Expect 100 GB Install Size, 6 GB Patches For Star Citizen

[Aggieknight]

And what is the problem? Storage space is cheap, and the people who want to play this game will probably have the internet speeds required for it.

Depending on whether you are a tower or notebook, gamer, then install size is a problem. I've got the largest disk drive available in the most powerful MBP, and this thing sounds like it will start at 10% of my space and grow. That's pretty insane, I'm not sure if all my installed games across two OS's consume that much space.

Hopefully this is all smoke and no fire as both the file and patch sizes will be problematic for many people.

 

[SweetShark]

Jesus Christ and to think I said the new Hitman will eat my disk space....
I really need to update my PC...

 

[RicoADF]

I'm on that deal you're talking about, Optus are good, but iinet have the best customer service.

The deal was $90/month for unlimited calls, net, Fetch and a tablet. Big win for me, even got them to add the 100mb/s package for free, just paying $10 for unlimited mobile calls (because my grandparents are the ones that use the home phone and the rest of us use mobiles). I hear good things about iinet but they don't offer cable and after being spoilt with 100mb cable I can't drop back to ADSL speeds

 

[Recusant]

And what is the problem? Storage space is cheap, and the people who want to play this game will probably have the internet speeds required for it.

Speed is not the problem. Capacity is the problem.

 

[RedDeadFred]

That would take me a day to download... It's doable, and I don't have to worry about a cap, but why is it so big? I get that the game has amazing graphics, but isn't a fairly sizable portion of the game just space?

If the game turns out to be amazing (I'm doubtful) I will certainly pick it up, but it really sucks for the people who have to deal with download limits. It just seems like a bit of a middle finger to what could very well be a large portion of their backers. But hey, they've already got their money so that doesn't really matter.

Maybe I'm just too pessimistic, but I tend to assume the worst about pretty much every game developer.

 

[Xyebane]

This isn't too surprising. I'm sure everything will be in high-res textures and the polygon counts of each individual ship are insane. They keep adding more and more ships as well.

I will be interested in seeing how it all turns out. I guess we will see the results of when a developer is given a ton of money and doesn't have a publisher telling them what they have to do to make sure that the produce has mass appeal.

Personally I don't think I will be able to play it for a while after it comes out, I definitely need to upgrade my PC first. But at this rate who knows when it will be out. Maybe in 2 years 100GB won't seem like very much anymore. 30-40GB games are become much more common.

 

[Cowabungaa]

As that's double my monthly data-cap; no Star Citizen for me. Shame, damn shame.

 

[Neobone]

And any interest I might've had just went down the drain. Seriously, what the fuck are they doing that takes that much space?!

Games like EVE, X3 and/or WoW give entire worlds or galaxies to play with and they're only in the 15-30GB range.

What do you think how much storage a game asset like this ship required?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxEWc6IvtQc

And this is just 1 ship!

 

[lacktheknack]

I like how people are surprised by this. Remember all those stories about how each individual ship had millions of polygons? And remember how they passed stretch goals almost daily at one point to add more ships? This was inevitable.

It's well over double my family's internet cap. Oh dears. Looks like I'll be passing on it for a while. Ah well, tech will eventually pass well beyond this where we won't think twice about a download like that. It always does.

 

[Nimcha]

This thread mostly serves to make me realize there are still people with data-caps. I feel for you, bros

 

[squid5580]

100GB? Man, it sure must suck to be in the USA where you consider 25Mb/s to be broadband. I'm on 200Mb/s and I'm considered to be low tier. Getting Gigabit next year.

I'm Canadian rockin a 5Mb/s connection. Oh sure I could get a faster one like 7-8Mb/s which will charge me for usage over 35Gb. But hey they got plans if you actually use the internet for more than facebook

 

[P-89 Scorpion]

Wow you poor American's. When I bought a new HDD for my steam collection (575GB) I just uninstalled everything and re-downloading it took less than a day.

 

[TilMorrow]

Well as long as the game has an install manager/launcher so that the game's installation download can be suspended and continue at will then that seems okay but it is still a crazy size. It'd just take days for some people to download but as long as the medium it's received through doesn't require you to restart the download every time its cut off or stopped then it won't be anymore than a boring wait.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

This thread mostly serves to make me realize there are still people with data-caps. I feel for you, bros

I also have a cap, 2 TB cap but a cap none the less... Never gone above 450 GB though...

 

[Bindal]

100GB with 6GB Patches? Well, there goes the very last piece of interest I potentially could have had in that game.

 

[Me55enger]

Well Chris Robert's middle name is ambition. And whilst the cynics fold their arms in their stalwart hope it'll fail, he and the rest of his team are actually getting on with it.

100gb might be a little hard to explain to the billpayers,. mind.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Eh. I'm not surprised, given the absurd level of detail the ships in that game have.

It doesn't bother me. 100 gb is a lot, and that would tax my 1gb main drive a little, but... Whatever.
Besides which I have unlimited internet.

Sure 100 gigs is a big download, but I'm sure I've had worse. the MMO I sometimes play routinely seems to shove 3+ gb patches my way too. So...

This kind of stuff is why I try and avoid capped internet plans like the plague though.
It's not even that I would necessarily ever hit my cap, just the stress of knowing I have one, and whether or not I might exceed it at some point that puts me off...

 

[alj]

Thats just incase ! I don't know how it can possibly be that big. If its crazy high res textures and stuff thats going to contribute to it but still 100GB is crazy.

Not a problem for my internet , in the civilised world we don't all have low limits mainly a US thing i think ( a few UK ones have it but not many).

Usually get between 15 -19 MB/s on steam so it should be fine

 

[Sewa_Yunga]

Fun fact: They recently introduced a new system to simulate the first two (out of five) damage states on ships without changing the meshes, so they could cut down on the memory cost.

RSI Comm Link [https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14568-Design-The-New-Damage-System]
Two other areas we wanted to improve on were the time it takes our artist to create the numerous damage states for each part of the ship, and the hefty memory cost these meshes come with, which could prove to be a problem as we scale up the game. The reason the damage states are so labour intensive is that each ship has over ten main parts, and each of these requires five damage states to represent the different levels of damage, then each of these requires up to five simplified meshes that we use when they?re further from the camera to save performance. This equates to over 200 meshes per ship!

 

[RedDeadFred]

Well Chris Robert's middle name is ambition. And whilst the cynics fold their arms in their stalwart hope it'll fail, he and the rest of his team are actually getting on with it.

100gb might be a little hard to explain to the billpayers,. mind.

Being cynical doesn't mean you want the game to fail. It just means people are being realistic in their idea of what a game developer is. They're a business and they want to make money. Making huge promises is nothing new with game devs and it doesn't usually end well. Just because people aren't jumping on the hype train, it doesn't mean they want the game to fail. I'd love for the game to succeed. If it delivers on most of what it promises, it'll probably be one of my favourite games of all time. I just don't expect that to happen.

Call me pessimistic if you want, but I've never had buyer's remorse when it comes to any video game I've purchased. Not saying you have, but it does seem to happen quite a bit in this industry.