off the textures which was good) is none of the ones i looked at had been compressed to 256 colors, which was an idea (not exactly brain science) i persoanly put forward to the devs in the dev channel a few months ago (along with the chaff removing) which reduces all of teh png textures by some large degrees, which at that time was a niggle i had with the old AB demo, mainly textures and there file sizes.
i was told by the programmers that the textures are made into 32bit textures anyway by teh engine (which is odd seeing as engines such as teh unreal engine quake3 and many others and so forth all have options to have either 16 or 32 bit (of which there is little noticable differance, you do get some banding and color wash on large gradiated textures) being used ingame, albeit according to the PS programmers i talked to \"there all 32bit in the renderer anyway\"), however seeing as this idea was (im still ony assuming here rather negativly i guess) not taken to heart or forgotten, or deemed second rate, as such you now have a large download on your hands, granted not all of that size is due to textures, although the old AB was made up of a fair chunk of Textures, and light map thingies (which i remeber where being worked on to reduce, did that ever get resolved?), even so Im assuming with increased content that much of the current demos download size being greatly contributed to due to textures...
Im not angry, no, just saddened at the apparent lack of acceptance or interest (my compression idea got a \"good idea, well keep it in mind\" responce) of ideas put forward time and again by certain current members and ex-members that would greatly enrich and/or improve what im sure will eventualy be a great game.
Ill leave you to your cumbersome downloads, I have things to do and art work to draw. Flame away if you have to my asbestos clad rear end is ready.