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Helldivers 2 devs slash install size from 154GB to 23GB

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Re: Helldivers 2 devs slash install size from 154GB to 23GB

#31

Post by deng »

snet0 wrote: post #16

> With their latest data measurements specific to the game, the developers have confirmed the small number of players (11% last week) using mechanical hard drives will witness mission load times increase by only a few seconds in worst cases. Additionally, the post reads, “the majority of the loading time in Helldivers 2 is due to level-generation rather than asset loading. This level generation happens in parallel wi…

11% still play HD2 with a spinning drive? I would've never guessed that. There's probably some vicious circle thing going on: because the install size is so big, people need to install it on their secondary, spinning drive...

Re: Helldivers 2 devs slash install size from 154GB to 23GB

#33

Post by [deleted] »

alias_neo wrote: post #12
rincebrain wrote: post #7

I've been really curious precisely what changed, and what sort of optimization might have been involved here. Because offhand, I know you could do things like cute optimizations of redundant data to minimize seek time on optical media, but with HDDs, you get no promises about layout to optimize around... The only thing I can think of is if it was literally something as inane as checking the "store deduplicated by has…

I'm not entirely clear what you're trying to say, but, my understanding is that they simply put lots of copies of files in lots of places like games have done for a long time, in the hopes it would lower seek times on HDDs for those players who use them. They realised, after a lot of players asking, that it wasn't necessary, and probably had less of an impact than they thought. They removed the duplicates, and drasti…

[deleted]

Re: Helldivers 2 devs slash install size from 154GB to 23GB

#34

Post by jsheard »

Ekaros wrote: post #21
jsheard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a business perspective the disk footprint is only a high cost if it results in fewer sales, which I doubt it does to any significant degree. It is wasteful, but can see why optimization efforts would get focused elsewhere.

Also the cost is often offloaded to the "greedy" Valve... So there is less pressure to optimize their own CDN use.

Yeah, I don't think any of the stores charge developers in proportion to how much bandwidth they use. If that changed then the priorities could shift pretty quickly.

Publishers do have to care somewhat on the Switch since Nintendo does charge them more for higher capacity physical carts, but a lot of the time they just sidestep that by only putting part (or none) of the game on the cart and requiring the player to download the rest.

Re: Helldivers 2 devs slash install size from 154GB to 23GB

#35

Post by bombcar »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #20
snet0 wrote: post #16

> With their latest data measurements specific to the game, the developers have confirmed the small number of players (11% last week) using mechanical hard drives will witness mission load times increase by only a few seconds in worst cases. Additionally, the post reads, “the majority of the loading time in Helldivers 2 is due to level-generation rather than asset loading. This level generation happens in parallel wi…

I don't find it surprising at all. A ton of developers do optimizations based on vibes and very rarely check if they're actually getting a real benefit from it.

This is the moral behind "premature optimization is the root of all evil" - you could say preconceived just as easily.

Re: Helldivers 2 devs slash install size from 154GB to 23GB

#36

Post by bombcar »

jsheard wrote: post #19
snet0 wrote: post #16

> With their latest data measurements specific to the game, the developers have confirmed the small number of players (11% last week) using mechanical hard drives will witness mission load times increase by only a few seconds in worst cases. Additionally, the post reads, “the majority of the loading time in Helldivers 2 is due to level-generation rather than asset loading. This level generation happens in parallel wi…

From a business perspective the disk footprint is only a high cost if it results in fewer sales, which I doubt it does to any significant degree. It is wasteful, but can see why optimization efforts would get focused elsewhere.

Given how many Steam games are bought but never even installed, it would seem not terribly worth optimizing for.

On phone, I bet you see some more effort.

Re: Helldivers 2 devs slash install size from 154GB to 23GB

#37

Post by onli »

nerdjon wrote: post #26
snet0 wrote: post #16

> With their latest data measurements specific to the game, the developers have confirmed the small number of players (11% last week) using mechanical hard drives will witness mission load times increase by only a few seconds in worst cases. Additionally, the post reads, “the majority of the loading time in Helldivers 2 is due to level-generation rather than asset loading. This level generation happens in parallel wi…

High cost to who though. We see the same thing when it comes to RAM and CPU usage, the developer is not the one paying for the hardware and many gamers have shown that they will spend money on hardware to play a game they want. Sure they may loose some sales but I have never seen many numbers on how much it really impacted sales. Also on the disk side, I can't say I have ever looked at how much space is required for…

That already happened :) Starfield claimed to not support HDDs and really ran bad with them. And I think I saw SSDs as requirement for a few other games now, in the requirement listings on steam.

Re: Helldivers 2 devs slash install size from 154GB to 23GB

#39

Post by swiftcoder »

eska wrote: post #23
rincebrain wrote: post #7

I've been really curious precisely what changed, and what sort of optimization might have been involved here. Because offhand, I know you could do things like cute optimizations of redundant data to minimize seek time on optical media, but with HDDs, you get no promises about layout to optimize around... The only thing I can think of is if it was literally something as inane as checking the "store deduplicated by has…

HDDs also have a spinning medium and a read head , so the optimization is similar to optical media like CDs. Let’s say you have UI textures that you always need, common player models and textures, the battle music, but world geometry and monsters change per stage. Create an archive file (pak, wad, …) for each stage, duplicating UI, player and battle music assets into each archive. This makes it so that you fully util…

> HDDs also have a spinning medium and a read head , so the optimization is similar to optical media like CDs.

HDDs also have to real with fragmentation, I wonder what the odds that you get to write 150 GBs (and then regular updates in the 30GB range) without breaking it into fragments...

Re: Helldivers 2 devs slash install size from 154GB to 23GB

#40

Post by amlib »

deng wrote: post #31
snet0 wrote: post #16

> With their latest data measurements specific to the game, the developers have confirmed the small number of players (11% last week) using mechanical hard drives will witness mission load times increase by only a few seconds in worst cases. Additionally, the post reads, “the majority of the loading time in Helldivers 2 is due to level-generation rather than asset loading. This level generation happens in parallel wi…

11% still play HD2 with a spinning drive? I would've never guessed that. There's probably some vicious circle thing going on: because the install size is so big, people need to install it on their secondary, spinning drive...

Even though I have two SSDs in my main machine I still use a hard drive as an overflow for games that I judge are not SSD worthy.

Because it's a recent 20TB HDD the read speeds approach 250MB/s and I've also specifically partitioned it at the beginning of the disk just for games so that it can sustain full transfer speeds without files falling into the slower tracks, the rest of the disk is then partitioned for media files that won't care much for the speed loss. It's honestly fine for the vast majority of games.

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