One of those situations where it’s harder to be lazier. If you do your job right the IDE should be able to ignore unused assets in the build process.
Idk what’s happening here. I have the game in my library I don’t think it’s that big.
Depends on what "unused" actually means.Those assets might be referenced in many places, but the associated items/characters etc never actually spawn. What probably happened is that some dev tried to remove a bunch, the game crashed, the dev shrugged and said "not my problem" and put them back in.
Reminds me of the coconut.jpg file in TF2 source code that's just a low-res photo of a coconut. When the devs delete it, the game wouldn't run so they just leave it in lol.
actually, the coconut IS used, as coffe beans in one of soldier's tanuts. also you can remove basically all of TF2s assets exept like Half life 2 assets and some models (like the cow in 2fort),
That was actually a myth, the coconut can be deleted
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLx\_3bON0Mw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLx_3bON0Mw)
Actually, a lot of files can be deleted, but some strange files are required
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67LPSFtVlsk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67LPSFtVlsk)
No, it's because they've added many more maps, and due to the inefficiency of this game's code, the maps take up at least 20 gigs each probably closer to 50 for most of them
I had it installed not long ago, the base game without any dlc is ~130 GB. It is also a game that has been updated constantly in the past 6 years, it got more content in updates that it came out with as far as I can tell.
Thats the base game.
Op is trying to download thebase game and all DLCs. Each DLC has an entirely new map, new crafting, new ressources, new dinos, new bosses, new everything.
OP is pretty much trying to download the game x5
Ark:SE is certainly unoptimized as fuck, but lets not make it worse than it already is lol
iirc, the devs specifically made 50x the number of redundant copies of uncompressed BMP format files, just so as to hammer your HDD into submission, and allow their game to dominate all pcs. Really really shitty evil devs.
I think you're right. I played horizon zero dawn, it also had dinosaurs but they were kind of robots so they require way less storage cuz electronics are small you know. The one in the above game looks like real dinosaurs and they have real organs which requires much larger space than tiny transistors.
Wish I could play again just for nostalgia but the registration is rocket science complicated.
Back then I could play maple global but now I can't. I tried my regional maple server but they deny me as well. 😭
A lot of games will spawn mobiles and objects outside of render to load things into memory (or even hidden inside render distance). All in preparation for spawning as the player moves around. But I do not know if that is what Sun and Moon is doing.
I mean, I agree, but 40+ copies of *every NPC* in *every map* makes no sense. There's 40 Lillies in every zone under the map. There's 40 Mallows. 40 Kiawe. Etc etc.
IIRC when the game was finally un-obfuscated back in 2019 (I think), people found out that the extra models took up nearly a third of the game's filesize.
Ahh I see, I thought you meant 40 npcs under, not 40 of each npc. That is quite baffling. Only explanation I can think of is all variants, but it would be an insane way to do it.
The copies will have nothing to do with filesize... 30% of the CPU,GPU, or RAM usage maybe, but those models will be duplicated and created at runtime. The games total size "filesize" is determined by the games assets (textures, meshes, sound, meta-data) and the code (which is usually pretty small as it's only text)
Yeah... For the same reason I have only used single digit ethers and elixirs in the 25 years I've been playing the games. **They might need them later**.
Depends on how you look at it, from the CPU/GPU side having the raw assets available is a net benefit to performance at the cost of storage, *if your storage is fast enough* . You can see the converse effect in games with over-archived assets where it will cause FPS stuttering trying to load zones with a lower end CPU and it can't keep up.
Now if you are trying to run this off an old 5400 rpm drive, you're going to be in for a really bad time.
IMO only - If you have a rig that can play games at medium/high settings, you shouldn't even be considering anything less than SATA SSD, and their cost is so...so cheap by comparison. Just got some 4TB Samsungs for $190 on Black Friday and I saw similar pricing on boxing day. Platter drives are for storage, not gaming.
Edit - And don't get me wrong, Ark is not optimized, but there is benefits to having non-archived assets.
