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> I'm not sure if this is common or not. > Side note: video game assets are often enormous in size because developers refuse to implement even very basic compr

> I'm not sure if this is common or not. > Side note: video game assets are often enormous in size because developers refuse to implement even very basic compression Be generous; you even said in your previous sentence you don't know if it's common or not, so how do you know developers refuse to implement basic compression? If it's that easy, I'm sure there are plenty of AAA game studios (including mine) that will hire you to just implement basic compression. There are enormous tradeoffs to make that are platform dependent; read speeds from external media are _incredibly_ slow but from internal media may be fast. Some assets are stored on disk to mask loading/decompression. Lastly, assets are just enormous these days. A single 4k texture is just shy of 70MB before compression and a modern game is going to be made of a large number of these (likely hundreds of them), and many games are shipping with HDR - these are multiples of the size. That's becore you get to audio, animation, 3d models, or anything else. My current projects source assets are roughly 300Gb, and our on disk size is 3GB or so. My last project was 5Tb of source assets and 60GB on disk. Of course we're using compression.

bscphil 4y ago
> Be generous; you even said in your previous sentence you don't know if it's common or not, so how do you know developers refuse to implement basic compression? If it's that easy, I'm sure there are plenty of AAA game studios (including mine) that will hire you to just implement basic compression. The thing I said I didn't know whether it was common was keeping assets in compressed form in memory. I admit I don't know much of the specifics of how game rendering works. What I do know something about is the extremely poor compression applied to many video games in their on-disk form. I'm willing to grant that your studio may indeed be an exception to this, but the general principle isn't possible to deny. Just by enabling lossless Windows file compression on a game folder, you can frequently see the size of a game on disk drop by 50% or more, as I discuss in my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042164 Surely a lossless format designed specifically for encoding assets would be even more effective and fast than generic Windows file compression!
jcpham2 4y ago
I was trying to explain to my son the other day when he was complaining about the Xbox without the drive slot. I asked him how big of a download Fortnite or call of duty were - I think he said 60 gigs and then I told him blu ray tops out at 50gb. He understands why the Xbox doesn’t have the cd slot anymore.
- listenallyall 4y ago
  Complex games used to be delivered on multiple floppy disks, later multiple CDs. I don't see the capacity of a single Blu-ray disc being a limiting factor.
  - tracker1 4y ago
    I don't recall having to swap discs on PS1/2/3/4 at all.
    - willis936 4y ago
      FFVII shipped on 3 discs. Most of it was cutscenes and you better believe they were compressed to hell.
    - maccard 4y ago
      Offhand, many final fantasy games shipped on multiple discs, as did armoured core. Gran turismo and oddworld. The last of us part 2 and GTA 5 both needed multiple discs on PS4.
    - tomku 4y ago
      PS1 had dozens of games that shipped on multiple discs, PS2 had somewhat fewer but the ones that I remember off the top of my head are Xenosaga 2 and 3.
    - zerocrates 4y ago
      In addition to other examples given, Metal Gear Solid 1 memorably has a disc-swap. Games heavy on prerendered video frequently were multi-disc: Final Fantasy 7 is three discs, 8 is four, 9 is four... Xenogears is multiple discs, as is Chrono Cross. Lots of JRPGs, though not exclusively: Riven was on 5 (!) discs, again a case of a lot of prerendered content. It was pretty rare on PS2 with DVDs, and as far as I know totally eliminated on PS3 with Blu-ray (Metal Gear Solid 4 has/had an "install swap" where it would copy over from the disc only a chapter at a time, but all coming from one disc). Then the concept made a comeback by the tail end of the PS4's life, with several games having "play" and "install" discs, though these aren't quite the same experience, as you just use the install/data disc once then put it away. Fittingly one of these PS4 multi-disc games is the remake of Final Fantasy 7 (one that covers only a relatively small portion of the original, to boot).

bscphil 4y ago

> Be generous; you even said in your previous sentence you don't know if it's common or not, so how do you know developers refuse to implement basic compression? If it's that easy, I'm sure there are plenty of AAA game studios (including mine) that will hire you to just implement basic compression. The thing I said I didn't know whether it was common was keeping assets in compressed form in memory. I admit I don't know much of the specifics of how game rendering works. What I do know something about is the extremely poor compression applied to many video games in their on-disk form. I'm willing to grant that your studio may indeed be an exception to this, but the general principle isn't possible to deny. Just by enabling lossless Windows file compression on a game folder, you can frequently see the size of a game on disk drop by 50% or more, as I discuss in my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042164 Surely a lossless format designed specifically for encoding assets would be even more effective and fast than generic Windows file compression!

jcpham2 4y ago

I was trying to explain to my son the other day when he was complaining about the Xbox without the drive slot. I asked him how big of a download Fortnite or call of duty were - I think he said 60 gigs and then I told him blu ray tops out at 50gb. He understands why the Xbox doesn’t have the cd slot anymore.

listenallyall 4y ago
Complex games used to be delivered on multiple floppy disks, later multiple CDs. I don't see the capacity of a single Blu-ray disc being a limiting factor.
- tracker1 4y ago
  I don't recall having to swap discs on PS1/2/3/4 at all.
  - willis936 4y ago
    FFVII shipped on 3 discs. Most of it was cutscenes and you better believe they were compressed to hell.
  - maccard 4y ago
    Offhand, many final fantasy games shipped on multiple discs, as did armoured core. Gran turismo and oddworld. The last of us part 2 and GTA 5 both needed multiple discs on PS4.
  - tomku 4y ago
    PS1 had dozens of games that shipped on multiple discs, PS2 had somewhat fewer but the ones that I remember off the top of my head are Xenosaga 2 and 3.
  - zerocrates 4y ago
    In addition to other examples given, Metal Gear Solid 1 memorably has a disc-swap. Games heavy on prerendered video frequently were multi-disc: Final Fantasy 7 is three discs, 8 is four, 9 is four... Xenogears is multiple discs, as is Chrono Cross. Lots of JRPGs, though not exclusively: Riven was on 5 (!) discs, again a case of a lot of prerendered content. It was pretty rare on PS2 with DVDs, and as far as I know totally eliminated on PS3 with Blu-ray (Metal Gear Solid 4 has/had an "install swap" where it would copy over from the disc only a chapter at a time, but all coming from one disc). Then the concept made a comeback by the tail end of the PS4's life, with several games having "play" and "install" discs, though these aren't quite the same experience, as you just use the install/data disc once then put it away. Fittingly one of these PS4 multi-disc games is the remake of Final Fantasy 7 (one that covers only a relatively small portion of the original, to boot).