An Issue With Modern PC Games
- Thread starter HerrBobo
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Hardly, but the amount I pay for it isn't significant enough to put a dent in my electrical bill, compared to my heating/cooling costs year round.TheArcaneThinker said:
Do you tend to sleep for roughly 14 hours? If so, I admire you. However, it doesn't change the fact that it would take that much time to download 65 gig over a 10Mbit line. That's if you're on full speed all the time. And even then, a more accurate time estimation would be 14 hours and 48 minutes. Again, that's over a 10Mbit line, if we go down to 8Mbit, we get just about 18 hours and 30 minutes. Full speed. On your own. Simply downloading this.Happyninja42 said:
Now, we could keep doing this, I suppose - 4Mbit, 1Mbit (rather easy, in fact, just multiply the results by the divisor difference) but instead, let's go back to 10Mbit. But this time, we could add more people. Not everyone is by themselves, sleeping for over half a day - some people share an internet connection with others. And those of them that aren't complete dicks, would be kind enough to not take over the entire bandwith. In which case, even if they could download 65 gig for the mere 60% of a day, they wouldn't and would elect to go for much longer period.
And that, so far, is assuming you have a stable connection. It could easily be prone to dropping out and so on. And in some cases, it may render unattended downloads impossible. Prolonging the download times immensely.
And that is also, assuming there is no data cap of any sort. Some ISPs limit their subscribers to a set amount, for example, 30GB or 40GB a month, with penalties of some form, if the usage goes over that - taxing usage per GB (or MB) afterwards, limiting speed, and others.
Of course, I should point out that some people could be in more than one of these situations at once - capped usage + slow or flaky connection, for example.
These are just some of the problems that you missed.
I wish they would give us an option to not install various languages that you are not going to use, ever. and i doubt that i'll be using 4k textures anytime soon, but that doesn't bother me as much as some people since i had unlimited bandwith for at least 7 years now, what worries me more is shitty optimization, i bet well need gpus with 8gb of vram in a year or two.
It's partially a choice, but partially just a consequence of improvements in technology.
consider 1995. Now, I don't quite remember the exact details, but you would probably find most ingame objects would be using maybe a single 128x128 8 bit texture.
Jump ahead to 2006, and look at something on the extreme end (that I happen to know some rough figures for). - The 3dmark06 benchmark - Here you find procedural textures (which turn out to be quite rare in actual games), but also many 2048x2048 texture maps. Often multiple textures per object (sometimes as many as 6). - 3dmark is extreme for it's time, so we can assume it took several years (maybe even the whole decade) for actual games to catch up with it. But even so, it gives some point of reference.
Many of these textures are 32 bits.
Now, because of how textures are used, and what happens to them, they usually avoid lossy compression.
with that in mind, let's look at what's happened in those 10 or so years. (and keep in mind that 2006 is 10 years ago now too)
well... 128x128x8 is 131,072 bits
10 years later, a 2048x2048x32 texture = 134,217,728 bits
That's 1024 times as much storage space per texture, and something like 6 times as many textures per object...
So about 6000 times as much data. Per object.
Then consider that older games tended to be slightly more prone to recycling their data. (re-using the same texture in multiple places, sharing animation data. A single 3d mesh with many 'skins' to represent different characters... Etc.), while newer games, while still doing that in places, are doing it a lot less...
And perhaps you can start to see the scope of the problem.
Assuming we haven't actually progressed much compared to that figure from 10 years ago, we can see a 6000 fold increase in texture data alone. (potentially - keep in mind hard drive space is dictated by the resources for the highest detail level the game supports).
Now let's say a more conservative game from 10 years ago was only actually using 4x1024x1024 textures per object. (1/4 the size per texture, 2/3 the number of textures per object, So very roughly 1/3 the amount of data.
Now even just jumping to 4096x4096 textures, you now have 16 times the data per texture...
so... Let's say the texture data for a single game in 2006 was 3 gb, now it would be 48...
Then consider the tendency to use uncompressed audio for some reason, and several other trends, and you should be able to spot the problem...
You simply can't improve graphics without also substantially increasing the storage space involved.
Unless you do clever things with procedural textures (and few devs do this to any real extent), you will find your storage requirements going up exponentially.
The only way to counter-act this, is to create games with less detailed graphics, or be vastly more clever about how you create detail in games. But... So far the main solution seems to have just been to throw more and more textures and other high detail resources at the issue...
Crazy? Maybe. But it's simple mathematics, and the consequences of 'better' graphics...
consider 1995. Now, I don't quite remember the exact details, but you would probably find most ingame objects would be using maybe a single 128x128 8 bit texture.