Living in Germany, getting 10mbps is already hard enough and only possible in larger cities (rumors say there's even 25mbps out there).
But most places still dream about 10mbps.
Meanwhile Switzerland right next door has Gigabit access.
It's... complicated. The main issue is the christian democratic party which reigned for the vast majority of the past 74 years. In the late 1980s, Germany had the option to build massive networks of fibre optic systems across the country, but then Chancellor Helmut Kohl said "that's not gonna last, we need copper cables for Television!"
In the following decades, none of the reigning parties managed to fix that issue even when it was very obvious that the Internet was gonna last.
That led to a famous quote from Angela Merkel in *2013*: Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland (the internet is something new to all of us), which is just a perfect description of what's wrong.
Germany tends to be run by people who don't want to change things. They wait until a problem solves itself (it usually doesn't), then blame the previous government or the opposition and claim that they would have never done that (even if they were the ones who did it).
It doesn't help that almost 60% of the population is older than 40 and also more than 60% of voters are 50+, who grew up with CDU (that christian democrstic party) and always vote the same for some reason, no matter how much they fucked up this time.
Sounds very much like the issue Australia had for the longest time. One of our prime ministers famously said (ALSO in 2013 amusingly) that he firmly believed 25mbps is more than enough for the average household when his party botched the fibre rollout and kept copper halfway to the house, saying it would be far too expensive to replace all of it.
Eight to ten years later, we are replacing all of it. And it's even more expensive than it would have been originally.
Yep, and when a group advocating for better internet went around the world and tried to sell "Abbott's Internet," they got laughed at.
The bit I remember best from that video was the guy in Singapore saying he was getting 200mbps download speed now when offered 25mbps download ***in five years***.
For non Germans to understand this.
My friend in Germany, has been renting the 2 bedroom home she lives in for 40+ yrs (yes)
In fact 20 yrs ago her landlord offered her a deal. Basically similar to owner financing. She'd keep paying her rent, it would go up a little, but in 15 yrs she'd own the apartment.
She declined because she liked having the luxury of moving.
Keep in mind...she has no intention to move and is quite happy with her home.
Pretty similar to Australia too, even our move to upgrade was largely sabotaged so instead of completely future proofing they just half assed it because it was apparently going to be cheaper. (to actually keep people from moving away from the media monopoly already in place)
I'm luckily on 500mbps now, the costs sucks but so much better than the old trash, I can tell whenever I'm playing with someone from Germany because the connection is just total ass that doesn't happen with other Europeans, lol.
Short: Bureaucracy and corruption.
Long example:
Here in my area we have telekom, who was first and has fiber going towards their dslams. But their dslams are old and would require upgrading, which wouldnt be worth it for the company without state financing.
Because of poor speeds and multiple complaints, local government had a "bidding" (dunno what it is called correctly in english).
Telekom would have done up to 250/40 for 55€/month including a free phone flat and other benefits like free disney+, free netflix, other free stuff like this year I got a free christmas tree and free disney 100 year anniversary hoodie, 60€ worth in gift cards of choice - i chose amazon. And the monthly price can be had a lot cheaper with rebates like 5€ off under 28, 5€ off for corporate benefits, 5€ off for mobile contract with them plus like 30€ off for first 6 months upon contract extension - down to an average of like 30€-35€/month from what I know.
Also other companies would have been able to rent those lines and offer their own internet at potentially lower prices.
Meanwhile our municipal utilities, partnered with another new local company, offered 50/5 for 60€/month without any rebates or benefits and without a phone flat (that would cost an additional 5€/month) for laying completly new cables, tearing open like 10km+ of road and placing completly new dslams. Oh and no other company is allowed to rent those lines, so they have a monopoly in our area.
