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Helldivers 2 on-disk size 85% reduction

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Re: Helldivers 2 on-disk size 85% reduction

#61

Post by Pannoniae »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #29

My takeaway is that it seems like they did NO benchmarking of their own before choosing to do all that duplication. They only talk about performance tradeoff now that they are removing it. Wild

The good old "studios don't play their own games" strikes again :P

Games would be much better if all people making them were forced to spend a few days each month playing the game on middle-of-the-road hardware. That will quickly teach them the value of fixing stuff like this and optimising the game in general.

Re: Helldivers 2 on-disk size 85% reduction

#62

Post by hbn »

BizarroLand wrote: post #16
tetris11 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of ownership, yes absolutely. In terms of read/write speeds to physical media, the switch to an SSD has been unsung gamechanger. That being said, cartridges were fast. The move away from cartridges was a wrong turn

I hate it when you buy a physical game, insert the disk, and immediately have to download the game in order to play the game because the disk only contains a launcher and a key. Insanity of the worst kind.

Nintendo is pretty good for putting a solid 1.0 version of their games on the cartridges on release. But on the other hand, the Switch cartridges use NAND memory which means if you aren't popping them into a system to refresh the charge every once in a while, your physical cartridge might not last as long as they keep the servers online so you could download a digital purchase.

I've kinda given up on physical games at this point. I held on for a long time, but the experience is just so bad now. They use the cheapest, flimsiest, most fragile plastic in the cases. You don't get a nice instruction manual anymore. And honestly, keeping a micro SD card in your system that can hold a handful of games is more convenient than having to haul around a bunch of cartridges that can be lost.

I take solace in knowing that if I do still have a working Switch in 20 years and lose access to games I bought a long time ago, hopefully the hackers/pirates will have a method for me to play them again.

Re: Helldivers 2 on-disk size 85% reduction

#63

Post by Zambyte »

high_na_euv wrote: post #50
habbekrats wrote: post #2

it seems wild the state of games and development today... imagine 131GB out of 154GB of data was not needed....

It was needed. Just the trade off wasnt worth it.

It was wanted and intentionally selected, but it wasn't needed.

Re: Helldivers 2 on-disk size 85% reduction

#64

Post by rjzzleep »

Hendrikto wrote: post #58
_aavaa_ wrote: post #29

My takeaway is that it seems like they did NO benchmarking of their own before choosing to do all that duplication. They only talk about performance tradeoff now that they are removing it. Wild

> our worst case projections did not come to pass. These loading time projections were based on industry data - comparing the loading times between SSD and HDD users where data duplication was and was not used. In the worst cases, a 5x difference was reported between instances that used duplication and those that did not. We were being very conservative and doubled that projection again to account for unknown unknown…

On the flip side I don't remember who did it, but basically extracting textures on disk fixed all the performance issues UE5 has on some benchmarks(sorry for being vague, but I can't find the source material right now). But their assumption is in fact a sound one.

Re: Helldivers 2 on-disk size 85% reduction

#65

Post by rincebrain »

everdrive wrote: post #59

I love Helldivers 2, but from what I can tell it's a bunch of enthusiasts using a relatively broken engine to try to do cool stuff. It almost reminds me of the first pokemon game. I'll bet there's all sorts of stuff they get wrong from a strictly technical standpoint. I love the game so much I see this more as a charming quirk than I do something which really deserves criticism. The team never really expected their g…

A lot of things suddenly made sense when I learned their prior work was Magicka.

Re: Helldivers 2 on-disk size 85% reduction

#66

Post by delichon »

everdrive wrote: post #59

I love Helldivers 2, but from what I can tell it's a bunch of enthusiasts using a relatively broken engine to try to do cool stuff. It almost reminds me of the first pokemon game. I'll bet there's all sorts of stuff they get wrong from a strictly technical standpoint. I love the game so much I see this more as a charming quirk than I do something which really deserves criticism. The team never really expected their g…

Thank you for your service in keeping the galaxy safe for managed democracy.

Re: Helldivers 2 on-disk size 85% reduction

#68

Post by wtallis »

hbn wrote: post #62
BizarroLand wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate it when you buy a physical game, insert the disk, and immediately have to download the game in order to play the game because the disk only contains a launcher and a key. Insanity of the worst kind.

Nintendo is pretty good for putting a solid 1.0 version of their games on the cartridges on release. But on the other hand, the Switch cartridges use NAND memory which means if you aren't popping them into a system to refresh the charge every once in a while, your physical cartridge might not last as long as they keep the servers online so you could download a digital purchase. I've kinda given up on physical games a…

> the Switch cartridges use NAND memory which means if you aren't popping them into a system to refresh the charge every once in a while, your physical cartridge might not last as long

You've been paying attention to the wrong sources for information about NAND flash. A new Switch cartridge will have many years of reliable data retention, even just sitting on a shelf. Data retention only starts to become a concern for SSDs that have used up most of their write endurance; a Switch cartridge is mostly treated as ROM and only written to once.

Re: Helldivers 2 on-disk size 85% reduction

#69

Post by hbn »

wtallis wrote: post #68
hbn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nintendo is pretty good for putting a solid 1.0 version of their games on the cartridges on release. But on the other hand, the Switch cartridges use NAND memory which means if you aren't popping them into a system to refresh the charge every once in a while, your physical cartridge might not last as long as they keep the servers online so you could download a digital purchase. I've kinda given up on physical games a…

> the Switch cartridges use NAND memory which means if you aren't popping them into a system to refresh the charge every once in a while, your physical cartridge might not last as long You've been paying attention to the wrong sources for information about NAND flash. A new Switch cartridge will have many years of reliable data retention, even just sitting on a shelf. Data retention only starts to become a concern fo…

What's "many years"?

I've read about people's 3DS cartridges already failing just sitting on a shelf.

Re: Helldivers 2 on-disk size 85% reduction

#70

Post by brainzap »

rincebrain wrote: post #65
everdrive wrote: post #59

I love Helldivers 2, but from what I can tell it's a bunch of enthusiasts using a relatively broken engine to try to do cool stuff. It almost reminds me of the first pokemon game. I'll bet there's all sorts of stuff they get wrong from a strictly technical standpoint. I love the game so much I see this more as a charming quirk than I do something which really deserves criticism. The team never really expected their g…

A lot of things suddenly made sense when I learned their prior work was Magicka.

oh no
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