Jump ahead to 2006, and look at something on the extreme end (that I happen to know some rough figures for). - The 3dmark06 benchmark - Here you find procedural textures (which turn out to be quite rare in actual games), but also many 2048x2048 texture maps. Often multiple textures per object (sometimes as many as 6). - 3dmark is extreme for it's time, so we can assume it took several years (maybe even the whole decade) for actual games to catch up with it. But even so, it gives some point of reference.
Many of these textures are 32 bits.
Now, because of how textures are used, and what happens to them, they usually avoid lossy compression.
with that in mind, let's look at what's happened in those 10 or so years. (and keep in mind that 2006 is 10 years ago now too)
well... 128x128x8 is 131,072 bits
10 years later, a 2048x2048x32 texture = 134,217,728 bits
That's 1024 times as much storage space per texture, and something like 6 times as many textures per object...
So about 6000 times as much data. Per object.
Then consider that older games tended to be slightly more prone to recycling their data. (re-using the same texture in multiple places, sharing animation data. A single 3d mesh with many 'skins' to represent different characters... Etc.), while newer games, while still doing that in places, are doing it a lot less...
And perhaps you can start to see the scope of the problem.
Assuming we haven't actually progressed much compared to that figure from 10 years ago, we can see a 6000 fold increase in texture data alone. (potentially - keep in mind hard drive space is dictated by the resources for the highest detail level the game supports).
Now let's say a more conservative game from 10 years ago was only actually using 4x1024x1024 textures per object. (1/4 the size per texture, 2/3 the number of textures per object, So very roughly 1/3 the amount of data.
Now even just jumping to 4096x4096 textures, you now have 16 times the data per texture...
so... Let's say the texture data for a single game in 2006 was 3 gb, now it would be 48...
Then consider the tendency to use uncompressed audio for some reason, and several other trends, and you should be able to spot the problem...
You simply can't improve graphics without also substantially increasing the storage space involved.
Unless you do clever things with procedural textures (and few devs do this to any real extent), you will find your storage requirements going up exponentially.
The only way to counter-act this, is to create games with less detailed graphics, or be vastly more clever about how you create detail in games. But... So far the main solution seems to have just been to throw more and more textures and other high detail resources at the issue...
Crazy? Maybe. But it's simple mathematics, and the consequences of 'better' graphics...
You're issue isn't with game developers and file sizes.HerrBobo said:
It's with the ISPs and their shitty business practices, as well as the lack of private and governmental investment into telecommunication infrastructure.
Yeah basically my thoughts as well. ISPs aren't doing their job to have infrastructure that keeps up with demand.Vigormortis said:
Thankfully in my dorm I get 70-90 mbps (both up and down), so it's not a big deal for me. But I can fully empathize with those with much worse Internet. Up until a couple years ago I had 1.5 mbps and even a 4gb steam game was painful
Well it's obviously down to increasing file sizes and scope of games. Models with higher polycounts and larger textures take up more space on a disc/disk. The difference between 1,024 textures and 2,048 isn't double, it's quadruple. Similarly, 4,096 textures are quadruple 2k (or 16x 1k).
With the increased size of game worlds, the greater "spectacle" or cutscenes (especially if they're FMV and not in-engine), Voice Overs (especially if multiple languages are all bundled at once) as well as the addition of other data upon which it's dependant (decoders, Origin/uPlay/other platform) and so on all add to the size.
We have seen a technical jump however with the latest gen in the form of both XB1 and PS4 using BluRay over DVD on the 360. The DVD meant games generally had to fit into 9GB of space with the occasional 2-disc game. BluRay however holds 25GB (or 50GB dual layer) meaning games can and will take up more space. The issue for PC then is that most games are now digital via Steam, rather than from a disc which means a lot of large downloads. An alternative where bandwidth usage limits exist would be to buy the game physically (with or without Steam activation). That way the vast majority of data doesn't need to be downloaded, only patches/mods as required. Another, if feasible is obviously to have an Internet connection with a more generous allowance, or no limits at all.
I gladly pay for my ISPs top package for 150Mb/s with no usage limits. I appreciate that not everyone is so lucky or even has much choice when it comes to service providers.
With the increased size of game worlds, the greater "spectacle" or cutscenes (especially if they're FMV and not in-engine), Voice Overs (especially if multiple languages are all bundled at once) as well as the addition of other data upon which it's dependant (decoders, Origin/uPlay/other platform) and so on all add to the size.
