Skyrim Fits On One DVD

[Saelune]

Maybe the recent multi disc games were just lazy Devs. TES has always been big games, but never were they multi discs.

 

[SextusMaximus]

Maybe I just don't understand how 360 hardware works, but is this news? It's pretty standard for rpgs, especially, to put it on one disk because f carrying over player data.

But this isn't a normal RPG.

[HEADING=1]THIS SKYRIM![/HEADING]

Good point, good point... I say 250 gigs or else!

I just hope you don't kick me into a bottomless pit...

I wasn't actually quite thinking along those lines when I posted, but yes, now would be an adequate time to use that meme.

Not going to, though - cause I'm nice and all.

[sub]and I've ran out of pits[/sub]

 

[Mike Kayatta]

Unless you used really high bitrates to compress your music, 8 gigs is a lot of Bob Dylan, even by Bob Dylan standards. That would have to be every studio album, live album, official bootleg, nonofficial bootleg, alternate mono versions, and a couple of box sets.

Pretty decent description, actually, and I just double checked my HD: 8.2 gigs.

Now if I could only somehow magically reconfigure those gigs into some sort of pre-release copy of Skyrim. I like you Bob, but there are dragons to kill.

 

[Unesh52]

dragons that control time and swallow planets

I stopped reading the article. WHAT DID I JUST READ? HOW WAS I NOT AWARE OF SOMETHING THIS AWESOME BEING IN THIS GAME?

 

[Mosesj]

Obviously the new AI is so good they made a mage character and got him to shrink the data.

that is the best thing I ever heard about a video game XD.


honestly, I have no idea what any of this means. Beside the obvious.

 

[omicron1]

So Skyrim is taking lessons from .kkrieger (look it up!)? Excellent! I foresee a rosy future of procedural games to come!

 

[Kurai Angelo]

dragons that control time and swallow planets

I stopped reading the article. WHAT DID I JUST READ? HOW WAS I NOT AWARE OF SOMETHING THIS AWESOME BEING IN THIS GAME?

That's pretty much the entire premise for the game -.-

What rock have you been living under?

 

[castlewise]

I hope you can download higher resolution textures for the pc. 8 gig is nice if you are on an xbox, but fitting on one dvd is not necessarily a good thing for the pc.

 

[McNinja]

The HDDVDs the 360 uses can handle up to 15 gigs on a single layer, double for dual-layer. The Blu-ray discs can handle about double a bit less than a dual layered HDDVD disc, which is why ME2 was two discs on the 360, but only one disc on the PS3.

However the techniques they used to save space is pretty neat.

The X360 never came with a HD-DVD drive... It uses standard, old, boring DVDs for both games and everything else... There was talk about an add-on drive for HD-DVDs back before the format wars ended (back in 2007), but it never materialised...
So all you get is 8 gigs on a dual-layer DVD, 4,7 on a single layer...

Best Regards

I could've sworn I read somewhere that the 360 uses HDDVDs, but I guess not. That makes the data-saving techniques a bit more impressive.

 

[Camarilla]

So Skyrim is taking lessons from .kkrieger (look it up!)? Excellent! I foresee a rosy future of procedural games to come!

No, not at all. They're still using traditional texture sheet methods and standard polygonal modelling, it's just that extra effects, such as wet characters, are being done with shaders, not a second 'wet' texture.

 

[Waaghpowa]

As far as I know the 360 uses default DVD disks, with 4.3/7 GB per layer.

I hope the PC version uses as many disks as it needs. I prefer my games installed with no need for "disks in the dvd drive". (or else I'd be forced to rip the disk and put it into a virtual drive )

I predict roughly 10-12 gigs (I say predict because Steam has no system reqs up for it)

I hope you can download higher resolution textures for the pc. 8 gig is nice if you are on an xbox, but fitting on one dvd is not necessarily a good thing for the pc.

Even if it doesn't, someone will mod it for high res textures.

 

[Unesh52]

That's pretty much the entire premise for the game -.-

What rock have you been living under?

Well, I knew about the dragons themselves, but I didn't know they could go all PoP meets Galactus on your ass.

 

[El_Chubba_Chubba]

Huh, magic really has progressed in these past few years eh?

Hopefully this is a sign that we humans are really developing to one day become a super race of perfect sentient beings. Whats next?!! Gay marriage legalised for all? Free money? Sex Robots?

THE LIST ENDLESS!

 

[XT inc]

the xbox owner in me says cool, one disc, that'll do nicely.

