Save game file sizes

[sheek]

This is one of the things I hate the most about modern games.

Nowadays 30 megabytes or more tends to be the norm. I think some of my NWN2 saves have been 50 mb, and already Fallout 2 took up 20-30 mb per save.

This is more than was taken up in entire games (which had as much or more complexity) in the mid 90s.

Compared to Fallout 2, Fallout had 1-2 mb save files. What justified multiplying the amount of disk space needed by a factor of 15?

At the same time CPU has increased so compression and time to write to disk (also HD rpm has increased) should have been reduced.

When you have a 100 gb hard drive, and 10 games installed at a time, games taking up 2+ gb just in saves becomes a problem. Especially when games don't tell you that the save couldn't be written, leaving you to find out next time you try to load it up - and find that your last twenty saves are corrupt.

Any techies know the answer? Is this just like the exponentially increasing level/scene load times, lazier programming across the whole industry or is there a legitimate reason?

 

[baronjohn]

Probably laziness.

When I wrote a game all I did to save/load a game was serialise the entire game state. This has the obvious advantage of being completely generic and requires zero maintenance.

 

[Destroid]

http://www.dansdata.com/gz076.htm

This will answer all of your questions.

Pretty good site generally, although the updates are pretty thin on the ground.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

oo thanks for the link Destroid.

 

[baronjohn]

I got the impression that the guy who wrote that article didn't really know what he was talking about, though.

 

[thesheeep]

It also depends on how much you are actually saving.

Games that track everything the player leaves behind (like something you dropped on the ground somewhere) obviously need to save a lot more.

Of course, you can do all of this in efficient, space-saving ways, but it requires a lot of work, thoughts before actuelly writing the code, experience, etc.
It can be done, sure, but it is always a matter of how much money you want to throw at the problem

 

[JarlFrank]

What I hate most is games that put savegames into the "My Documents" folder on fucking C. I got a rather small C partition and try to keep only the system and system-related programs on it, and those fucking savegames clog up all the space. Fuck. What happened to storing saves in the goddamn fucking game folder, where they fucking belong?

Not to mention that when you get problems with the system and have to reinstall, your saves are fucking lost. Woohoo. Savegames belong in the game's folder, not in some My Documents on fucking C. Dammit.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

What I hate most is games that put savegames into the "My Documents" folder on fucking C. I got a rather small C partition and try to keep only the system and system-related programs on it, and those fucking savegames clog up all the space. Fuck. What happened to storing saves in the goddamn fucking game folder, where they fucking belong?

Not to mention that when you get problems with the system and have to reinstall, your saves are fucking lost. Woohoo. Savegames belong in the game's folder, not in some My Documents on fucking C. Dammit.

+1
Damn right!

 

[Black_Willow]

What I hate most is games that put savegames into the "My Documents" folder on fucking C. I got a rather small C partition and try to keep only the system and system-related programs on it, and those fucking savegames clog up all the space. Fuck. What happened to storing saves in the goddamn fucking game folder, where they fucking belong?

Not to mention that when you get problems with the system and have to reinstall, your saves are fucking lost. Woohoo. Savegames belong in the game's folder, not in some My Documents on fucking C. Dammit.

+1
Damn right!

QFT

 

[denizsi]

Dumping save and configuration files into the one folder to rule them all can be pretty pragmatic, but you're right. I hate whenever any software at all uses any folder within "Documents & Settings/<user>" by default.

At this point, all games should have the option to change default save folder in game menu. I'd sure love to have everything in one place and not worry about it later when uninstalling/reinstalling.

 

[Micmu]

Probably laziness.

Pretty much - like the rest of the programming.

Welcome to the era of bloatware and shitty middleware on middleware on middleware, etc.

 

[Krokar]

All you bastards who bitch about My Documents in system partition, you do know that you can move the folder right?

For XP: http://www.watchingthenet.com/change-location-of-mydocument-folder-in-windows.html

For Vista: http://www.vistax64.com/vista-file-management/122908-how-move-my-document-dpartition.html


To stay on topic... fucking Witcher with gigs and gigs of savegames.

