They optimized for things other than install size. Optimization is often choosing one thing at the expense of others.
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T00l_shed@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Lack of optimization, and crazy texture packs
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 months ago
acosmichippo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
they optimized for least effort.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 months ago
When time is money, optimizing for time is a worthwhile endeavor. 6+ year dev cycles aren’t something anyone wants. But realistically, large file sizes probably aren’t going away with more dev time.
Shanmugha@lemmy.world 2 months ago
6+ years dev cycles is something I am comfortable with, because I want something done well, and if it’s something big enough (like Cyberpunk 2077 or Baldur’s Gate), then of course it will take a long time, even with big command
But I still haven’t figured out another end of such a deal: how to keep all the command members alive, fed and comfortable for this long time? Buying a game once, even multiplied by whatever-count-of-copies-they-have-sold-for-now, doesn’t give a guarantee that all those people have enough money to just keep creating something exciting for as long as it takes
rtxn@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Pray tell, how do you think “they” should optimize game assets? People who have zero experience in game development love to talk about “optimization” like it’s a slider in the options or some challenge that can be solved by throwing resources at it. Modern compression algorithms like Oodle are about as performant and artifact-free as mathematically possible. Everything beyond that is a trade-off between quality, size, and performance.
But are you thinking about it in abstract? Would you prefer a game to have occasional pop-in and stutter issues in exchange for a smaller size?
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Hey, listen to OP and turn your file compression spider up at least 50%
popcar2@piefed.ca 2 months ago
Audio is another big one. If you want good quality music and your game is voice acted you would be surprised how much space all those audio files take. Add in tons of other gigabytes if you offer voice acting for other languages.
applebusch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
evidently a lot of games dont compress their audio files at all, so a ton of data is wasted on that by itself. theres really no excuse for that because there are plenty of lossless compression algorithms and compressed files will often have faster loading times because the disk read speed is the limiting factor even with the added computational cost of the decompression. thats also true for all the other game files such as textures and meshes and whatnot, which are often also uncompressed.
jumponboard@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Why is it uncompressed? For speed? Is it written such that the data does not need to be serialized into RAM?