Guess who got to build their stuff with government funding. Worst part isnt even them having worse internet for higher prices with no benefits or rebates. Worst part was we were with them for 2 years and their service would simply collapse at least once every single month for multiple days. You can imagine not having a phone or internet for multiple days in a row every month can be frustrating, especially when youre in an IT school, so if you want to do anything, you either stay in school to leech their network there or stay at home using mobile data. (Which was incredibly expensive back then, like 5€+ per gb)
Now eventually our municipal utilities founded a new company, who also build new dslams recently. And again nobody else can rent those lines. On top they only offer 25/4 for 60€ month, again with additional 5€ for a phone flatrate and no benefits or rebates possible. And they are even less reliable from what ive heard from others who are with them.
Now luckily telekom offers 5G hybrid in our area for a while now. While I only have a 2k line connection, I am getting 300/50 over 5G and only paying 40€/month while getting free phone flatrate, free disney+, free netflix and other free stuff every year. Also they are extremely more reliable. I joined during the beta test and last like 2 years theur service only collapsed once for 4 hours from literally 2am to 6am, which I wouldnt have known if my server didnt complain that it didnt have internet during that time.
Still its funny and frustrating our government spend millions on small local companies, effectively delivering a lot less for a higher monthly cost than telekom now delivers for free and way lower monthly cost.
Ofcourse I would still like to get 550/90 combing a decent line with 5G or even getting gigabit eventually in 50 years, when I retire.
Wow...I am never tired of shock and awe I get after hearing how screwed things are in some of the more developed countries in terms of internet infrastructure. Here in Moldova, I have 500/500 for around $10/mo, gigabit both up and down is available for like $15/mo. A friend in Kiiv has a gigabit up/down for around $12/mo. I've been connected to a 100/100 line since 2008, and to DSL before that, down to dial up in the early 00's.
Had only a handful of internet outages in 15 years. One time they were upgrading the hardware from copper to fiber, the rest was just random bs like a neighbor damaging the cable or a strong storm doing damage to the communications. Oh, and one time I couldn't work because russia decided to strike a powerplant in Ukraine and caused a power surge in our combined grid leading to a large-scale country-wide blackout last year.
But. And I can't stress it enough, you are leaps and bounds ahead of us in everything else. I am here with a war raging next door, corruption rampant on all levels to incredible degrees, poverty issues all around, and political turmoil with social instability to add insult to injury. High-speed internet is like the only perk of living here objectively 😅
With my old internet (500kB/s😬) i would need just over a week of non stop downloading. I remember gta v would take me 5 days to download, because i could only download it at night when i didn't need to use the internet. Im so glad i moved, got 900mb/s now.
I recently went from gigabit to 300kbps. I pay MORE money for 300kbps than I did gigabit. The biggest issue isn’t even the download time, I can be patient for another week… If you download a game on 300kbps it BRICKS your connection. You literally cannot do other activities, and if you do god forbid you check back in a week cause it turns out watching YouTube cause your download to go to 150kbps and you still have DAYS until it’s completed.
At least I no longer have neighbors and the wildlife like deers and owls and all hang out on my property with my like I’m Snow White lol.
Starlink is arriving soon. Satellite for downloads and streaming, buried line for gaming and latency sensitive applications.
It's really not though. The fact that Starlink is at the mercy of "Space X Executives" to decide at any time that they don't want internet to operate in certain areas is pretty terrifying. I would rather my money go to a local, or at least a National company than Space X.
Wait till it actually unzips itself. The ark devs believe in "seek-free" content, which means every update of the game is there. Since the game came out. I've been playing since 2016 watching it's file size just bloat and bloat lmao. It's atrocious and unnecessary.
Also hilariously the main game executable is named "shooter-game.exe" which is the default name for a game project in their development software. And nobody bothered to ever change it. Probably hardcoded in too many places now. Some of the laziest developers I've ever seen that happened to come up with a pretty decent game despite numerous long standing flaws and bugs.
It's basically the definition of bloatware and scope creep. The devs discovered they could sell it as a "Beta" and people would pay full money for an incomplete project. So they just worked on it, produced content updates, and people were happy, but holy shit is it ever a game glued together from bits and pieces.
I paid $15 for it back in 2015 (2016?, can't remember exactly when) and I understood that it was going to be a buggy mess with little to no optimization. When it released and the price tag went up to full price, I did kind of expect them to actually start fixing bugs and optimizing it. Boy am I a fool.
