disk in the mail

[steuben]

I've floated this idea before. Anybody think there is enough demand for hard copies of the game? I found a couple of print-on-demand services.

A new version would have to be created for each release. But that wouldn't be much trouble.

[Caraick]

From a practicality standpoint? I think this would be a great idea.  And a great way to help get Planeshift's name around a bit more.

From a demand standpoint? There's not enough players or interest to support this.

[Eonwind]

I would be very cool to have some PS hardcopies albeit Caraick is right. How much would it cost?

[Rigwyn]

I'm having AOL CDROM flashbacks... o.O
For the love of god, no!

[Caraick]

Just put it on a floppy disk, and call it a day.   

[steuben]

if done with one of the print on demand houses about 3-4$ plus mark-up

[bilbous]

You might be better off using usb sticks, you could probably fit all the various clients and a complete development environment so people could compile their own.

[Zalya]

Just put it on a floppy disk, and call it a day.   

Don't Copy That Floppy!

But honestly, on topic, I don't see there being any demand at all for a hard copy of PS.

[tman]

Any computer modern enough to run PS is going to have enough disk space and internet bandwidth to download it.  It may take a day, but waiting for a hard copy would take even longer.

Hard copies make sense for operating systems and offline tools, but I don't see any reason to pay for a CD when any computer that can play the game can download it for free.

[Eonwind]

what you all say is mostly true, however I miss the times when you could get a boxed hard copy of a video games with pictures and a nice user manual.

[Bonifarzia]

I wonder about printed magazines for indie games or open source projects. A few years ago I heard some regional game magazine was shipped with an install DVD for one of my favorite open source games. I don't know where and when that was, though, but the licensing of said game does not have any non-commercial use clauses.

[steuben]

Having just crunch the numbers for all 5 versions. It yeilds approximately 4.8 GB. So maybe USB is the easy to go instead.

[Cairn]

USB copies of PS in the mail. That'd be a fun novelty!

[bilbous]

4.8 would leave some space. the smallest thumb drive to fit it would be 8 gigs, no? how much space would the source code take?
Still that would cost a few bucks. Can you save any space to fit it onto a dvd by compressing the files? I am guessing the binary installers are already compressed. I suppose a double sided dvd would work or blue ray.

[steuben]

years ago i brought forward the concept of an "artless"/"common art" installer. but, even back of the envelope sketches put it in the headache to maintain category.

i think a full sourcecode kit, about 1.5 gig, of that 2/3 is the cs lib files.

compressing the installer didn't yeild much savings.