Games are Starting To Get TOO Large!

I just Pre Ordered my first Preorder game, Total War Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai from Greenman Gaming - had a great 34% off Price of $19.79 and it activates on Steam... but looking at the game size - it's 32 GB!

Rage was 18 gb or so, Shogun 2 was around 16 GB.

But when some games don't take much space I don't think they are worth it. Like the new Jane's JASF - doesn't use much hd space, so I wonder if this game is worth it? Anyone have this game and is it good?

But in all, I have 250+ games and they take about 1.3 TB of hard drive space. No way I could game all of my games on a laptop.

 

I believe that is because technology hasn't found a better way to compress the graphics. It's a trade off - crap graphics for less space or better graphics for more space? At the moment, we can't have both

lol that said I bet my Skyrim folder is massive...

 

That's the beauty of Steam though! Your save files are in the cloud, so uninstall and install to your heart's content!

 

A large amount of those space hoarding files are probably voice, music, pre-rendered video (not often used now), and texture data. Not a whole lot you can do about the first three and texture data is already highly compressed when possible. The only way to drop that storage requirement is to go with procedural texture generation and who knows if that is going to be technically feasible in the short-to-medium term.

 

you mean texture right?

 

Well size of a game doesn't determine if it's good or bad, still boils down to what you're looking for... Eye candy or game play

Wonder how large world of warcraft is now with the next expansion lol



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Really?

Of course.

 

lol my sc2 folder went from like 12GB -> 16 GB.

Pure replay power.

 

My solution to this problem?
Bought a 3TB external drive i backup Steam, Origin and whatever else.
Only keep the games i actually play on my 500gb internal HDD now.

Savegames are uploaded to DropBox as a cheap cloud saving substitute.

 

I agree games are getting large, especially AAA titles. I hope hard drive manufacturers not only keep up with the demand for bigger storage, but lower prices as well. Just over a year ago, I thought a 1TB hard drive was too big, but now I'm starting to consider adding probably 2TB of storage space right now.

 

Terraria - 16MB
89 hours played. Just sayin

 

Procedural generation would be kinda cool. It's not like it's new tech either, it's been around for donkeys years in things like gameboys. When you think about it, all terrain is procedurally generated anyway, it's not like people draw these things by hand anymore.

The only downside I can see is that you'd have to get the map compile times to something reasonable.

 

96KB total file size (yes KB) - procedural textures (sorry for lack of sound wasn't using latest version of MSI Afterburner to get audio). This was from like 2006 too.

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16 MB?!?!

doesn't sound right...

 

lol the graphics wasn`t too shabby either. I reckon every single data in the game is compressed to hell and beyond?

No really, true words. 16 MB

 

It actually uses an algorithm to generate textures on the fly, well at the start. So it still uses a considerable amount of RAM, but it doesn't have to store 10GB on your HDD, only a few hundred MB in vRAM for a level.

Steam says 16MB, Windoze says ~ 30MB

Actually Steam says 16Mb ~ 2MB

 

Not all save files are in the cloud with Steam. I bought Skyrim off of Steam. When I reformatted my hard drive, I reinstalled Steam and re-downloaded Skyrim. When I started the game, it didn't pick up where I left off.

Instead, the intro cinematic played as if there were no saved games. Sure enough, I googled Skyrim saved games and they are saved locally on your hard drive.

 

Is it possible that Skyrim is saved on HDD and not cloud, because of the large size of save files for Skyrim? I have, apparently, over 5 gigs of save games of Skyrim at the moment.

 

Large file sizes wouldn't be a problem if everyone had larger band-width. Sure steam allows you to download games whenver you want/need them...but it can take a great deal of time to install a game when there are 10gb of updates and you want to play NOW!

 

The problem with procedural textures in general is that they are limited in terms of versatility. They do allow for complex designs with very minimal space, however.

 

+1, had to wait for a couple of days when shogun 2 was launched and had to download I think 16GB from steam on a 5mbps connection.

also annoying is when there's a new popular game out on steam and their servers are getting hammered the download speed from their servers becomes crap.

 

This has been my problem latley, I have been shifting around the last 16gb of free space on my 200gb HDD to make way for the next big releases. Games are getting bigger and bigger, and my HDD is slowly looking more and more inadequate.

 

There's nothing worse than a game releasing on your day off and then you're forced to download all day when the following days and beyond you have work or school + lots of arons to run.

 

And not to mention the 1.1GB Modern Combat game for the iphone. That's pretty insane if you ask me..

 

my wow folder is 22.8GB with the current 3 expansions + some addons.

 

I couldn't believe that star wars old republic was so large.

I think it's the biggest game out there ...sitting at 25GB+ and a massive patch is coming out soon, so I expect the number to rise by a few GB's.

 

not even close. if you count x-plane, you could be looking at over 70 GB. if you don't count x-plane, you're still looking at maybe 35-40GB.

of course, sw:mmo is pretty new. it could get really huge if they add enough content over time.

 

32gb.. that is 266x bigger than my first hard drive. HA!

Yes, i agree, games are getting so much larger, its unreal. Especially with digital delivery.. It took all day for me to get Dirt 3 downloaded the other day.. and took all week to download after a buying binge of Batman:AC, Borderlands, Dirt3, DuesEx etc..

 

Given that a 2 TB drive can be acquired for the same cost as a 40 GB drive from a decade ago, games (on the high end of the storage spectrum) increasing by 20x or so in size over the same time period is not a big deal.

 

Storage space isn't such a big deal, even with SSDs. The problem comes with content delivery methods. With the optical drive starting to go away, and download services on the rise, it becomes a matter of bandwidth.

I would still prefer to spend 4 hours downloading a game title than running out to the store to buy it.. but still, it ties up your home network quite a bit when you make a purchase.

I have gotten in the habit of just starting downloads at night when i buy a game or have to re-install it on steam.

 

Well, Shogun 2 FOS was integrated into my existing regular Shogun 2 game, so on release day it was just a 8.6 GB update patch to Shogun 2. Wasn't a 32gb download after all.

 

hopefully steam and other game sellers would follow what blizzard is doing by pre-selling the game so you could start downloading even a month before the game's release.

this really helps a lot in bandwidth management, specially those with a monthly cap

 

That is so true. Pre-Loading is a great way to get the content out there early and ready to go so you don't kill the server come launch day.

 

Depends on how much money you have, I guess. A 128GB SSD for $100 wouldn't do me much good for game installs on my primary gaming computer... it would get me through a few and that's it. A 2 TB hard drive for the same price would get the task done.

 

Here's my steamapps folder. I keep them all backed up on my home server and sync from my desktop to the server on a weekly basis in case any games I currently have installed on my desktop get updated (which is only a fraction of this size).

 

Oh, i can agree there. The 64-128gb SSDs are a bit on the small side for anyone who games frequently or is a power user. They are perfect for people that do office apps all day long, no doubt.

At 240-256gb, you have enough room to really keep a library of games installed without much of an issue. Its still a bit cramped.. but not bad. Thats the sweet-spot IMO, for around $300, you get a LOT of capacity for apps.