We have seen a technical jump however with the latest gen in the form of both XB1 and PS4 using BluRay over DVD on the 360. The DVD meant games generally had to fit into 9GB of space with the occasional 2-disc game. BluRay however holds 25GB (or 50GB dual layer) meaning games can and will take up more space. The issue for PC then is that most games are now digital via Steam, rather than from a disc which means a lot of large downloads. An alternative where bandwidth usage limits exist would be to buy the game physically (with or without Steam activation). That way the vast majority of data doesn't need to be downloaded, only patches/mods as required. Another, if feasible is obviously to have an Internet connection with a more generous allowance, or no limits at all.
I gladly pay for my ISPs top package for 150Mb/s with no usage limits. I appreciate that not everyone is so lucky or even has much choice when it comes to service providers.
I got that beat. I ran Vista 64 when I bought Wolfesnstein, I had to give it 50 gigs of my hard drive AND buy a new OS.
For a lot of games consoles are to blame, at least in part: modern consoles can't handle the loads PCs can, but they can run high-def media files like a boss, so when it's cut-scene time, just render that shit as a lossless video file. Almost every cut-scene in MGR, for instance, was a high-def video (which is why Raiden always has his default outfit and weapon in cut-scenes).
OTOH, since we of the PC master race like to ***** about getting straight console ports, an easy way devs like to shut us up is by putting uncompressed textures in our releases. Is it usually noticeable? I don't know, if you own Skyrim run the native textures then Bethesda's official hi-def pack and tell me*. So we get games like the above-mentioned Wolfenstein, which are huge because of textures (and again, rendered cut-scenes).
I couldn't tell you why COH is that big though. It has textures that, up close, are actually really crappy, not many maps, and comparatively few videos. I guess Relic just sucks at optimizing.
*Spoiler, no it isn't http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/pf4vt/comparison_landscape_screenshots_of_the_new_hd/ not even a little bit.
For a lot of games consoles are to blame, at least in part: modern consoles can't handle the loads PCs can, but they can run high-def media files like a boss, so when it's cut-scene time, just render that shit as a lossless video file. Almost every cut-scene in MGR, for instance, was a high-def video (which is why Raiden always has his default outfit and weapon in cut-scenes).
OTOH, since we of the PC master race like to ***** about getting straight console ports, an easy way devs like to shut us up is by putting uncompressed textures in our releases. Is it usually noticeable? I don't know, if you own Skyrim run the native textures then Bethesda's official hi-def pack and tell me*. So we get games like the above-mentioned Wolfenstein, which are huge because of textures (and again, rendered cut-scenes).
I couldn't tell you why COH is that big though. It has textures that, up close, are actually really crappy, not many maps, and comparatively few videos. I guess Relic just sucks at optimizing.
*Spoiler, no it isn't http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/pf4vt/comparison_landscape_screenshots_of_the_new_hd/ not even a little bit.
I think the biggest problem with PC game requirements (not just disk space) is that companies expect the customer to have the latest and greatest. Developers don't have the same incentive they once did to reign in space, memory, and graphical requirements.
Back in the PC Dark Ages AAA games like Civilization and Doom would fit on a couple of 1.44MB floppies. HDDs were measured in MB, RAM was measured in KB, and CPU clock speeds were measured in double digit MHz. Companies knew that the hardware customers had was limited and was very unlikely to increase much due to massive hardware costs. The biggest problem for most people was figuring out which SoundBlaster card you had. In this situation developers #1 priority was making sure code, graphics, and sound files were highly optimized. They had very little choice but to ensure that the game ran extremely well on modest hardware, because that is all the customer had, and that it could be 5+ years before they even thought of upgrading.
Now the situation is very different. Customer PCs could expect to double their RAM, HDD, and CPU/GPU stats every couple of years. That is why we get games like Crysis that are near impossible to run when they come out, but run just fine a year later once the average user's PC hardware catches up. This is also similar to the issue with companies launching broken games that require day 0 patches just to start. That would have been unacceptable back when patches had to be mail-ordered from the company (though it did happen, just ask iD software what happened when they released Doom v1.0). Now the expectation is that everyone has broadband, so the concept of shipping something that actually works on day 1 is quaint and archaic (anyone who bought a certain AAA Ubisoft title can attest to this).
It is perfectly normal for game sizes to grow over time to make use of new hardware, new game engines, new monitors, and new video cards. The problem is that companies have figured out that it is cheaper to skip any sort of optimization, and to just ship broken and bloated products. The customer will gladly shell out the money to buy more RAM, HDD space, or a new video card, as well as spend 5 hours downloading a patch. The sad part is that they have been proven right. People would sooner drop $100-$200 on an upgrade rather than not play the newest Call of Duty: Spunk-Garggle-Wee-Wee, now with 472 Terrabytes of textures.
