Red Dead Redemption 2 PC System Requirements - requires 150 GB of storage

lol

 

So much whining over file sizes. Remember when games came in 4 discs? Two DVDs? Those were, more often than not, bigger than half of the available space in many HDDs of their time.

Yet here we have a game that is, at best, 1/3 of the space in a cheap SSD, and people are complaining.

My shitty internet downloads at 1.8MB/s, and yet I have no problem with those games. You know why? Game size scales with the content in it. If a game is 150GB, it most likely has a sh*tload of content in it, and I'm pretty sure RDR2 has a lot of it. That's fine with me.

Unless people can somehow prove that this space is being used unreasonably, I really see no problem.

 

Not from what I remember. I've played games with 6 discs and would even download enough extra content for the game that would double its whole size and never had any concern with disk space. I had a smaller HDD than most enthusiasts at the time.

So... you're ok with accepting mediocrity, or needless sacrifice? Like you said, game sizes scale with content. It's proportionate, which means that whether you have all raw data or compressed, it's still scaling with the amount of content.
As I have said before, the size itself isn't the problem, it's the efficiency. Uncompressed read-only data is an inefficient use of storage, especially in an age where many-core CPUs are cheap and abundant.

The inverse could be requested too: what is the problem with lossless compression?
Regardless, you can effortlessly prove it yourself. Go and download a very large game; any large game. Notice how the download is several GB smaller, yet, the quality of the textures and audio didn't suffer at all. The game looks and plays as intended, yet, it took up less disk space to get it. Why can't it stay compressed? You save disk space with no sacrifices.
Meanwhile, here's an example of the performance gains you can get (in read performance, anyway) if you use compression:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=btrfs_lzo_2638
That article is old, but still relevant. Even though drives have got faster since then, so have compression methods and CPUs. The only time where no compression is faster is random write, which is irrelevant when it comes to game data. That's a substantial increase in performance, again, with no sacrifices.
Windows 10 has built in LZX compression, which can save a large chunk of data and is very fast at decompression.

 

I'll just drop this here:

https://github.com/ImminentFate/CompactGUI

 

I still wish they develop a compression mode for small size (<1MiB) files, my "emulation" dedicated HDD would appreciate it a lot.

 

The compacting functionality in Windows is pretty awesome. However, compressing 150GB of data will probably take as long as finishing the game

 

Actually, no, it's pretty fast on a SSD (of any kind).

The built-in NTFS compression algorithm is designed to be used with realtime read-writes, so it's very low in CPU usage. It's even faster than basic "ZIP" compressing (the old one, not talking about 7zip)

CompactGUI is not just a GUI, but it's also a web-service connected software that interrogates a community-maintained database of compression estimates - So basically, people can submit their compacting results so others know in advance how much they can save before they start. Pretty neat !

 

I remember buying the CDs for like 0.2$ at the time. The cost is not an issue, the reason why digital distribution won is convenience. You don't need to go out to some store, deal with their supply, pay for reservations or preorder, you don't have to store your physical medium and worry that it doesn't get damaged. Even as large as this game is, you would likely get preload, which would still be significantly more convenient than dealing with physical store and physical medium.

Anyway, I just find it funny that while digital distribution completely won PC market due to convenience, we now have voices saying that physical medium would be better.

 

Btw, there's another compacting utility that uses the Windows API directly instead of being "just" a front-end for compact.exe:

https://github.com/Freaky/Compactor

Allegedly, it's supposed to be faster than CompactGUI.

 

I think he was referring to LZX, which Windows 10 has built-in and isn't the same thing as the "traditional" NTFS compression. It offers compression levels similar to CompactGUI, and can take advantage of many cores. Last I checked though, it isn't accessible through a GUI, so, CompactGUI is currently a more user-friendly option.
LZX is one of the very few features Windows has built-in that I think is actually good.

 

I just used the Windows Built-in feature, and it turn all text blue. Is there a way to make it black and still have compression?

EDIT! Figured out via Google

I read that everytime a file that is being opened and writen to it being decompressed. Isn't that going to affect SSD lifespan due to lots of actions?

