3 ms·

Titanfall shipped uncompressed audio on purpose to cut out audio decompression CPU usage. You can disagree with the decision, but it wasn't an accident or negli

Titanfall shipped uncompressed audio on purpose to cut out audio decompression CPU usage. You can disagree with the decision, but it wasn't an accident or negligence.

haswell 4y ago
I realize they’re trying to optimize for a wide base, but I have plenty of spare cores to decompress audio, and SSD space is limited. For me, the net result is that Titanfall was one of the first games to go when I needed space. Low hanging fruit. Even if it was deliberate, I have to question the logic and wonder how much usage they enabled vs. uninstalls from file size over time.
- kristianp 4y ago
  You've already bought it, so the game studio got their money, despite having a "bloated" install. So the incentives aren't quite there to reduce the size. I was thinking about buying Mass Effect yesterday, the recent update, but it requires 150GB and I don't have a Windows partition that big! (I'm Dual booting Linux) So I think money is being lost in people who aren't often gamers and haven't bought big disks for gaming.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    Do you have a big enough Linux partition? Mass Effect Legendary Edition runs pretty great via Proton.
  - haswell 4y ago
    > You've already bought it, so the game studio got their money, despite having a "bloated" install. So the incentives aren't quite there to reduce the size. They may have some of my money, but not much (discount!), and they’re not getting money for DLCs, arguably the reason the base game was so cheap, and I’m not in a rush to buy more stuff that I can’t fit on my PC. Prior to the era of the initial game purchase being just the entry point I’d have agreed with you, but many modern games have monetization strategies that make uninstallation a problem. And if they have a strong enough incentive to care about CPU usage, they’re clearly putting effort into optimizing for some audience.
terafo 4y ago
It could've been handled as DLC that downloads with a game by default and can be uninstalled/disabled, if we are talking low-effort solutions.
tzs 4y ago
Why not ship the audio compressed and decompress it once when the game gets installed? That wouldn’t help people whose issue with large game size is the amount of space used on their disk, but it would help people whose issue is the long download times.
- kevingadd 4y ago
  For all we know it actually worked that way. Steam definitely decompresses game assets at install time. The people complaining about game sizes aren't looking at the depot files you download when installing the game, they're looking at their HDD (which is fair!) My guess is Valve doesn't offer a 'decompress your ogg files to wav at install time' feature though.
  - ntauthority 4y ago
    Titanfall did work this way on the EA launcher. There was a tool that it'd run on first launch to decompress the compressed audio files.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      But why. Even when you do want lossless assets, as long as you compress in reasonable chunks there is no downside.
usefulcat 4y ago
Are spare cores really such a scarce resource? I thought most games didn't come close to using all available cores. And audio decompression is not known for being that cpu intensive.
- kevingadd 4y ago
  It was a long time ago, the CPU usage was an actual problem.
taskforcegemini 4y ago
I think their point was more on the "uncompressed _in all available languages_"

Titanfall shipped uncompressed audio on purpose to cut out audio decompression CPU usage. You can disagree with the decision, but it wasn't an accident or negligence.

haswell 4y ago

I realize they’re trying to optimize for a wide base, but I have plenty of spare cores to decompress audio, and SSD space is limited. For me, the net result is that Titanfall was one of the first games to go when I needed space. Low hanging fruit. Even if it was deliberate, I have to question the logic and wonder how much usage they enabled vs. uninstalls from file size over time.

kristianp 4y ago
You've already bought it, so the game studio got their money, despite having a "bloated" install. So the incentives aren't quite there to reduce the size. I was thinking about buying Mass Effect yesterday, the recent update, but it requires 150GB and I don't have a Windows partition that big! (I'm Dual booting Linux) So I think money is being lost in people who aren't often gamers and haven't bought big disks for gaming.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  Do you have a big enough Linux partition? Mass Effect Legendary Edition runs pretty great via Proton.
- haswell 4y ago
  > You've already bought it, so the game studio got their money, despite having a "bloated" install. So the incentives aren't quite there to reduce the size. They may have some of my money, but not much (discount!), and they’re not getting money for DLCs, arguably the reason the base game was so cheap, and I’m not in a rush to buy more stuff that I can’t fit on my PC. Prior to the era of the initial game purchase being just the entry point I’d have agreed with you, but many modern games have monetization strategies that make uninstallation a problem. And if they have a strong enough incentive to care about CPU usage, they’re clearly putting effort into optimizing for some audience.

terafo 4y ago

It could've been handled as DLC that downloads with a game by default and can be uninstalled/disabled, if we are talking low-effort solutions.

tzs 4y ago

Why not ship the audio compressed and decompress it once when the game gets installed? That wouldn’t help people whose issue with large game size is the amount of space used on their disk, but it would help people whose issue is the long download times.

kevingadd 4y ago
For all we know it actually worked that way. Steam definitely decompresses game assets at install time. The people complaining about game sizes aren't looking at the depot files you download when installing the game, they're looking at their HDD (which is fair!) My guess is Valve doesn't offer a 'decompress your ogg files to wav at install time' feature though.
- ntauthority 4y ago
  Titanfall did work this way on the EA launcher. There was a tool that it'd run on first launch to decompress the compressed audio files.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    But why. Even when you do want lossless assets, as long as you compress in reasonable chunks there is no downside.

usefulcat 4y ago

Are spare cores really such a scarce resource? I thought most games didn't come close to using all available cores. And audio decompression is not known for being that cpu intensive.

kevingadd 4y ago
It was a long time ago, the CPU usage was an actual problem.

taskforcegemini 4y ago

I think their point was more on the "uncompressed _in all available languages_"