Back in the PC Dark Ages AAA games like Civilization and Doom would fit on a couple of 1.44MB floppies. HDDs were measured in MB, RAM was measured in KB, and CPU clock speeds were measured in double digit MHz. Companies knew that the hardware customers had was limited and was very unlikely to increase much due to massive hardware costs. The biggest problem for most people was figuring out which SoundBlaster card you had. In this situation developers #1 priority was making sure code, graphics, and sound files were highly optimized. They had very little choice but to ensure that the game ran extremely well on modest hardware, because that is all the customer had, and that it could be 5+ years before they even thought of upgrading.
Now the situation is very different. Customer PCs could expect to double their RAM, HDD, and CPU/GPU stats every couple of years. That is why we get games like Crysis that are near impossible to run when they come out, but run just fine a year later once the average user's PC hardware catches up. This is also similar to the issue with companies launching broken games that require day 0 patches just to start. That would have been unacceptable back when patches had to be mail-ordered from the company (though it did happen, just ask iD software what happened when they released Doom v1.0). Now the expectation is that everyone has broadband, so the concept of shipping something that actually works on day 1 is quaint and archaic (anyone who bought a certain AAA Ubisoft title can attest to this).
It is perfectly normal for game sizes to grow over time to make use of new hardware, new game engines, new monitors, and new video cards. The problem is that companies have figured out that it is cheaper to skip any sort of optimization, and to just ship broken and bloated products. The customer will gladly shell out the money to buy more RAM, HDD space, or a new video card, as well as spend 5 hours downloading a patch. The sad part is that they have been proven right. People would sooner drop $100-$200 on an upgrade rather than not play the newest Call of Duty: Spunk-Garggle-Wee-Wee, now with 472 Terrabytes of textures.
I blame Steam. These days you can't buy a retail PC game that isn't tied to Steam. And that means that even with all the necessary data on the disc, there is still some mandatory patch that's often as big as the game itself.
Why are so many patches so big? Isn't it mostly textures and models and audio? Misaligned textures do happen, but surely not so many that every texture on the retail disc must be replaced by one downloaded from Steam? And if there really must be some gigantic patch, why isn't that available on DVD/Bluray so Comcast customers don't have to download that monstrosity? What is the point in selling discs in the first place if you have to download the game anyway?
Why are so many patches so big? Isn't it mostly textures and models and audio? Misaligned textures do happen, but surely not so many that every texture on the retail disc must be replaced by one downloaded from Steam? And if there really must be some gigantic patch, why isn't that available on DVD/Bluray so Comcast customers don't have to download that monstrosity? What is the point in selling discs in the first place if you have to download the game anyway?
I was interested in rebuying GTA 5, but with someone who has a download speed barely surpassinh 100KB/s (Thanks BT for passing over us during your rural internet upgrades) I'm probs not going to bother.
Still, seeing as most of that will be the HD textures, other languages and the like, it would be nice if we could choose to download the HD textures or other sounds as optional extras. Some games already do this, I know Fallout New Vegas has different language options to download and Skyrim had the HD pack as a separate download so it is doable. otherwise I'm downloading 10-20 gigs of crap that is not relevant to me nor want.
Still, seeing as most of that will be the HD textures, other languages and the like, it would be nice if we could choose to download the HD textures or other sounds as optional extras. Some games already do this, I know Fallout New Vegas has different language options to download and Skyrim had the HD pack as a separate download so it is doable. otherwise I'm downloading 10-20 gigs of crap that is not relevant to me nor want.
Do you like your games to look good?
Do you like your games to sound good?
If the answer to either of those questions is yes, you need the huge installs.
Sound, texture, and model files take up around 80% of a game install in my experience. My Skyrim exploded from 6Gb to somewhere between 20 and 50Gb, CBF checking, upon installing high definition sounds, high res textures, and improved model meshes. The same holds true for all the other games.
Pre-rendered cutscenes also add to this total, as they reduce processing requirements, and convert that into HD space pre-stored info.
The more languages you install on install, multiply your audio files size by that number. Smart games would give you the option of what to install.
So, yeah, games are getting big. A lot of people will remember the 50Mb games that were huge back in the day. 50Mb is about a quarter of the size of one texture in todays games. As we bump up detail, we need more harddrive space to store it.
