Can we get a better way to download games?

[Archform]

Some people have data caps and these games nowadays take upwards of 20% of a monthly data cap on an expensive home internet plan. Is there a way you guys can compress this data and just have a local installer unpack it? Or is it already doing something like that? Either way these high data usage games are getting out of hand.

[C²C^Guyver |NZB|]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Archform:

Well another solution would be to pick a default graphics setting to download.

Say I want to 4k with DLSS everything set to max. I don't need every graphical option so that saves data, and I can download the other data for other settings later.

There is no real feasible way to do that.

:qr:

...and even it was, talk about resources....sheesh.

[Satoru]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Archform:

Well another solution would be to pick a default graphics setting to download.

Say I want to 4k with DLSS everything set to max. I don't need every graphical option so that saves data, and I can download the other data for other settings later.

Few games do this because its not worth the hassle. You have to firstly somehow segregate your assets. Then you have to make it so your engine doesn't ahve a literal seizure when it cant find those assets. Then you have to clearly communicate somehow through teh settings UI that "oh btw did you actually download this OTHER thing in order to enable this setting?" which is going to just annoy more people when they wonder

* Why is this option greyed out
* Why do I have to download this separately

As a developer its much much better to simply have all assets included so there's no confusion, you don't get support tickets about "why doesnt this work", you don't have to create UI and engine changes to accomodate this, for what amounts to solving a problem that can easily be solved by telling users "have X hard drive space free". The 'solution' creates more problems and basically doesn't solve any real problems in the first place.

Again your bandwidth cap isn't a problem that the developer or steam needs to 'solve' for you. Steam already compresses downloads and only sends delta patches, meaning its already doing its part to reduce bandwidth sent to clients. Its not the developers responsibility to accommodate your download caps either.

[Satoru]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Overseer:

I mean maybe at some point Valve figures out a solution to serve data in a more open way, so that people can download data at different locations without much trouble. That's really the only thing i can think of. But since we are talking intellectual property here it's not that easy.
In the end it's not Valves problem that your ISP is that restrictive. And right now i only see the possibility to have a trusted friend where could load it and then transfer it via some external storage device.

Cyber cafes, Public library, etc... Those are used at your own risk.

Nearly no services set up download hubs as it will requires to run said hub to be stored somewhere for peopel to access, as well has to regular get checked by someone to ensure that not being tamper with by someone, and such, as it would be their responsibility in providing such services, as that where hassles comes into play, as this wouldn't work in certain countries, such as most of NA, parts of EU, and etc, due to people more likely to try tamper with things they shouldn't be doing, which why it would regular checks by someone at the least.

Note cybercafes have the ability to set up an authorized basically proxy server where clients can pull patches/data from. This saves bandwidth for cybercafes who otherwise would be downloading the same DOTA2/CSGO patch a few thousand times.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1152-RJKX-0332

These servers are still authorized/authenticated by steam so they're safe to use in cybercafe environments. These content servers only work within the same subnet as the content server, but again these are designed for cafe environments so that's an expected limitation.

Most older squid based proxies that were common before, no longer work now because I think all downloads on steam are now HTTPS based (though I could be wrong on this)

[Jonius7]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Quint the Alligator Snapper:

Game devs, broadly speaking, have gotten worse/lazier at data compression, compared to the really tightly-compressed stuff from like twenty or thirty years ago.

Though part of this is because they no longer feel the need to optimize for data size and performance, especially on PC, where the assumption is they can just throw whatever at your computer and leave it to you to figure out whether you have the space for it.

Yes, games in the 90s - early 2000s had to optimise their space taken up, firstly because Hard Drive capacity (was at 1GB and steadily increased), and also to fit within the capacity of CDs or DVDs (700MB or 4.7GB per disc typically).

Nowadays, TBs of Hard Drive space are cheap, and it's digital downloads, so it doesn't really make much sense for game Devs to hyper-optimise their game file size say, from 15GB to 12GB.

A lot of games, as already mentioned, are downloaded compressed already, so that 15GB game, you might only have to download 8.5GB.

That being said, something like Destiny 2 would very much benefit from a refactor and file size optimisation: it was running at 100GB+ before they vaulted half the content.
Optimise that and maybe they wouldn't have to vault as much.

[Start_Running]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Jonius7:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Quint the Alligator Snapper:

Game devs, broadly speaking, have gotten worse/lazier at data compression, compared to the really tightly-compressed stuff from like twenty or thirty years ago.

Though part of this is because they no longer feel the need to optimize for data size and performance, especially on PC, where the assumption is they can just throw whatever at your computer and leave it to you to figure out whether you have the space for it.