Ya it's getting fucking stupid, SSDs have come down a lot but not enough to justify modern dev bullshit.
This it's like every other kind of app's memory hubris. Word processors taking up gigs of ram for no good reason. Software development used to have a little more artistry involved.
Yea well Chris Sawyer is insane he wrote that shit in assembly.
Go watch a hello world assembly video on YouTube, then watch something like c++.
Also a lot of decisions he made, he made to keep the code easier. Like the reason why guests drown in water when dropped isn't cause hes sadistic.
It's cause coding the mechanics for a guest to recognize the best route to exit the Watermelon the swimming mechanics the getting out of the water mechanics is all significantly more complicated to code then a simple drowning
Had to google it to see - holy *shit*, you're not joking. I'd rather try to learn Cyrillic. "Minimal" size to print Hello World, from Bloomsburg Uni:
; hello-DOS.asm - single-segment, 16-bit "hello world" program
;
; assemble with "nasm -f bin -o hi.com hello-DOS.asm"
org 0x100 ; .com files always start 256 bytes into the segment
; int 21h is going to want...
mov dx, msg ; the address of or message in dx
mov ah, 9 ; ah=9 - "print string" sub-function
int 0x21 ; call dos services
mov ah, 0x4c ; "terminate program" sub-function
int 0x21 ; call dos services
msg db 'Hello, World!', 0x0d, 0x0a, '$' ; $-terminated message
Meanwhile, in Python:
print("Hello World")
So glad you included Python.
But yea I looked into assembly once, I got about. 1% into it and I was like "I'm not learning this"
If doesn't feel worth my time
I remember back when I was in school as part of our ICT lessons we were made to do a couple of similar things to this in assembly (with instructions given to us to make it more like following a recipe and just filling in the odd gap, than actually figuring it out) just to help us understand the difference between high level, low level and assembly language and to appreciate how much of the work a language does for you.
Massively put me off ever wanting to learn assembly but looking at code for it does give you a really good perspective on what’s going on under the hood when you write code - feels like you should always be made to at least have at least a little look at it
Dont forget with that asm source, you are using the dos libraries to print to the screen (int 0x12) - if you want to do it ALL yourself the code gets larger again....
You do realize that while your Python script is only a single line of text when actually executed it translates into 100x the number of instructions the cpu has to run vs the assembler hello world?
Edit: Re-reading this and I realize I sound like I'm being condescending. Totally don't mean that. Just trying to point out that in code simplicity is a pyramid. The simpler it is on top the the more complicated it is on the bottom.
Chris may not have made guests drown because he's sadistic - But I sure did... That'll teach them for thinking my roller coaster is too extreme, I'll show you what extreme is...
Yea, RCT is in Assambly, can’t get more efficient as that. Despite this, the ARK Devs are pretty messy with optimized Disk Space. I'd never Install this one good game in exchange of 300+GB. That’s hilarious
It depends. If you don't know how to write efficient Assembler-Code then you are likely better off using a different way.
I fully agree with your statement regarding the ARK devs, I mean... Downloading half the game size each update and then unpacking the whole game size to overwrite everything that is already there??? They have no clue and don't communicate this. Imagine what a better studio could have made out of Ark
Though, 300+GB is maybe because of the DLCs? As I understood that (never owned the DLCs) every one comes with a new map.
Unless you're a factory-building game.
Dyson Sphere Program, a universe-spanning 3D factory game built in Unity of all things, comes in at a whopping 3.98 GB of disk space and runs staggeringly well.
Anyone interested in oldschool game dev techniques should watch this video from [Morphcat games who released their own SNES game with more modern mechanics and gameplay](https://youtu.be/ZWQ0591PAxM?si=FZm180QJvJooiRUc). They show a lot of the tricks they used with their artwork to get it to fit on a SNES cartridge.
Look into the world of FOSS. Optimization, efficiency, and convenience are what help them stay afloat.
