Slightly offtopic, is there a way to setup a virtual file system that caches most used files and removes least used of a project in internal SSD from an external HDD?
Solving the 100GB Game Download
51–60 of 108 posts
Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download
#52> Via hooks directly into Steam, making setup easy. But this doesn't hook into the game itself, causing issues with VAC like the AMD AntiLag+ recently did?
It sounds like it’s just a file system, backed by a local cache and then the network. They can probably monitor file access to figure out what they should cache locally without actually touching any game files.
Yeah. The probabilistic access patterns for games are going to be comically repeatables for prefetching.
Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download
#53Slightly offtopic, is there a way to setup a virtual file system that caches most used files and removes least used of a project in internal SSD from an external HDD?
i recommend primocache on Windows
Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download
#54Slightly offtopic, is there a way to setup a virtual file system that caches most used files and removes least used of a project in internal SSD from an external HDD?
Ooh, I'd love that. Or native steam functionality for the same. I never install games onto my SSD for that reason, so I'm at the mercy of whatever windows naturally does in that space. (Possibly nothing, as I don't remember manually configuring a SSD cache file on this computer, and last I checked that was required).
Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download
#55We've recently made a similar thing for databases: https://github.com/ClickHouse/web-tables-demo
It downloads the database on demand and optionally caches on the client side: https://presentations.clickhouse.com/meetup73/new_features/#...
But it is not a new idea; for example, it was already implemented for SQLite a long time ago.
Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obviously I don't know your setup, but that sounds harder than "move the computer next to the router, plug it in."
I was thinking that but I didn’t want to have to get the ladders out.
That does sound like a scenario where digging through converters is easier.
Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right. 2.5 hours initial wait to then play a game normally is... fine. It's a non issue for most folks:) I noticed Battle.net from BLizzard tracks couple of thresholds in the progress bar - when the game will be fully downloaded, but also when the game is playable. For many updates, those two thresholds are very close together; but occasionally, the "playable" is half the distance or less of "completed", which makes…
PS5 has a similar system to let you start playing (properly designed) games before downloading is complete. I know iOS has something like that, though o don’t think I’ve ever seen it used. And I’d expect Xbox does as well, but I’m not in that ecosystem so I don’t know as much about their features.
That sounds like a lot of engineering effort for something with minimal payoff. Carefully balancing early vs late offsets for the one time payoff of playing while the game is still downloading. So many potential failure states vs just saying, "Wait another hour and then start"
Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download
#58This seems an incredible technical accomplishment. My one question is, is it supposed to be solving for disk space constraints or connection speed constraints? I'm guessing both, but the former is pretty cheaply solved these days with a new drive (or by finally admitting you only need to have 2-3 games installed at once and probably aren't playing a dozen games in parallel), and I'm not sure it seems to be solving th…
Right. 2.5 hours initial wait to then play a game normally is... fine. It's a non issue for most folks:) I noticed Battle.net from BLizzard tracks couple of thresholds in the progress bar - when the game will be fully downloaded, but also when the game is playable. For many updates, those two thresholds are very close together; but occasionally, the "playable" is half the distance or less of "completed", which makes…
I'm in the USA with 3mbps average download speed. Fine for streaming, but when I used to play games and my friends wanted to switch to a large game (Sea of Theft, say, or Rat Slaughter 2, whatever they're called) I'd set it to download overnight. I don't consider this a problem.
Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download
#59"To approximate average connections, demos were ran with a 120 Mbps download speed limit."
Whoah. I know 3Mbps isn't blazing fast anymore, but it works fine for streaming video and downloading a 100Gb game from Steam overnight, back when I used to play games.
Via seems like a cool idea, but the energy cost is high if I'm playing Vermintide 2 with only 10Gb available- that's a lot of continuous downloading, depending on how long I play.
Not wanting to bother with downloading so much data contributed to to my preference for small games like Valheim and Deep Rock Galactic, and ultimately to being done with videogames.
Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download
#60Slightly offtopic, is there a way to setup a virtual file system that caches most used files and removes least used of a project in internal SSD from an external HDD?
On Linux you have bcache and flashcache, but they work on the block layer and not file layer.