huge save game file size?

[Jumboman]

So, question. why are the saved game files for this game in the range of 20 to 300(!) MB? Shouldn't it be in the range of minecraft file sizes? I've done the math and it seems like they store EVERY voxel, rather than the ones you have seen and/or interacted with. Does anyone know if TFP has mentioned this?

[CatPerson]

I've often wondered about the mega save sizes as well, although it only gets huge if you're explored a ton of territory. By huge I mean I had one save folder that was 1.5GB. Most of that was the Region files, however (247 -!- of them total) - the Player "map" file was only about 66MB.

*Feels* rather inefficient vs. other voxel Unity games I've played but I have no clue re: that sort of thing so...

[Totally Not A Gamer Girl]

Originally posted by CatPerson:

I've often wondered about the mega save sizes as well, although it only gets huge if you're explored a ton of territory. By huge I mean I had one save folder that was 1.5GB. Most of that was the Region files, however (247 -!- of them total) - the Player "map" file was only about 66MB.

*Feels* rather inefficient vs. other voxel Unity games I've played but I have no clue re: that sort of thing so...

As a voxel engine developer it's actually quite impressive considering the region files store not only the voxels but the individual block damage and various other properties like mesh data, etc. Which simply isn't stored by most voxel based games including my own. That's ALLOT of data compared to minecraft for example which only stores block id's and tile data (Like chests and furnaces) for the most part in the region file. The map file is actually very similar to an image file and the more you explore the bigger it should get.

And to the OP.
It definitely doesn't store EVERY voxel only the ones you explore.

[Jumboman]

Originally posted by l-smith:

Originally posted by CatPerson:

I've often wondered about the mega save sizes as well, although it only gets huge if you're explored a ton of territory. By huge I mean I had one save folder that was 1.5GB. Most of that was the Region files, however (247 -!- of them total) - the Player "map" file was only about 66MB.

*Feels* rather inefficient vs. other voxel Unity games I've played but I have no clue re: that sort of thing so...

As a voxel engine developer it's actually quite impressive considering the region files store not only the voxels but the individual block damage and various other properties like mesh data, etc. Which simply isn't stored by most voxel based games including my own. That's ALLOT of data compared to minecraft for example which only stores block id's and tile data (Like chests and furnaces) for the most part in the region file. The map file is actually very similar to an image file and the more you explore the bigger it should get.

And to the OP.
It definitely doesn't store EVERY voxel only the ones you explore.

Well I just did some math off the top of my head, since you're a developer I'd be interested what you think of it. I assumed 4 bytes per block, (so 2^2), 128 blocks high (2^6) and an explored area of 1000 by 1000 (so 2^10 by 2^10). that's 2^28 bytes in total, which is 250 MB. Is my estimate of 4 bytes per block that low, or am I forgetting something else?

[Totally Not A Gamer Girl]

Originally posted by Jumboman:

Originally posted by l-smith:

As a voxel engine developer it's actually quite impressive considering the region files store not only the voxels but the individual block damage and various other properties like mesh data, etc. Which simply isn't stored by most voxel based games including my own. That's ALLOT of data compared to minecraft for example which only stores block id's and tile data (Like chests and furnaces) for the most part in the region file. The map file is actually very similar to an image file and the more you explore the bigger it should get.

And to the OP.
It definitely doesn't store EVERY voxel only the ones you explore.

Well I just did some math off the top of my head, since you're a developer I'd be interested what you think of it. I assumed 4 bytes per block, (so 2^2), 128 blocks high (2^6) and an explored area of 1000 by 1000 (so 2^10 by 2^10). that's 2^28 bytes in total, which is 250 MB. Is my estimate of 4 bytes per block that low, or am I forgetting something else?

I am not a developer of this game so I cannot say exactly how much data is stored exactly per chunk.

Now running a small test on my own engine and a lightweight chunk save (Just the file headers and block_ID for each block in a chunk) assuming 1 block = 2 bytes +1 byte per block for segment padding(added to simulate an extra layer of data per block). A region of 256*256*256 or one region of 256 cubic meters = 16777216 voxels.

Which should yield 16777216 bytes @ 1 byte per block or 16.77721 mb.
So @ 3 bytes per block should be 50331648 bytes or 50.331648 mb per region.
Apon running a region save I got a save folder for one whole region. I found the folder to be (35,024,896 bytes) or 35.024896 mb compressed.
(50,331,648 bytes) or 50.331648 mb uncompressed.

Now that is a little over a (1/4km)^3 which is actually quite a large loaded region to be saving or even playing. So based on that a 1024*1024*256 block area would take up 16 times as much data (1024/256 = 4 : 4*4 = 16) and that would be 50.331648mb*16 = 805.306368mb. Hmm that's quite allot of data. You can half that again if you want to assume a world height comparison of 128 blocks but that still brings us to 402.653184mb per 1024*1024*128 area.

I have to say that I'm impressed with what they are doing with the resources they have. I haven't even gotten to adding the damage indexes to the chunk saves in my engine and it costs allot of hard disk space already.

Hope that helps you with your maths on the matter.