 

[ghostdog]

This mostly happens with RPG games that have a lousy way of creating save files. As the game progresses and there are more and more information to be saved the filesize + loading times are getting bigger and bigger.

NWN2 and Witcher are two examples. They're probably doing something like a "save state" instead of just saving the information of the game world.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

All you bastards who bitch about My Documents in system partition, you do know that you can move the folder right?

Yes, we fucking know, but that's not the fucking point is it?

 

[Elzair]

Dumping save and configuration files into the one folder to rule them all can be pretty pragmatic, but you're right. I hate whenever any software at all uses any folder within "Documents & Settings/<user>" by default.

At this point, all games should have the option to change default save folder in game menu. I'd sure love to have everything in one place and not worry about it later when uninstalling/reinstalling.

I remember that all old school games just placed saves in their main directory (well, those that did not save to a disk). I am rather happy about the new arrangement. This gives people who play games on the same machine the ability to not interfere with each other.

Plus, the %SYSROOT%\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\My Games is the standard set-up for Windows, and Windows defaults to using one partition. If you have modified it to use more, then changing one more thing should not be too bad.

 

[JarlFrank]

I loved how King's Bounty gave you the option during install of choosing your savegame directory. Either the My Documents thing or the game folder. That's how it should be done. Choice and Consequence already during the installation, ITZ HEAVAN.

 

[MetalCraze]

Pffft X2 had 100+ mb saves.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

What I hate most is games that put savegames into the "My Documents" folder on fucking C. I got a rather small C partition and try to keep only the system and system-related programs on it, and those fucking savegames clog up all the space. Fuck. What happened to storing saves in the goddamn fucking game folder, where they fucking belong?

Yeah I know. Fucking Purble Place dumping shit in My Documents and then it just keeps reloading the same save game even though you've finished it because it's badly coded and doesn't realise you've already finished that fucking one and guessed it already.

This is one of the things I hate the most about modern games.

Nowadays 30 megabytes or more tends to be the norm. I think some of my NWN2 saves have been 50 mb, and already Fallout 2 took up 20-30 mb per save.

This is more than was taken up in entire games (which had as much or more complexity) in the mid 90s.

Compared to Fallout 2, Fallout had 1-2 mb save files. What justified multiplying the amount of disk space needed by a factor of 15?

Average HDD capacity 1997: 3 GB.

Average HDD capacity 2009: 500 GB.

There's been a 166 times capacity increase. I'm not surprised there's been a 15 times multiplier in space used.

 

[sheek]

This mostly happens with RPG games that have a lousy way of creating save files. As the game progresses and there are more and more information to be saved the filesize + loading times are getting bigger and bigger.

In that case a save game created during the first seconds of a new game would be small, and it would gradually get progressively larger with time.

That's not the case.

Save game files start huge and stay huge but without increasing all that much.

 

[sheek]

Fallout 1 & 2 were only ¬1.5 years apart.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Fallout 1 & 2 were only ¬1.5 years apart.

That year is the difference between 3 and 6 GB. If you also consider that the original Fallout was started around 1995 when average HDD capacity was a mere 500 MB, it probably helps. Although I don't know what changed in their code for the file size to increase, other than lots of new areas. If you say it's about 1 MB per location, that'd make sense as FO2 has a lot more locations - and thus more stuff to track.

 

[sheek]

But if you've never been to those areas yet what is there to record? I would have thought your first save should record the contents of the Temple of Trials and nothing else.

 

[ghostdog]

This mostly happens with RPG games that have a lousy way of creating save files. As the game progresses and there are more and more information to be saved the filesize + loading times are getting bigger and bigger.

In that case a save game created during the first seconds of a new game would be small, and it would gradually get progressively larger with time.

That's not the case.

Save game files start huge and stay huge but without increasing all that much.

ORLY?

these are some of my nwn2 saves:

 

[Major_Boobage]

Who cares about HD space when a terrabyte HD costs 90 euro's.

If your C partition is too small, resize it. Non-issue detected.

 

[JarlFrank]

Who cares about HD space when a terrabyte HD costs 90 euro's.

If your C partition is too small, resize it. Non-issue detected.

What if I just prefer to have the savegames in the actual game folder, where they belong?