Yes, games in the 90s - early 2000s had to optimise their space taken up, firstly because Hard Drive capacity (was at 1GB and steadily increased), and also to fit within the capacity of a CD or DVD (700MB or 4.7GB typically).

They weren't even that optimized for space. I've done a few tests and the thing is those games compress quite a bit, which I can easily get their size down by half. Where as with more modern games its difficult to even get 20% compression, I've tried recently seem to top out at 30%. Which says there's already a fair ammount of compression in those files as opposed to 20-30 years ago.
There's also the fact that many games in the 90's cheated a bit by leaving a fair amount of data on their disc. You do remember back then right? having to keep a disc in or swap discs during play?


Yeah. that was another and rather common trick back in the day.

Nowadays, TBs of Hard Drive space are cheap, and it's digital downloads, so it doesn't really make much sense for game Devs to hyper-optimise their game file size say, from 15GB to 12GB.

Well that and remember optimization is about weight costs . YOu can optimize for one factor at the cost of others, in fact this is basically a known problem with optimization. You optimize for a particular set of limitations, or set of hardware and once you're not in those parameters things start breaking...

You see this alot in old games where they were optimized to squeeze every last cycle they could from the cpu. The result.? Well there's a reason emulators like DOSbox have a function to slow down/limit the CPU cycles the game uses. In short the games run waaaay too fast to be playable, or the speed causes collisions in processes.

The same can happen with RAM, and it happens a lot where games were specifically designed around certain brands of Hardware. AAny game for example thatt was optimized around any 3DFX tech have historically been a ♥♥♥♥♥ to get running smoothly.

A lot of games, as already mentioned, are downloaded compressed already, so that 15GB game, you might only have to download 8.5GB.

That being said, something like Destiny 2 would very much benefit from a refactor and file size optimisation: it was running at 100GB+ before they vaulted half the content.
Optimise that and maybe they wouldn't have to vault as much.

Easier said than done. and again. WHat trade off would you consider acceptable.. FIdelity, greater RAM usage, Hogging more CPU&GPU cycles?

[Tito Shivan]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Jonius7:

Yes, games in the 90s - early 2000s had to optimise their space taken up, firstly because Hard Drive capacity (was at 1GB and steadily increased), and also to fit within the capacity of a CD or DVD (700MB or 4.7GB typically).

Except multi-disc installations were far from an exception during the 90s.
Bladur's Gate was 5 discs long, to name an example.

Optimization due to storage-unit limitations is a lie as we've had multi-disk installations since the first days of the floppy disk. Even Doom installer took five floppy disks.

No one has ever optimized to fit on a floppy, CD or DVD because you could always fit another one.

[Archform]

Well I guess il be abusing my mobile plan with multi TB data usage per month. Eventually they are gonna throttle me hard.

[crunchyfrog]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Tito Shivan:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Jonius7:

Yes, games in the 90s - early 2000s had to optimise their space taken up, firstly because Hard Drive capacity (was at 1GB and steadily increased), and also to fit within the capacity of a CD or DVD (700MB or 4.7GB typically).

Except multi-disc installations were far from an exception during the 90s.
Bladur's Gate was 5 discs long, to name an example.

Optimization due to storage-unit limitations is a lie as we've had multi-disk installations since the first days of the floppy disk. Even Doom installer took five floppy disks.

No one has ever optimized to fit on a floppy, CD or DVD because you could always fit another one.

Exactly right.

There are examples from the very early days where chips were costly and slow to produce (look to the likes of Commodire PETs, for example), so there was SOME point back then.

But largely, it's never a concern when the medium being turned out on is so cheap.

This is why there's a number of Nintendo 64 games that were miraculously compressed - like Resident Evil 2 - because that WAS a consideration for them. Selling two cartridges would have been something the market couldn't bear.

But as far as PC goes, nah, you're spot on. There's never been a medium that has stymied this.

[Jonius7]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Tito Shivan:

Optimization due to storage-unit limitations is a lie as we've had multi-disk installations since the first days of the floppy disk. Even Doom installer took five floppy disks.

No one has ever optimized to fit on a floppy, CD or DVD because you could always fit another one.

That was my bad, I did not necessarily mean just one disc for games.

As for never optimising, there is the story of how Myst almost couldn't run on a CD-ROM.

This article is quite interesting on the topic of the thread:
https://www.pcgamer.com/au/how-game-sizes-got-so-huge-and-why-theyll-get-even-bigger/

Even in the case of 5-11 disc games, sure, that is still an ordeal to install, maybe even looked upon positively as "worth the effort" through a nostalgic lens. But it wasn't going to last and so the next disc medium came along.