News Star Citizen likely to have a 100GB client

I utterly disagree with all of you ignoramuses!

If 100GB is the lowest it can be then 100GB it will be. How do I know this? Well, if there's one thing I've learned on my short time on earth it's that money never lies, and the money says that the 100GB estimate will already be highly optimized. It's not just us who has to pay for bandwidth...They have 801,221 backers at the time of writing. If each one of them were to download the finished client just once that's 641PB. Even 1GB of difference in the client represents 6.4PB of data they have to pay a third party to serve up.

The size is more likely the natural storage requirement inflation for progressively prettier graphics and the scope of the "'verse". Crysis 3 weighed in 10GB and, in my opinion, looked kinda same-y throughout. Star Citizen is going for 100+ systems (each having multiple worlds and locales), each with vastly different texture and sound palettes...not to mention the multiple space environments or the fact some of the capital ships are unique, sizeable environments unto themselves...and all as photo-realistically rendered as the engine allows.

Given that not optimizing it could add millions to the data budget I think they're much more likely to spend thousands, or even tens of thousands, on optimizing their content delivery system. TL;DR: Money talks. Money talks. Dirty cash I want you. Dirty cash I need you. Ooohhh!

 

Just from a texture point of view the jump from 1k square [the biggest size used in skyrim's 'HD' pack] to 4k square [the largest supported by UE4 and Cryengine iirc] is substantial jump in terms of space required...

Looking at 2 versions of a texture I have, the 1k square is 1.6MB, the 4k square is 19MB so over 10x the size... so even if the engine can compress the textures further, it's still going to be a noticeable jump in space required from 1k to 4k, especially as i'll probably need to include both the 4k and 1k versions [and possibly a 2k square version] for LOD purposes...

EDIT: Just converted them to .dds, using DXT1 compression [common format used by engines, still widely used last i checked though i admit i'm out of the loop somewhat...] and the file sizes are roughly halved from those above, but it still jumps from 700k for a 1k square to 10MB for the 4k square which is quite a relative jump...

multiply that by at least 2 textures per ship... plus normal/other maps, plus scenerey etc. etc. and even with the most efficient compression going it quickly adds up...

TL-DR; immediately dismissing large client sizes as dev laziness is, imo, a load of bollocks...

 

Right but I'm sure the backers weren't expecting the game to be that huge. 100GB is NOT the lowest it can be - that's exactly the problem. I understand high-res textures take up significantly more space, but they CAN be compressed without looking ugly.

Ugh... no, it wouldn't. Cleaning up the code might be expensive, but I'm sure the code of the game is fine overall and isn't what needs cleaning. Take out all of the 3D models, textures, and sounds and I'm sure the game would be less than 2GB, depending how many libraries it needs. It isn't hard to compress game resources and the result isn't usually that bad.

 

People making a big deal about the size are noobs. I had an MMO that was 20gig about 10 years ago. Current games are often over 50gig. 100gig for such a deep game and in 2016 is not a surprise.

 

Dolphie talking BS again, fancy that.

 

cod:aw requires 55GB already without any dlc

 

Who said anything about optimizing the code? I meant optimizing textures to sit comfortably in the vram ceiling, which would in turn reduce the overall file size.

Eve Ships are about 3,000 polys each; Small Star Citizen ships are around 60,000 polys each, due to the full scale-modeled interiors. In Eve planets are balls with a few shaders applied; In Star Citizen they essentially a whole new game, with all the associated asset requirements - There really is no comparison between a space MMO and a full space "sim" in terms of level of detail.

 

That was for the raw TIF files [see my edit for the final compressed textures], and compressed or not, the relative jump from 1k to 4k the same at ~10x... so based on that SC could have 10x the diffuse texture data of Vanilla HD Pack Skyrim [whose textures are at most 1k], yes not all textures would need to be 4k but the argument of 'but *game* can do *it* with half the space so SC's space requirements are unreasonable' is a rubbish argument... Evolve, which uses the same engine [and thus a better comparison than skyrim imo] as SC requires 50GB, whereas Ryse: Son of Rome [also using the same engine] requires a more modest 26GB, that doesn't automatically mean Evolve [or SC] is a bloated mess though.

Yes efficient compression [and code optimisation] can have a noticeable impact on performance and client size, but it'll only get you so far... If the client ends up around 100GB at [or after] launch, so be it, but I still take issue with the assumption that the final size, whatever it ends up being is a result of dev laziness...

 

Sounds like the devs are suffering from "Let's just use the highest quality we can physically create and to hell with anyone who disagrees."

I mean, fine whatever, I don't intend to ever buy a game with the business model SC has been displaying so far, so it won't affect me, but I hope it doesn't set the trend!

Having 175~ games take up 660gb is insulting enough, let alone the laughable notion of 100gb games.