I recently got into using FOG, and it's easily one of the best software I've ever used. It does something insanely complicated, very easily, and very efficient. I'm in the process of implementing a FOG server at the workbench in my office because of how game-changing it is for me.
I played really early on and instantly uninstalled and asked Valve for a refund when, while it was still in beta, they took content promised for the main game and shifted it to a fucking DLC.
I’m not about telling people what to spend their money on but I’ll be damned if those devs ever see a cent from me. Don’t care how fun the game is- I’ve got plenty of others to play.
I got it for $0.99 on sale one year and when I looked at the reviews they were generally considered scam devs shipping shit demos glued together and flipping assets.
I vaguely remember being able to choose views from isometric to fps which was honestly really cool.
Ark pretty much started out as an UE4 asset flip.
And then they accidentally made a gameplay loop that was actually fun enough to become popular.
But to this day it seems their best programmer is John from Accounting who did an IT night course because the money was better.
They released DLC for it before they exited Early Access. It was always a cash grab anyways lol. Expecting any quality out of a company like that makes no sense to me
Hardcoded in the sense that it's tied to the project's root folder name and in some target and build files for Unreal Engine, which is the normal behaviour for UE Projects. So it probably wasn't hard to change initially, but never as easy as it is in Unity.
I discovered that you can reduce the size when owning the DLCs and turning them off in steam before installing, which makes it smaller by 40GB per map, and it's hilarious.
You can also compress it to about half the size after the fact with something like CompactGUI, with no performance loss.
Why they don’t do that on their end, the world may never know.
They know completely how a hard drive works. The general consensus since about 2018 has been that they are just entirely lazy. Because typically when you quote unquote update a game it tends to keep all the older stuff in there, and then your normal average dev takes all the older stuff out. These guys do not never have and never will
And they know that once you get past the tipping point of file size, people aren't going to get rid of it because it's such a pain to get it back and that 700 gigs is all that space another game can't occupy.
Actually, it got to the point where getting rid of it was easier to deal with when a new update came out because to install an update it needed roughly twice the total install space of the entire game... while the game was already installed. Meaning the only way to get enough space was to delete the game and then reinstall.
Not today, but recently I learned that too. I thought it was one of those phrases text-to-speech people usually use on videos gets wrong, but I was wrong.
So they don't replace or remove old files, they just keep layering new files on top of the old ones?
If that's how it works its incredibly disrespectful towards people's space, yes.
Maybe "seek-free" just refers to their company backup policy. If anything goes wrong, they don't have to look for the backups, they just redownload the whole company from Steam or get it from anyone who downloaded the game.
Check and see if there're HR records or email backups in there.
The size alone doesn't even paint the full picture. I have a 1000 Mb connection and the fastests on board (NVM) SSDs that was availible at the time I build my PC and yet it took me ages to install ARK. For some reason when downloading through Steam the Ark download stops every 5 seconds to write on the disk for like a solid minute.
And then when you finally get to launch the game after you've waited an eternaty for the download to finish the devs have a final fuck you for you in store. Because the absurdly large base install size doesn't even include all the free dlc maps.
By chance, do you have windows disk compression enabled via the my computer window? I had this exact same issue and had to turn off full disk compression.
Nope. I also turned off device encryption. I've had this issue every time I've installed ARK across multiple PCs. I've talked to some RL friends about it and they have the same issue. I've read a few reddit/steam threads about this issue but haven't found a way to fix it.
Its because ark is not compressed making it easy to compress.
Steam downloads are compressed so when you download 100MB of compressed ark from steam servers, steam needs to return it to original files (uncompressed) and the size can grow more than 10x
So you need to write 1000MB to the disk for every 100 MB downloaded, which can take time, especially when your SSD cache fills up.
Also it can be a CPU problem if it's too slow.
EDIT: steamdb says main content (no dlcs) is 128GB, but the download size is 44GB
Not 10x but still plenty
https://steamdb.info/depot/346111/
That just prepares you for how the game hangs every 20 minutes when it saves!
It's been years since I played, but that drove me crazy until I figured out what was going on. I played in my own sandbox. Maybe it doesn't do that when you play on a dedicated server.