Internet does need to improve for these sorts of games though. Got a 200Gb bandwidth cap. That's been excess and a half for a few years now. Stream as many online shows, music, and download all my games through Steam and barely dent it. Now, we hit our limit. 65Gb for one game is massive, and a bit too big for today. Once Internet is cheaper and more affordable it might work, but for today that's one game a month sort of business. Makes it worthwhile to go buy a physical copy in store.
Do you like your games to sound good?
If the answer to either of those questions is yes, you need the huge installs.
Sound, texture, and model files take up around 80% of a game install in my experience. My Skyrim exploded from 6Gb to somewhere between 20 and 50Gb, CBF checking, upon installing high definition sounds, high res textures, and improved model meshes. The same holds true for all the other games.
Pre-rendered cutscenes also add to this total, as they reduce processing requirements, and convert that into HD space pre-stored info.
The more languages you install on install, multiply your audio files size by that number. Smart games would give you the option of what to install.
So, yeah, games are getting big. A lot of people will remember the 50Mb games that were huge back in the day. 50Mb is about a quarter of the size of one texture in todays games. As we bump up detail, we need more harddrive space to store it.
Internet does need to improve for these sorts of games though. Got a 200Gb bandwidth cap. That's been excess and a half for a few years now. Stream as many online shows, music, and download all my games through Steam and barely dent it. Now, we hit our limit. 65Gb for one game is massive, and a bit too big for today. Once Internet is cheaper and more affordable it might work, but for today that's one game a month sort of business. Makes it worthwhile to go buy a physical copy in store.
In most cases it's because either devs not rendering cutscenes in-engine and/or not properly compressing the video files. You can generally even notice this; games with lots of pre-rendered cutscenes will tend to require more space then games that rely on in-engine. In super "special" cases it gets to absurd levels of laziness (see Titanfall, which is 48GB on Steam that pirates were able to get down to 15GB via compression)
Even with devs actually giving a shit, AAA games would still might hit 20GB especially with highly detailed assets, it certainly is an issue with shitty internet even in developed countries.
Even with devs actually giving a shit, AAA games would still might hit 20GB especially with highly detailed assets, it certainly is an issue with shitty internet even in developed countries.
The sudden explosion in game sizes is primary down to both current gen consoles now having blu-ray drives. Hence developers are no longer limited to 9.4GB space of a DVD. To be honest this is good news, because it allows for uncompressed high quality textures and sound files. Now we can get 4k high quality textures in games rather than blurry compressed images.
Also I am glad we are getting larger video files, because in the last gen almost all ports to the PC had these horrible 720p compressed videos which looked awful stretched to 1600p.
We should all embrace the larger games due to the quality improvements. If you don't have sufficient space then buy a secondary drive to install games on. It's really cheap to buy a 1TB drive, last I looked you can get one on Amazon for about $50, which is cheaper than a brand new game.
Also I am glad we are getting larger video files, because in the last gen almost all ports to the PC had these horrible 720p compressed videos which looked awful stretched to 1600p.
We should all embrace the larger games due to the quality improvements. If you don't have sufficient space then buy a secondary drive to install games on. It's really cheap to buy a 1TB drive, last I looked you can get one on Amazon for about $50, which is cheaper than a brand new game.
How is this "an issue with Modern PC games"? When the exact same issue is part of the console experience as well.
The problem is no matter what people or the industry does there are going to be upset at what is happening and try and point the finger as someone. I was reading the other day how some people are upset about how Dragon Age: Inquisition looks on the 360/PS3 for they were expecting something closer to what the XB1/PS4/PC can do. I think any attempt to try and have multiple versions of a game will meet the same response as well even if its completely optional or something their current hardware is unable to do.
For me at least there are options around my bandwidth cap until I got a new provider and Amazon was the best for that for I bought the games from them and generally at a decent price (I refuse to buy at GameStop/EBGames), but my big issue with developers anymore is that they don't seem to be able to schedule enough Quality Assurance time before the game goes gold anymore requiring mega patches which becomes a necessity because the game could be unplayable without them.
The problem is no matter what people or the industry does there are going to be upset at what is happening and try and point the finger as someone. I was reading the other day how some people are upset about how Dragon Age: Inquisition looks on the 360/PS3 for they were expecting something closer to what the XB1/PS4/PC can do. I think any attempt to try and have multiple versions of a game will meet the same response as well even if its completely optional or something their current hardware is unable to do.
For me at least there are options around my bandwidth cap until I got a new provider and Amazon was the best for that for I bought the games from them and generally at a decent price (I refuse to buy at GameStop/EBGames), but my big issue with developers anymore is that they don't seem to be able to schedule enough Quality Assurance time before the game goes gold anymore requiring mega patches which becomes a necessity because the game could be unplayable without them.