 

Making comparisons with what other games have used, deciding that an arbitrary figure for the release of a game at least 18 months away, is because of some reason you cant possibly have any knowledge of, but you're going to call the developers lazy. Brilliant.

There's not a single person at CIG who knows how big it'll be, but i do find it amazing that the bit-tech detectives have already come to the conclusion that the arbitrary filesize is due to lazy compression.

There's already 30+ (rough count) ships which are modelled to insane levels of detail in the game now, and all but about 10 of those are including 5 levels of damage modelling, all include animations and are modelled inside & out with crazy levels of attention to detail. There's at least 3-5x more ships which are in-progress, if you include alien ships too. Theres ships over 1km in size, fully modelled going all the way down to jet fighter sizes and everything in between, even a 6km mining platform (again, externally & internally modelled) and thats just stuff we know about which is for the first slice of the single player campaign.
There's planetside environments, the majority are populated/developed planets with their own unique authored look, shops, bars, customs, repair centers, ship show-rooms etc etc as well as some undeveloped proc-gen worlds too which will likely need additional assets too.

100+ ships, 100+ unique locations, various space stations, almost everything modelled to first-person detail inside and out... and yet its just 1 reason that it might be this arbitrary 100gb size... lazyness in compression, cos the fact that they're modelling an entire universe with all its little details, is far too sensible for the tin-foil hat folks.

 

is it 100GB because it actually has an offline mode

 

My concern is not the lazyness, but the size of it. 100GB with my 800KB/s represent 35 hours worth of downloading, a 20GB update is worth 6 hours. I'm not even talking about the VRAM usage with 4K textures. Seriously, that's just insane and prolly just usefull for epeen still screenshot. Once everything moves you won't notice any difference between 2K and 4K.

 

I'm going to run this off a bank of 1.44MB floppy disks. I'm super stoked they've released this info as I can now make an accurate assessment of my own requirement.

 

Don't be mad at the truth.

It's not lazy it is just a big game in terms of content and high resolution graphics. And your internet speed is bad. I've had faster than that for 10 years.

 

Happy for you, but not everyone has access to 300MB/s Internet. Welcome to the real world. 9.6 Mbps is enough for most tasks, including streaming HD videos, but downloading 20+ GB games takes ages.

 

that's nice for you - my parents have 2mbit adsl , and that's the fastest they can get - in a housing estate , in a town of 100k+ people. and no , down south no one gets cable.

the phone line travels nearly 8 miles to reach them. no fibre either.

so , its great *golf clap* you can get faster , but a lot of people cant.

 

I find it funny how the people who think 100GB is ok seem to be legitimately offended and angry that people disagree. Seriously - it's an opinion. Though saying "the developers are lazy" may be jumping to conclusions, so is saying the game's immense size is justified.

Maybe there really is 100GB worth of fully optimized and compressed content - we don't know that yet. But it would definitely be wise of them to offer low-res or compressed texture packs and lower sample rate audio. Especially if they're expecting up to 20GB updates on a regular basis. It'd be nice too if maybe you would only have to download just singleplayer or just multiplayer.

Based on other tech websites I've visited, most people are not ok with the size of this game.

 

But I'm not talking about 300mb even 9 is far faster than what he has. And you download overnight. It's no big deal.

But why should this game care about something so terrible? It is your internet that is the problem not a cutting edge game.

Websites full of clueless noobs like this one.

 

your the one stoking your over inflated ego about your epeen internet speeds here...

 

Just to clear this argument up once and for all I'd like you to all picture this meeting at CIG taking place in your head:

Chris Roberts: Hi guys! Welcome to the meeting. As you know our business model has 3 main areas of expenditure. One - Development Costs, Two - Distribution Costs, and Three - Maintenance Costs. Today we're here to talk about the distribution costs. Ben, do you have the client size estimates?

Ben Lesnick: I've spoken to the department heads and they reckon it'll come in at about 100GB.

Chris Roberts: Wow! Even for 100 systems of diverse content, played across two paradigms that seems excessive. Sandi, do you have a report on the optimization status? Is there more we can do to reduce that file size?

Sandi Gardner: Oh, absolutely! Lots...

Chris Roberts: So lets optimize!

Sandi Gardner: I was thinking...If we don't optimize we can not only limit our market, but troll our customers, and increase our distribution costs, which would have a knock on effect of lowering the company earnings.

Ben Lesnick: That would be funny...

Chris Roberts: Ok, lets do that. Who likes Christmas bonuses anyway?

Sandi Gadner: Exactly, Allahu Akbar!

Chris Roberts: Now Sandi, if you don't mind, Ben and I are going to re-enact some fan fiction on the boardroom table. Hold my calls.



Apart from the last bit, it isn't very realistic is it? What company would wilfully increase their overheads? Unoptimized content usually comes from studios pushing release dates forward, but CIG set their own release date so have all the time in the world to work on keeping their overheads to a minimum. Which they undoubtedly will, because all this business is the most basic of basic business.