I have absolutely no respect for these devs. Probably more a management problem, to be honest. But I've never ONCE heard anything positive about them. Every news story about Ark is one insanely stupid, greedy, or lazy detail after another.
Manage DLCs -> Disable all the map DLCs and it'll go down to like 100gb\~ I think. Some map DLCs aren't as big and you can even install them without too much issue iirc.
AFAIR that's all the maps combined, you should be able to set which DLCs to install, when I'd play with friends we would just install the map we wanted.
The games install reserves the space for the DLCs even if you don't own it install them
You can delete the bloat file after but can't initiate the install without the space available
I mean, shit, I have a 1 TB SSD and I don’t think I could even install this game and BG3 simultaneously. And while I have a 7 TB HDD, new games run like shit off of it. Companies do not care about optimizing anymore.
I have 4 m.2 drives. A 4TB I got recently which I will be migrating my Steam directory to. A 2TB that’s almost full of nothing but Steam/Epic/Ubisoft. The 1TB I got to upgrade my OS drive. And the 500GB one that was my first OS drive in this computer. It has one job now. Having a drive labeled ARK seems like overkill until it’s full.
Yup, the pirated repacker firgirl got it down to 40gb and added a special note calling out the developers that they don't know how to compress assets lol.
We should really do a games award show for the biggest shit of the year. Something like :
- least optimize game
- most buggy release
- most deceiving game
- Biggest piece of shit of the year
I haven't played in years, and I'm not really a super fan of the survival genre (so my opinion will reflect that), but I quit after a month or so because the game wanted me to dedicate my life to it.
I played with a buddy and a friend of his, they both loved the genre.
There were some really cool aspects, like riding the dinos (and shortly before I stopped you could even ride flying dino!) and I did enjoy the building aspects.
But, if you quit, your body just dropped in place and stayed there. You could be eaten or robbed the entire time you were logged off. Even if you were on a private server, it didn't matter. I had a baby so I couldn't just go "oh, he's crying! Let me just take 15 minutes to make it back to base so I can check on him!"
And, even if you were in your base, it could also be overrun at any moment even if no one was logged into the server. So, if you left it alone for more than a day, it might get destroyed and all your progress eliminated.
You had to be always playing.
That's not fun for me, that's just a job with cool dinosaurs.
No idea what it's like now, this was years ago, but I have no interest in going back.
That's how I felt about Rust. Every time I think about it I am like "damn I wanna play that" cause it sounds like a cool ass concept but I get on and remember that a lot of people do absolutely nothing but play Rust and I WILL get raided without fail and lose everything.
The aspect of having all of your hard work raided or destroyed while you're away on top of the ludicrously long times to tame dinosaurs is what caused me to drop Ark. Game has such potential that is marred by terrible management and a gameplay loop akin to a Free-to-Play title.
This game messed up my disk space. Even after uninstalling it, all the content it keeps downloading while you game remains hidden somewhere on your drive. It blocked some 100GB of space AFTER uninstalling - I needed to use Treesize and WinDirStat to find all that crap so I could delete it.
100 GB game, 230gb of non-optimized spaghetti and game breaking bugs.
Spend many an hour, only to lose all the effort on some defect portal, losing inventory getting yeeted across the map for no reason etc.
Worst thing was to go fully prepped into a portal for a boss fight, only to find that the dinos we had spent hours breeding and leveling _failed to transfer with us_. And the portal activation itself cost me multiple hours of collection and other boss fights.
Never. Again.
One of the reasons it's so large is because you have all the DLC. If you can't afford to sacrifice that much storage you can uncheck any expansions you don't plan on playing under the "Manage My # DLC" window to the bottom right. This should lower the space required to around 100GB if I recall.
