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Solving the 100GB Game Download

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Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#61

Post by cookie_monsta »

pcchristie wrote: post #17
thomastjeffery wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absurd and real at the same time. My apartment contract forces me to pay $99/mo. for roughly 120mbit, while most residences on my block can get 1gbit symmetric from Google Fiber for $70/mo.

I assume the parent comment is making the opposite point? I'm in Australia and I can get 90-100mbps which is very fast in this country - I'd say the average house gets 50-60mbps (guessing, haven't looked it up).

> Melbourne here. We just switched to the 5G modem and reliably get 300 down, 20 up.

The nanobots I can live with

Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#62

Post by Skullfurious »

fbdab103 wrote: post #57
MBCook wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

To you it might sound like a lot of effort but for a user who is on his 1 day off for the week not having to wait twice the amount of time to log in to play his game probably means more than you or I could ever imagine. Blizzard used to be about making everyone have an excellent experience and some of the legacy features they've had for years seriously still do show what kind of commitments to that fact they have made in the past.

I think you're also over-estimating how hard it is to flag something as not-necessary for the majority of users. Especially when downloading a fresh copy of a new expansion. If you know most players aren't going to be in the final boss lair for 3 weeks but still ship the game with that content it's not unimaginable to just allow the game to download those files in the background.

Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#63

Post by sombragris »

I like it, but it does not "solve" the big downloads issue. You know what would solve the 100 GB game download problem? Reducing that to 30 or 40 GB, not inventing an (admittedly clever and nice) man in the middle streaming things to you in byte-sized chunks.

Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#64

Post by dangus »

sombragris wrote: post #63

I like it, but it does not "solve" the big downloads issue. You know what would solve the 100 GB game download problem? Reducing that to 30 or 40 GB, not inventing an (admittedly clever and nice) man in the middle streaming things to you in byte-sized chunks.

That ain’t happening, and I don’t want it to happen, personally.

All that data represents visual fidelity. I don’t want the of type games that boast amazing graphics and endless content to get smaller and more crude.

I think this product is actually a big dead end because all you need is fast Internet to make this whole thing obsolete.

Storage is also stupidly cheap even for blazing fast SSDs, for the price of a typical AAA title you can get a 2TB pcie nvme tlc SSD.

I also see cable companies like Xfinity offering speeds above 1Gbps over plain copper. They’re selling speeds that consumer WiFi can’t even handle. Even the laziest monopoly cable companies have rolled out new docsis versions at minimal cost that deliver really impressive speeds on their ancient copper networks.

If you saturate WiFi 6 at 600mbps a 100GB download is only going to take around 30 minutes if not less.

Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#65

Post by hakfoo »

dangus wrote: post #64
sombragris wrote: post #63

I like it, but it does not "solve" the big downloads issue. You know what would solve the 100 GB game download problem? Reducing that to 30 or 40 GB, not inventing an (admittedly clever and nice) man in the middle streaming things to you in byte-sized chunks.

That ain’t happening, and I don’t want it to happen, personally. All that data represents visual fidelity. I don’t want the of type games that boast amazing graphics and endless content to get smaller and more crude. I think this product is actually a big dead end because all you need is fast Internet to make this whole thing obsolete. Storage is also stupidly cheap even for blazing fast SSDs, for the price of a typi…

That assumes that the data is being used responsibly.

Leftover assets that weren't properly cleaned before shipping the build?

Uncompressed media that could be? (I recall that even well into the 2000s games often came with basically uncompressed CD audio tracks)

Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#66

Post by [deleted] »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #25

This, and the apparent need for 4TB+ SSDs for Steam libraries is at odds with how I play games. I tend to bounce between 2 or 3 AAA games at most before I "finish" and delete them. Maybe I will come back some day, but I certainly don't switch every day to warrant keeping dozens at once or insta installing them, and if its an intricate mod setup or something I just archive it.

[deleted]

Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#67

Post by oldbbsnickname »

If this isn't it, the way this has been done before: the SnapVolumes/AppVolumes & Softricity method.

0. Write a custom storage driver that presents an read-only overlay volume where the app should be.

1. If the OS doesn't support it, redirect conflicting writes, deletes, and moves to another volume or cache locally.

2. Cache the app gradually on-demand from the network.

3. Profit!

Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#68

Post by Guvante »

hakfoo wrote: post #65
dangus wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That ain’t happening, and I don’t want it to happen, personally. All that data represents visual fidelity. I don’t want the of type games that boast amazing graphics and endless content to get smaller and more crude. I think this product is actually a big dead end because all you need is fast Internet to make this whole thing obsolete. Storage is also stupidly cheap even for blazing fast SSDs, for the price of a typi…

That assumes that the data is being used responsibly. Leftover assets that weren't properly cleaned before shipping the build? Uncompressed media that could be? (I recall that even well into the 2000s games often came with basically uncompressed CD audio tracks)

To be fair audio compression wasn't exactly great in early 2000 and if the CD was required to play you could just not install the audio.

Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#69

Post by dangus »

hakfoo wrote: post #65
dangus wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That ain’t happening, and I don’t want it to happen, personally. All that data represents visual fidelity. I don’t want the of type games that boast amazing graphics and endless content to get smaller and more crude. I think this product is actually a big dead end because all you need is fast Internet to make this whole thing obsolete. Storage is also stupidly cheap even for blazing fast SSDs, for the price of a typi…

That assumes that the data is being used responsibly. Leftover assets that weren't properly cleaned before shipping the build? Uncompressed media that could be? (I recall that even well into the 2000s games often came with basically uncompressed CD audio tracks)

It just doesn’t bother me. If a game wasted something like 500GB of storage space that means it’s temporarily borrowing $20 worth of SSD storage.

(I think the uncompressed audio was usually because of CPU decoding restraints, and the fact that a typical PlayStation game had such a crazy amount of “free” storage to work with on a disc compared to the amount of data needed to create the game and its world - might as well toss in voice acting and FMV video)

Re: Solving the 100GB Game Download

#70

Post by fbdab103 »

Skullfurious wrote: post #62
fbdab103 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

To you it might sound like a lot of effort but for a user who is on his 1 day off for the week not having to wait twice the amount of time to log in to play his game probably means more than you or I could ever imagine. Blizzard used to be about making everyone have an excellent experience and some of the legacy features they've had for years seriously still do show what kind of commitments to that fact they have mad…

Gaming industry is notoriously crunch time. Feels a hard ask to spend any resources on partially downloaded gameplay vs the mountain of bugs which likely exist in the non-quantum state of download-or-not.
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