Why Titanfall's Install Requires 48 GB: Uncompressed Audio

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CraigN

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As someone mentioned before-hand, you could use Junctions in Windows to relocate the files, but on an unrelated note -

Why the obsession to install the game on only an SSD? I don't see too many builds on here that have an SSD as their only HD storage option. The only time an SSD would really benefit you in Titanfall is if you joined a match that's already in progress to reduce load time. But in fresh matches, it waits till all the players have connected. 500GB+ Hard drives are more than affordable.

For those who have bandwidth caps, I can certainly understand and feel their pain. For the average user, it's not hard to get more space/clean up space for a game if it's one you really want to play.

I do agree it's silly to not have varying levels of install to reduce file size, but, I do think the notion that people are acting like nobody will be able to fit this on their HDD with everything else is rather ridiculous as well.

 


The issue I have is this "1 size fits all" approach the companies are taking. I guess I refer a more finessed approach. The consoles are all equal, but since pc's are not, the install should be more intuitive. IMO, the consoles have made some developers lazy.
 

Phillip Wager

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i'm sure that it would not too difficult to make the aplicaiton reference the audio files from a seperate disk as the rest of the files? what would be the harm in that? give it time and i bet somone will figure out how to do it.
 

soldier44

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This shouldn't be an issue if you are a serious PC gamer, I have 7 Tb of space on 4 different hard drives including where my OS is on the main drive a 512Gb SSD. Its 2014 people buy more space, games are getting larger all the time.
 

knowom

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It's funny seems like more of the higher end gamers are complaining about this even though they are the ones that are most likely to have 1TB drives and larger sized SSD's.
 

The point is that they claimed the install size was to help out the older, slower machines. It's those very same older, slower machines that are much more likely to have limited drive space.


Right, and everyone has the the money to rebuild their computers every three years too, right? So only people with a lot of disposable income deserve to play games?



I don't think anyone is saying the big titles were getting smaller. However, increasing the install size by 300% is pretty drastic.

I don't agree with you that "lower end machines will all likely have higher capacity HDDs" though. In fact I think it will be the opposite. Baker said he's worried about the older Athlon and C2D machines, those that are 6+ years old. Actually I build a C2D machine back in 2007. I put dual 500GB drives in it, which was rather overkill for the time. Let's assume a single 500GB drive was typical back then. You're telling me a game that consumes 10% of your total drive space is ok? Drives tend to get fuller the longer you have them. The fuller it gets, the slower they perform. Sure, you can probably still fit Titanfall on an old PC, but it's not doing anyone any favors.

We've had years of game installers with options for hi-res texture packs, hi-fidelity audio files, installing movies and cut-scenes, and all sorts of other decisions. The instant they started pondering whether to use compressed audio or not, someone should have been considering an install option of which way the end-user would like to go. A decision like this wouldn't ( or at least shouldn't, ) have been toward the end of development. So why is this something they couldn't fit in, even if the installer was the last thing to go through QA? Either the developer was lazy or they cut polish time because MS was pressuring them for an earlier release date. Both practices yield poor results.



I'm sorry, are you saying that only people with $500 or more worth of storage can be considered "serious gamers"? Don't make the mistake of considering your own situation as the norm. A lot of other people don't have nearly the disposable income you or I do. If only the well-off enthusiasts can afford the hardware to run them, these games would lose a lot of money. These big, anticipated titles have to sell a lot of units to be successful. That means they have to be able to run on some lower-end hardware, even if at much reduced graphics settings so they're accessible to enough people to turn a profit.
 
G

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you don't really believe this, right? this is stuff for aprils fools.
 

CraigN

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Don't get me wrong - I agree. But it's the hand we're dealt. The only option is finding an affordable way to live with it.
 

InvalidError

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It seems odd to me that they would cite low-spec as a reason to justify using uncompressed audio. IIRC, playing MP3s on my 650MHz P3 used less than 10% of CPU time. On a 2.4GHz Core2Duo, that should be less than 2% which should be nowhere near enough to make or break any game. On my i5-3470, playing a MP3 uses 0.45% of the CPU and that includes updating the media player's UI.
 
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Deleted member 1353997

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Am I the only one who noticed the contradiction in the minimum requirements?


  • ■ Graphics card: Radeon HD 4770 with 512 VRAM or GeForce 8800GT with 512 VRAM
    ■ DirectX: DirectX 11
I mean, a GeForce 8800GT with Dx 11 support, seriously?
 

11796pcs

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This shouldn't be an issue if you are a serious PC gamer, I have 7 Tb of space on 4 different hard drives including where my OS is on the main drive a 512Gb SSD. Its 2014 people buy more space, games are getting larger all the time.
I don't think you understand the complete stupidity of uncompressed audio. It takes almost no CPU power to decompress lossy MP3 and for 99%+ of people, the difference between uncompressed WAV and 320 kbps compressed MP3 is inaudible. The difference is size is huge. This: "a two-core machine would dedicate a huge chunk of one core to just decompressing audio" is a lie. Also, a Tb and a Gb is not the same as a TB and a GB. What you actually wrote in your comment was that you have a 64GB SSD and 875GB over four different hard drives.
 

Mr Majestyk

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This makes me sad... I hope more games don't do this. It would take literally 4-5 days straight downloading just to get one game on my connection. Ridiculous.
If I had to download this that would be 75% of monthly broadband quota gone in one hit.Sorry, why on earth do we need uncompressed audio, when the sound hardware on most computers is not that great that we would notice. I'd be more than happy with VBR MP3's with 256-320kB/s bit rates.
 

voltagetoe

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Umm, going towards 800 hours of audio files ? There's something fishy going on here now. Why would a game have so much audio ? Yes, textures not audio...
 

XGrabMyY

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No need to lose your shit guys, just delete the language packages you don't need. That is a big chunk of the audio right there. 11 languages in total.
 


Better question would be, why on Earth do we still have data caps in a world where every device needs to be connected to a server and phone apps need updates twice a week.
 

K2N hater

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It's not about making it playable in lower-end PCs but wasting PCs potential. Contradictory, isn't it? I could even assume running current games on a 10, 12 or 16-core CPU actually leads to lower FPS than on a 2-core CPU.
 

Joe of the Jungle

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such stupidity...if you can't afford to purchase a gamming rig or build one then you don't deserve to play the game....like it or not, it's the truth.....anyone can build a decent gaming machine these days.
True. 1 TB HDs are quite cheap to adquire too. People complaint just because they CAN.
 
Looks to me like they wanted the game to capture most of the PC gaming market.How would the game look with 4gb ram, dual core cpu of 2.8 Ghz or above, and a minimum of a Gtx 8800 graphics card.Not saying it`s a bad thing but would you want to run it on a Gtx 8800 card ?
 
Looks to me like they wanted the game to capture most of the PC gaming market.How would the game look with 4gb ram, dual core cpu of 2.8 Ghz or above, and a minimum of a Gtx 8800 graphics card.Not saying it`s a bad thing but would you want to run it on a Gtx 8800 card ?
 
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