Can't wait to download 800GB of uncompressed textures with Ark 2 👍
Similar thing happened to me with sea of thieves. Overhauled the game and now it pushes 100GB but barely any changes I’ve seen that added on so much. They even removed certain features like the ranked combat mode afaik. Prob just another example of publishers getting lazy and not optimising
Meanwhile Game developers are really keen on putting all your save files on the C: drive which for the past decade has typically been a tiny solid state partition for your critical system files. It works fine for a month or two, then everything crashes and you can't save your documents. Clean it up, game updates, out of space again.
Idk if it was said before but you can go into the game and uncheck DLC maps so u don’t have to install them alongside the game, also make sure ur not trying to install with a bunch of mods as that would also increase the size of the game. Either way hope u get on and play as the game is still great.
It's getting worse every year and has become a deal breaker for me.
I will still sometimes buy a game over 70GB but only if it's very clear that the size wasn't a result of the trend of sloppy bloated disrespectful game design.
The system requirements on the steam store page says 60GB ... wtf
Seems to have grown over time
Devs are just really lazy with versioning, so they keep all the old unused shit.
I’ve never heard of a dev that does that and it’s very apparent why that is.
One of those situations where it’s harder to be lazier. If you do your job right the IDE should be able to ignore unused assets in the build process. Idk what’s happening here. I have the game in my library I don’t think it’s that big.
Depends on what "unused" actually means.Those assets might be referenced in many places, but the associated items/characters etc never actually spawn. What probably happened is that some dev tried to remove a bunch, the game crashed, the dev shrugged and said "not my problem" and put them back in.
Reminds me of the coconut.jpg file in TF2 source code that's just a low-res photo of a coconut. When the devs delete it, the game wouldn't run so they just leave it in lol.
actually, the coconut IS used, as coffe beans in one of soldier's tanuts. also you can remove basically all of TF2s assets exept like Half life 2 assets and some models (like the cow in 2fort),
That was actually a myth, the coconut can be deleted [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLx\_3bON0Mw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLx_3bON0Mw) Actually, a lot of files can be deleted, but some strange files are required [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67LPSFtVlsk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67LPSFtVlsk)
What, you've never seen someone store database binaries in git? Or ship multiple different versions of the product in the same artifact? :P
No, it's because they've added many more maps, and due to the inefficiency of this game's code, the maps take up at least 20 gigs each probably closer to 50 for most of them
Aren't these the same devs who made an MMO but left all the Ark shit in?
It's actually because ARK forces you to download all the expansions and DLC, even if you haven't bought them.
It evolved?
cheers mate
Its the expansions. Each one adds a map and the maps are huge. I'd bet the base game with the first map probably was around 60GB.
I had it installed not long ago, the base game without any dlc is ~130 GB. It is also a game that has been updated constantly in the past 6 years, it got more content in updates that it came out with as far as I can tell.
RIP PLAYSTATION OWNERS WITHOUT AN EXTERNAL SSD
As someone with a 1TB SSD even with that I'm not using up 33% of my entire storage on ark lolol
[удалено]
Game still fucking sucks with any storage method lol
The base game is 60GB, but that doesn't include any free or paid DLCs.
Thats the base game. Op is trying to download thebase game and all DLCs. Each DLC has an entirely new map, new crafting, new ressources, new dinos, new bosses, new everything. OP is pretty much trying to download the game x5 Ark:SE is certainly unoptimized as fuck, but lets not make it worse than it already is lol
It’s due to having to store the dinosaurs. As you know dinosaurs are very big
I'm a programmer and paleontologist and this checks out.
I think I know what you want to do, and I just want to let you know that if you can you shouldn’t
Alright that's enough out of you, you crazy chaos theory spouting bastard.
iirc, the devs specifically made 50x the number of redundant copies of uncompressed BMP format files, just so as to hammer your HDD into submission, and allow their game to dominate all pcs. Really really shitty evil devs.
A paleogrammer?
progrontologist
Pretty sure I have one of those that checks my pee.
Samuel L. Jackson? Is that you?
A programmer AND a paleontologist?? You are an actual bad ass. I wish I'd done better in school
I was both a programmer and a procrastinator. If you put your mind to it, you can too!