The pessimist in me says incoming expensive, multiple dlc, hard drive rape in coming.

 

[newwiseman]

Wait one moment, people are planning to play this on their consoles? You poor poverty stricken fools. My Skyrim won't fit on one DVD; I just hope I have enough empty space on my 1TB Game HDD for all the Excessive and Gratuitous high-resolution textures and meshes.

If not I have a flimsy excuse to build a new computer with the AM3+ socket, I just hope the FX-8170 (AMD 3.9Ghz 8core) is out by then.

 

[Dalek Caan]

Marvelous. I hate games that come on more than one disc. It wouldn't make sense for Skyrim to be on more than one disc anyway. The world is so open that the only way that two discs would work if it where to make you swap it out every time you entered a building. I would imagine a bloody up-roar if that where the case.

 

[newwiseman]

The HDDVDs the 360 uses can handle up to 15 gigs on a single layer, double for dual-layer. The Blu-ray discs can handle about double a bit less than a dual layered HDDVD disc, which is why ME2 was two discs on the 360, but only one disc on the PS3.

However the techniques they used to save space is pretty neat.

The X360 never came with a HD-DVD drive... It uses standard, old, boring DVDs for both games and everything else... There was talk about an add-on drive for HD-DVDs back before the format wars ended (back in 2007), but it never materialised...
So all you get is 8 gigs on a dual-layer DVD, 4,7 on a single layer...

Best Regards

I could've sworn I read somewhere that the 360 uses HDDVDs, but I guess not. That makes the data-saving techniques a bit more impressive.

There was a USB HDDVD addon for movies but that format died pretty quick next to Blu-Ray and is now obsolete. About all the addon is good for now is cheap and powerful blue laser pointers.

Edit* MS did do some experimenting with Halo ODST last year to fit more data on to discs to see if the standard XBOX 360 didn't have a problem and they were successful. Not sure how much more they can pack on there but at least 9GB now.

 

[RandV80]

I hope the PC version uses as many disks as it needs. I prefer my games installed with no need for "disks in the dvd drive". (or else I'd be forced to rip the disk and put it into a virtual drive )

In many cases the PC version only needs one disc as quite a few developers compress the data then uncompress it during installation.

Sad to say, I think the Xbox 360 is limiting the potential content in-game and having an knock-on effect with the other formats. Same might be said for Skyrim.

Yeah this is the main worrisome point. Could be Bethesda simply used some magic to fit a game that has no business being on 1 DVD to fit on 1 DVD. This is cutting it close to console wars but as far as disk space goes the 360 is the red headed step child of the industry. As someone who will play Skyrim on PC I'd be much more impressed to here "Skyrim will be a 50GB install!" than I am hearing they got it onto 1 DVD for the 360. I'll give Bethesda the benefit of the doubt here but I still be glancing at the 360 crowd with suspicion that the game would be bigger without them.

 

[Camarilla]

Marvelous. I hate games that come on more than one disc. It wouldn't make sense for Skyrim to be on more than one disc anyway. The world is so open that the only way that two discs would work if it where to make you swap it out every time you entered a building. I would imagine a bloody up-roar if that where the case.

That would be funny though.

"Ooh, I wonder what's in this house?"
"Disc 2 pl0x"
"Damn it, this better be good *changes disc*"
"Hmmm, nothing but some books and a potato, guess I'll go back"
"Disc 1 nao"
"...."
"u mad bro?"

 

[Robert Ewing]

The main disc space consumer on games these days are texture packages. If I remember rightly, Oblivion didn't even hit the 7GB mark. Yet the developers of Skyrim have said that Skyrim is a tad smaller than Oblivions setting.

It's because Oblivion re-used textures a lot. Because there weren't any need for any textures.

Oblivion also compressed the textures to hell, making them only creep out to their full resolution when the player was really, really close. Which is why distant hills look so shit.

With improved technology, graphics cards are able to unpack textures and display them quicker, and at a higher volume. So basically, the don't have to render for as long, and they can render even more. Skyrim will undoubtedly have more textures. But compression technology, and disc technology have vastly improved. No doubt Bethesda have made new bite sized coding for the game too. To make everything a bit more streamlined.

I estimate the game will be around 12GB - 15GB on the disc. Since blu-ray can handle over 128GB of space, normal dics used for games will probably be able to hold Skyrims work load no problem. Obviously, in Oblivions day and age, it was still possible. But not cheap.