Casefile: ZODIAC online publishing options

[scobie]

Ok,  I have had some  feedback on the latest draft of my ZODIAC weird 70s spy game in the design forum and now I am looking at my publishing options.   I want to distribute online and I am not really fussed about getting money for it (apart from the whole 'people don't respect free stuff' argument) but the thing is full of art which makes hosting a problem.

The PDFs total at more than 20 Meg (130 pages) and I am experimenting with ways of making the filesize smaller but again, degrading the art too much defeats part of the purpose of doing the game (drawing weird 70s crap).

Anyway,  I had thought of RPGnow but have heard grumbling around the place about that option.   Anyone have advice?

Scobie

[Lxndr]

Clinton recently posted about a place called "lulu.com" which is where I'm currently planning to publish the Fastlane pdf (thanks entirely to his post).  The neat thing about pdf publishing, though, is that multiple options don't have to be exclusive.  RPGNow and Lulu, I believe, will both be getting my business.  It'll be interesting to compare and contrast the two models.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Scobie,

Have you considered breaking out some of the art into separate downloads? Such that someone could buy the game, which isn't too huge, and then be authorized to access an area of the website with the biggie pics on it?

Best,
Ron

[Clay]

I would recommend talking to Clinton about one of the forge sub-domains.  First, it helps to support the forge, and second it gives you a pretty reliable hosting situation.  If you need any software to support some of the thigns suggested, contact me off the forum and I may be able to set you up.  I have a lot of toys in my electronic toybox.

[Matt Snyder]

20 MB at only 130 pages? Man alive! You can definitely trim that down by a huge margin.

I've created several 70-100 page PDFs with art, and a few at 120+. NONE of them have exceeded 5 MB.

What software are you using to create the PDF?

What resolution have you saved images at? What kind of images are you using? Are all the pics full color? How many are there?

Are there other visuals, like marginalia, color screens (esp. w/ graded fills) or other imagery / visual treatment?

Let me know here or by private message. I'm sure you can trim that 20 MB file size a great deal.

[scobie]

Thanks for the comments.   Zodiac has about 80 or 90 images.  They were all full colour but I changed them to greyscale to reduce their size (in image ready).   I then used indesign2 to layout the book with a dpi of 72 which looks ok on screen and doesn't print too chunky (I think).  There is margin art, but there are two pieces used on every alternate page so (I hope) indesign just saves them as two versions, not one for every page.

I have got the first section of the book, if anyone wants to look, at:

http://www.staff.vu.edu.au/scobie/zodiac_a.pdf

I will follow up some of the hosting options suggested.  As I said, I am not really into this as a business but more as a fun project.

[scobie]

OK, I know this was a while ago, but I now have the ZODIAC game up with webspace I have scavenged from work.  It is at http://www.astrolabus.com and I'm glad it is finally out there.

[Clay]

scobie,

1) Glad to hear that you have the game out.

2) Expect a visit from the don't-resurrect-ancient-threads fairy.  I'm not that fairy.  But I do personally appreciate it when somebody who wants to reference something older like this makes a new post, and includes a link to their old post in the message.

[Luke]

Here, I'll be Ron for a minute since he's away:

Don't resurrect old posts. Don't. Do. It. Please start a new post with a link to the old post, as Clay suggested.

-L