 

Just the opposite - you'd be increasing the SSD lifespan. Most (if not all) methods of [de]compression occur in RAM (unless you're trying to permanently change the compression, such as when you extract a zip file). This is also one of the reasons why it's potentially faster to read a compressed file an than an uncompressed file. Since compression reduces a file's footprint, you're decreasing the write cycles on your drive. If you are taking an uncompressed file and then compress it, yes, you'd be eating up your SSD lifespan since the whole thing has to be re-written.

In general, I would advise against compression for files that are frequently modified, since it adds unnecessary overhead. But, I would strongly recommend it for anything that will pretty much never be written to (like game data), or, is appended to (like databases).

 

You forgot to mention the network circle:

Mainframes
Local networks
Cloud.

The circle is now complete...

 

I don't understand why game launchers don't give you the option of whether if you want to download the 4k assets given most people still run 1080p! If the Xbox Store can do this then I don't understand why other launchers haven't done this yet.

I got a 1TB SSD after upgrading from a 512GB SSD less than a year ago and thought I was set, then games like this come along and make me consider installing it on a HDD.

 

its simply game developer pick 4k as their base assets resolution
well we can see the trend with 4k becoming more common and incoming 8k

so most of developer dumped full HD
being 4k also "future-proof", so incase remaking the game, assets quality is much better

if u asking for 1080p assets, they ask them, they might release paid full-HD DLC

 

really people still getting corruption from download?
more over if u getting corruption after downloaded then something wrong in ur system/hardware
our crc check is robust enough now, do u know that all traffic already have crc-built-in (from ur pc, modem/ont, to far sea-cable-repeater, gateway etc.)
i quite OCD with file-hash, so i know if i am getting different hash from file i downloaded


i agree if we can make it more compact & efficient why not
but the trend isnt going that way, i mean do 8k will more data efficient ?
the outlook of data-usage in our-world keep going up ...
so its simply because the ecosystem supporting each other we getting bigger data, with bigger storage, faster network etc.

as for compression
even say we have good compression tech/system, is it widely used ? if not, then when issue happen with compability etc, what to do ?

also do u ever thought cons with compression, i mean there always pros and cons with everything
such as cpu usage for decompression, effect of error in transmission, and what really clear is the need to decompressing everytime needed is really add complexity in building the game
especially now with open-world as the trending in game , how u split the compression etc. is quite challenging

 

There are additional PC specific features and settings that weren't mentioned in the article here on Guru3D. Here's a link to Rockstar's own page about it (although you can find articles all over the internet if you search for them). https://www.rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption2/pc


Also, Newegg has a 1TB SSD for $79.99 this week if anyone is interested.

 

What part of "I never said the download gets corrupted" did you not understand?
Again, the ability to check file integrity exists for a reason. Sometimes it's not so much a matter of data getting corrupted due to bad hardware, but stuff like mods gone wrong. Bigger files waste more time to check.

Streamed videos have very lossy compression, and networks are not sufficiently keeping up.

There are plenty of good lossless compression methods, most of which will even work well on RISC CPUs. Why they're not widely used is exactly what I'm griping about, because there's no good excuse.

What cons? As stated before, if you've got the money for a decent PC that can handle such a game, you've got a CPU good enough to handle decompression quickly.
To put it in another light, let's say RDR2 could've been compressed to 100GB, where the decompression method is scalable with more cores. The cost of a 6c/8t CPU to 8c/12t (Intel or AMD) is roughly half the cost of going from a 1TB SATA SSD to a 2TB. So your options are either
A. Have the game compressed, where you save on disk space, get a better CPU (which is great for things other than that 1 game), decrease load time (vs not-compressed), and decrease download time.
B. Leave the game uncompressed, where you spent more on a drive that will fill up quicker, loads the game slower, downloads the data slower, and does not yield any performance improvements in other applications.
Why would you choose B?

What do you mean "split the compression"? What is there to split? There are plenty of excellent compression methods out there that allow you to take 1 file from a compressed archive or filesystem without decompressing the entire thing.
There is hardly any additional complexity to building the game. There are plenty of games that already use compression without any problems. In fact, many of these absurdly large PC games are compressed on consoles.

 

Do you know why CompactGUI keeps sounding off Windows Default sound like every 30 seconds?

 

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.