Is it true that this game requires 36GB disk space?

[Brain]

I was pondering to install the game, as I paid for it and I should play it at least a little, but according to the library page it demands 36GB? Is that true?

[Metacritical]

yes, plus if you use mods that space will obviously increase. buy a bigger hard drive or install fewer concurrent games if space is such a premium

[ShutEye_DK]

Originally posted by Brain:

I was pondering to install the game, as I paid for it and I should play it at least a little, but according to the library page it demands 36GB? Is that true?

36GB? It's a small game, then. Get some more TB if you're in trouble :)

Originally posted by Metacritical:

yes, plus if you use mods that space will obviously increase. buy a bigger hard drive or install fewer concurrent games if space is such a premium

Yep. Focus on a few games at a time. No need to have them all installed at all time.

[mongolteiko]

Not to mention save game files.
Edit: I would have a dedicated drive [if a gigabyte drive] for this game [if it's going to be a main game to play]. Most drives come in terabytes now anyway.

[Zapp]

The harsh reality is that anything less than 1 TB of hard disk space is hopelessly small nowadays.

And yes, I know companies still try to sell you laptops with 256 or 512 GB SSDs. Don't fall for it, it's a trap.

[Tsubame ⭐]

Yes, but 36 GB these days is small change.

Do note this quantity can significantly increase if you subscribe to lots of mods.

[Zapp]

I just checked my user folder. Apparently I'm using 124 GB, and that's on top of the game installation folder which is 38 GB.

(Much of that is probably/hopefully old saves I probably should/could delete. But still. Worrying about 36 GB is what you used to do ten years back... and that's coming from someone that remembers the time when a 80 MB with an M hard drive was considered huuuge :)

[X-C0brA-X]

Originally posted by Zapp:

I just checked my user folder. Apparently I'm using 124 GB, and that's on top of the game installation folder which is 38 GB.

(Much of that is probably/hopefully old saves I probably should/could delete. But still. Worrying about 36 GB is what you used to do ten years back... and that's coming from someone that remembers the time when a 80 MB with an M hard drive was considered huuuge :)

I remember my first computer in the 80's and it had a massive 5 MB HDD that you would never fill up lol. Today my system has 5 internal SSD's that are 4 TB each and a 32 TB external SSD and I do not have all of my games installed because I would need more space.

That 5 MB HDD was enough room for Windows 3.11 and all of my games and I do not remember even filling up half of it. The shocking part was that 5 MB HDD in the 80's cost me around $1,500.00 USD on sale and today a 4 TB SSD only cost me $75.00 USD.

[General Tso]

Originally posted by X-C0brA-X:

Originally posted by Zapp:

I just checked my user folder. Apparently I'm using 124 GB, and that's on top of the game installation folder which is 38 GB.

(Much of that is probably/hopefully old saves I probably should/could delete. But still. Worrying about 36 GB is what you used to do ten years back... and that's coming from someone that remembers the time when a 80 MB with an M hard drive was considered huuuge :)

I remember my first computer in the 80's and it had a massive 5 MB HDD that you would never fill up lol. Today my system has 5 internal SSD's that are 4 TB each and a 32 TB external SSD and I do not have all of my games installed because I would need more space.

That 5 MB HDD was enough room for Windows 3.11 and all of my games and I do not remember even filling up half of it. The shocking part was that 5 MB HDD in the 80's cost me around $1,500.00 USD on sale and today a 4 TB SSD only cost me $75.00 USD.

I can beat that. My first computer was a Sinclair ZX80. I bought it somewhere around 1980. It had 1KB of memory and used a cassette tape for storage. But I paid for the 16KB memory expansion. So I was a real power user. ;)

My next two computers where Commodore Amigas. They used a different operating system than Windows. But I had the same general experience with hard drives as you did.

[RadiKyle]

Something to watch out for, no matter where you install the game it still throws a bunch of its data onto the C:drive (the "userdata" folder). And that's where all the saves, mods, caches, etc go. So if you're running a lean/older system with a smaller boot drive for the OS and some apps, it can fill up quickly (like my 2012-ish 75GB).

The game doesn't give an option to move that userdata folder, but it can be done at the OS level by creating a junction link that points it to another drive instead.

[mmmcheesywaffles]

That can only ever be an estimate based upon the average size of the players Storage media.

What causes a file to be one size or another on different media is the way the operating systems and BIOS communicate with those files. This is why many storage devices have large caches too..

[Brain]

Now that the space requirements are settled - what is the space used for? I mean, this is not a AAA game with hours of HD video clips, or is it. It looks better than TTD, granted, but _that much_ better? Is the game and the saves not optimized?

Looking at my harddrives, there are very few games that have more than 30GB installation space: XCom2, Kingdom Come Deliverance, It Takes Two, Anno 1800, Anno 2205, The Sims 4 (plus umpteen expansions), Space Engineers with lots of mods and Baldurs Gate 3.

[Metacritical]

Originally posted by Brain:

Now that the space requirements are settled - what is the space used for? I mean, this is not a AAA game with hours of HD video clips, or is it. It looks better than TTD, granted, but _that much_ better? Is the game and the saves not optimized?

Looking at my harddrives, there are very few games that have more than 30GB installation space: XCom2, Kingdom Come Deliverance, It Takes Two, Anno 1800, Anno 2205, The Sims 4 (plus umpteen expansions), Space Engineers with lots of mods and Baldurs Gate 3.

it's funny that you think size equals less optimised.

[SeniLiX]

Originally posted by Brain:

Now that the space requirements are settled - what is the space used for? I mean, this is not a AAA game with hours of HD video clips, or is it. It looks better than TTD, granted, but _that much_ better? Is the game and the saves not optimized?

Looking at my harddrives, there are very few games that have more than 30GB installation space: XCom2, Kingdom Come Deliverance, It Takes Two, Anno 1800, Anno 2205, The Sims 4 (plus umpteen expansions), Space Engineers with lots of mods and Baldurs Gate 3.

In general, you can't judge the quality (or if it is/isn't a AAA) of a game, from the size requirements.
A lot of what makes the size of the game is several factors which include but is not limited to video files, sound files and textures.
Even if a game consists of a lot of different files from these types, sometimes the game devs get around by heavily compressing these files and reusing assets whenever possible.
However, this will often lead to a lower quality and/or higher load times within the game.

A higher quality is of course desired, but not always possible.
Let's say, a game requires a lot of different textures to be loaded, you run the risk of demanding too much RAM to effectively run the game on weaker systems.

One way of circumventing this issue, would be to have two different files with the same texture in two different resolutions. This would result in being able to use the file you want, depending on the game settings.
This of course, takes up more harddrive space, but some games use this way to make the game playable on more systems.

A more modern approach would be to use a single texture and upscale/downscale it to the desired resolution, depending on the settings used.
This way uses overall less HD space, but its more demanding on the system because it needs processing power to do this.

In short, you need to consider more than just the harddrive requirements to determine the quality of a piece of software.

[Brain]

I understand, that is why I ask. The original Transport Fever required 12GB installation space, and nearly tripling that - I do not see which features of the game justify that.

[Tsubame ⭐]

The game has quite a few more features than TpF 1, and assets in general in this game are of higher quality, which does result in more space used.

Space is cheap these days. 36 GB is little when 1 TB is pretty much standard nowadays.