3 ms·

> That's because some of the complete game files were as large as 50GB 50GB is not the total size of the files needing to be transferred - some of the files we

by mryan 13y ago

> That's because some of the complete game files were as large as 50GB 50GB is not the total size of the files needing to be transferred - some of the files were 50GB. Knowing the total size would have been interesting for the sake of discussion.

debian69 13y ago
Yeah thats bollox , sorry but no game has 50 gb files on launch , and what kind of idiotic company would send round a file they weren't using in launch code base ?
- johnbellone 13y ago
  The raw assets are generally a lot larger than what becomes present on your machine. An example would be normal mapping[1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping
- lgbr 13y ago
  Not true anymore. http://www.explosion.com/45404/call-duty-ghosts-pc-install-50gb/ http://www.explosion.com/45404/call-duty-ghosts-pc-install-5...
- jswanson 13y ago
  TLDR; Internal workflows, not customer facing. Enterprise dropbox. The article title is misleading. They are actually talking about the internal workflow. Raw assets, art assets, and such, can be pretty large. When you have a studio in Country A doing PC, a studio in country B doing ps3, all wanting the base raw data but (presumably) transforming it in different ways, between how the build actually happens or artists tweaking something for a platform, it'd become a nightmare pretty quickly if you were to send it across a company private network (often just VPN pipes across the internet itself). The article is, at it's heart, an ad for a company called 'Panzura', which sounds like an enterprise-specific dropbox. Boxes 'on-premise', security guarantees, and probably pretty expensive.
- doug363 13y ago
  I'm aware of at least one PS3 game port that had around 40GB of data at launch. I'd be surprised if that were the only one. Most games' source data is much larger than the shipped data size for a number of reasons, mostly because files designed for human editing encode a lot of information not needed by the game itself, and game source data is aggressively compressed making it unsuitable for further editing. A full snapshot of the source data for a game like Battlefield 4 is likely to be on the order of hundreds of GB, maybe getting up to the TB range. And if multiple teams are working on the same source data, then the source data needs to be sent between them. Also, before the final few months of development, games' runtime data will often significantly exceed the final shipped size because compression and quality tradeoffs have not been decided and applied.
- mkohlmyr 13y ago
  Most software or games companies.. Much like how software doesn't always ship with source code, games don't ship with source assets. Normal maps are generated from high-polygon meshes that do not ship with the finished product. Final textures are the result of psd files with layers, reference materials, alternative versions. These do not ship with the finished product. Maps are compiled from a source format. E.g. vmf -> bsp. The vmf does not ship with the finished product.
simias 13y ago
Mmmh, that's not how I understood it. I've never worked in game development but 50GB seems a reasonable amount of space for a full game. Also TFA mentions that the issue is synchronizing with testing centres, I doubt they send the whole source files there, only the current debug build I assume (but really, even if it's the full material in 2013 it shouldn't be an issue unless they're using dialup). But at any rate the size of the individual files is not what matters. The important part is the total size of the game files and the average change rate. I would be surprised if they weren't able to synchronize everything with a good internet connection and a bunch of rsync scripts.
- pandaman 13y ago
  Source assets take much more space than their shipped version. E.g. you'd want to keep Photoshop layer files for textures that are compressed to 4bpp in the shipped game because it would be hard to edit the final version. If the final game takes 18GB (judging by the torrent files a quick search will reveal) I'd imagine its source assets could not be less than 100 GB.
  - Negitivefrags 13y ago
    As a game developer, our shipping assets are about 4.4GB, but our Tarsnap account (which we use for backup) has passed 1.2 TB. We use a lot of rsync.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

by mryan 13y ago

debian69 13y ago

Yeah thats bollox , sorry but no game has 50 gb files on launch , and what kind of idiotic company would send round a file they weren't using in launch code base ?

johnbellone 13y ago
The raw assets are generally a lot larger than what becomes present on your machine. An example would be normal mapping[1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping
lgbr 13y ago
Not true anymore. http://www.explosion.com/45404/call-duty-ghosts-pc-install-50gb/ http://www.explosion.com/45404/call-duty-ghosts-pc-install-5...
jswanson 13y ago
TLDR; Internal workflows, not customer facing. Enterprise dropbox. The article title is misleading. They are actually talking about the internal workflow. Raw assets, art assets, and such, can be pretty large. When you have a studio in Country A doing PC, a studio in country B doing ps3, all wanting the base raw data but (presumably) transforming it in different ways, between how the build actually happens or artists tweaking something for a platform, it'd become a nightmare pretty quickly if you were to send it across a company private network (often just VPN pipes across the internet itself). The article is, at it's heart, an ad for a company called 'Panzura', which sounds like an enterprise-specific dropbox. Boxes 'on-premise', security guarantees, and probably pretty expensive.
doug363 13y ago
I'm aware of at least one PS3 game port that had around 40GB of data at launch. I'd be surprised if that were the only one. Most games' source data is much larger than the shipped data size for a number of reasons, mostly because files designed for human editing encode a lot of information not needed by the game itself, and game source data is aggressively compressed making it unsuitable for further editing. A full snapshot of the source data for a game like Battlefield 4 is likely to be on the order of hundreds of GB, maybe getting up to the TB range. And if multiple teams are working on the same source data, then the source data needs to be sent between them. Also, before the final few months of development, games' runtime data will often significantly exceed the final shipped size because compression and quality tradeoffs have not been decided and applied.
mkohlmyr 13y ago
Most software or games companies.. Much like how software doesn't always ship with source code, games don't ship with source assets. Normal maps are generated from high-polygon meshes that do not ship with the finished product. Final textures are the result of psd files with layers, reference materials, alternative versions. These do not ship with the finished product. Maps are compiled from a source format. E.g. vmf -> bsp. The vmf does not ship with the finished product.

simias 13y ago

Mmmh, that's not how I understood it. I've never worked in game development but 50GB seems a reasonable amount of space for a full game. Also TFA mentions that the issue is synchronizing with testing centres, I doubt they send the whole source files there, only the current debug build I assume (but really, even if it's the full material in 2013 it shouldn't be an issue unless they're using dialup). But at any rate the size of the individual files is not what matters. The important part is the total size of the game files and the average change rate. I would be surprised if they weren't able to synchronize everything with a good internet connection and a bunch of rsync scripts.

pandaman 13y ago
Source assets take much more space than their shipped version. E.g. you'd want to keep Photoshop layer files for textures that are compressed to 4bpp in the shipped game because it would be hard to edit the final version. If the final game takes 18GB (judging by the torrent files a quick search will reveal) I'd imagine its source assets could not be less than 100 GB.
- Negitivefrags 13y ago
  As a game developer, our shipping assets are about 4.4GB, but our Tarsnap account (which we use for backup) has passed 1.2 TB. We use a lot of rsync.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]