Oh, they’ll do compression alright, they’ll ship every asset in a dozen resolutions with different lossy compression algos so they don’t need to spend dev time actually handling model and texture downscaling properly. And games will still run like crap because reasons.
Comment on This new 40TB hard drive from Seagate is just the beginning—50TB is coming fast!
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 1 month ago
Incoming 1Tb videogames. Compression? Who the fuck needs compression.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Games can’t really compress their assets much.
Stuff like textures generally use a lossless bitmap format. The compression artefacts you get with lossy formats, while unnoticable to the human eye, can cause much more visible rendering artefacts once the game engine goes to calculate how light should interact with the material.
That’s not to say devs couldn’t be more efficient, but it does explain why games don’t really compress that well.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
When I say “compress” I mean downscale. I’m suggesting they could have dozens of copies of each texture and model in a host of different resolutions (number of polygons, pixels for textures, etc), instead of handling that in the code. I’m not exactly sure how they currently do low vs medium vs high settings, just suggesting that they could solve that using a ton more data if they essentially had no limitations in terms of customer storage space.
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
They do.
And that’s completely normal. Every modern game has multiple versions of the same asset at various detail levels, all of which are used. When you choose between “low, medium, high” that doesn’t mean there’s a giant pile of assets that go un-used. The game will use them all, rendering a different one depending on how close to it you are. The settings often just change how far away the game will render at the highest quality, before it starts to drop down to the lower LODs (level of detail).
That’s why the games aren’t much smaller on console. They’re not including all the unnecessary assets for different graphics settings from PC. They are all part of how modern game work.
“Handling that in the code” would still involve storing it all somewhere after “generation”. Same way shaders are better generated in advance, lest you get a stuttery mess. Not to mention that such code does not exist. Human artists produce better results.
Finally automating this is what Unreals nanite system promises to do, but it has ran into snags.
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 1 month ago
When I say “compress” I mean downscale. I’m suggesting they could have dozens of copies of each texture and model in a host of different resolutions.
Yeah, that’s generally the best way to do it for optimal performance. Games sometimes have an adjustable option to control this in game, LoD (level of detail).
the_q@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Optimizations are relics of the past!
SynonymousStoat@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I don’t know about that. These are spinning disks so they aren’t exactly going to be fast when compared to solid state drives. Then again, I wouldn’t exactly put it past some of the AAA game devs out there.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 1 month ago
Yeah, I’d expect the bloat to hit when there is a boost in SSD sizes. Right now I think the biggest consumer-grade SSDs are 8TB and are still rather expensive.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
10 of these in a raid6?that’s 4x speed and 400tb.
Trail@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Of it’s raid6 it’s 320tb or so.
FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Black ops 6 just demanded another 45 GB for an update on my PS5, when the game is already 200 GB. AAA devs are making me look more into small indie games that don’t eat the whole hard drive to spend my money on, great job folks.
AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 1 month ago
That is absolutely egregious. 200GB game with a 45GB update? You’d be lucky to see me installing a game that’s around 20-30GB max anymore because I consider that to be the most acceptable amount of bloat for a game anymore.
FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Agreed, it’s getting out of control. The most annoying thing is I’m not interested in PvP, just zombies, so probably 80% of that is all just bloat on my hard drive.
DeceasedPassenger@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I arrived at that point a few years ago. You’re in for a world of discovery. As an fps fan myself I highly recommend Ultrakill. There’s a demo so you don’t have to commit.
FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Thanks I’ll check it out. The gf and I like to shoot zombies but were it not part of PS Plus I surely wouldn’t give them $70. I’ve been playing a lot of Balatro recently, poker roguelike from a sole developer with simple graphics but very fun special powers
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Do you have time to talk about our Lord and Savior FACTORIO? Here; just have a quick taste.
FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I haven’t played much since my curved monitor got broken but between Stellaris and Rimworld I don’t know if there’s enough time in a day for another build queue. I’ll check it out at some point and fall into the rabbit hole I’m sure.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Ok, I’m sorry, but… HOW??? How is it possibly two hundred fucking gigabytes??? What the fuck is taking up so much space???
FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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More than triple the next largest game. All I want is the zombies mode and space to install other games, I could probably cull 80% of the COD suite and be just fine, but I have to carry the whole bag to reach in 🤷♂️
Pieisawesome@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
It’s mostly textures, video, and audio.
The game code is probably less than 10gb
Change languages in your game, I am willing to bet it doesn’t download a language pack for whatever language you choose.
You need multiple textures for different screens, resolutions, etc. to provide the best looking results. Multiply by the number of unique environments…
Same with all of the video cutscenes in games, they play pre-rendered videos for cutscenes.
DJDarren@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
The game is 50GB, the other 200GB is just “fuck you” space.
lud@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Did it use 45 GB extra or were there just 45 GB worth of changes?
FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Requires an additional 45 clear to accommodate the update file and is currently sitting at 196.5. Deleting Hitman and queuing it up after the update is simple enough technically for someone like me with a wired high speed connection and no data cap, but still a pain in the ass and way too big for a single game.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Clean up assets? Gamers have enough disk an time is money!