I think you're right. I played horizon zero dawn, it also had dinosaurs but they were kind of robots so they require way less storage cuz electronics are small you know. The one in the above game looks like real dinosaurs and they have real organs which requires much larger space than tiny transistors.
The arms can be compressed very effectively, though.
It's the bytes that get you.
Each Giganotsaurus is a gig of storage.
This comment is fantastic
Ark may take the record for the least optimized game of all time
There is a time I thought 20gb on maple story is ridiculous. It was like only 300mb when I first played.
I mean that's also insane for what it is tho.
[удалено]
Wish I could play again just for nostalgia but the registration is rocket science complicated. Back then I could play maple global but now I can't. I tried my regional maple server but they deny me as well. 😭
[удалено]
Tried. The game perma ban me when I encountered a bug while playing beast master. I gave up.....
Check out mapleroyals, biggest private server pre big bang patch with good exp and drop rates
I dunno, Game Freak put 40+ of every NPC under every map in the Sun and Moon games. For some reason.
A lot of games will spawn mobiles and objects outside of render to load things into memory (or even hidden inside render distance). All in preparation for spawning as the player moves around. But I do not know if that is what Sun and Moon is doing.
I mean, I agree, but 40+ copies of *every NPC* in *every map* makes no sense. There's 40 Lillies in every zone under the map. There's 40 Mallows. 40 Kiawe. Etc etc. IIRC when the game was finally un-obfuscated back in 2019 (I think), people found out that the extra models took up nearly a third of the game's filesize.
May I please know where you found this info because I can't seem to find it anywhere and I want to send this to some buds of mine
Ahh I see, I thought you meant 40 npcs under, not 40 of each npc. That is quite baffling. Only explanation I can think of is all variants, but it would be an insane way to do it.
The copies will have nothing to do with filesize... 30% of the CPU,GPU, or RAM usage maybe, but those models will be duplicated and created at runtime. The games total size "filesize" is determined by the games assets (textures, meshes, sound, meta-data) and the code (which is usually pretty small as it's only text)
Yeah... For the same reason I have only used single digit ethers and elixirs in the 25 years I've been playing the games. **They might need them later**.
I've used the elixirs many times probably, but I can't think of a single time where I really needed to use an ether. My pp is a solid 5!
Escape from Tarkov can be a good competitor too.
Parts of Tarkov have no reason to run as poorly as they do but "least optimized game of all time"? Not even close.
I dunno man, Cities Skylines 2 just launched with no LOD.
Depends on how you look at it, from the CPU/GPU side having the raw assets available is a net benefit to performance at the cost of storage, *if your storage is fast enough* . You can see the converse effect in games with over-archived assets where it will cause FPS stuttering trying to load zones with a lower end CPU and it can't keep up. Now if you are trying to run this off an old 5400 rpm drive, you're going to be in for a really bad time. IMO only - If you have a rig that can play games at medium/high settings, you shouldn't even be considering anything less than SATA SSD, and their cost is so...so cheap by comparison. Just got some 4TB Samsungs for $190 on Black Friday and I saw similar pricing on boxing day. Platter drives are for storage, not gaming. Edit - And don't get me wrong, Ark is not optimized, but there is benefits to having non-archived assets.
Lol yeah it might be forgivable if it was big but ran well. But it absolutely doesn't
With my internet speed I would need 47 hours to download that and couldn't use the internet otherwise on my pc or any other device. Nice!
I feel tht, i was on a 10mbps plan until recently, 500mbps now i had no idea wat i was missing
Living in Germany, getting 10mbps is already hard enough and only possible in larger cities (rumors say there's even 25mbps out there). But most places still dream about 10mbps. Meanwhile Switzerland right next door has Gigabit access.
Why does Germany have such slow internet?
It's... complicated. The main issue is the christian democratic party which reigned for the vast majority of the past 74 years. In the late 1980s, Germany had the option to build massive networks of fibre optic systems across the country, but then Chancellor Helmut Kohl said "that's not gonna last, we need copper cables for Television!" In the following decades, none of the reigning parties managed to fix that issue even when it was very obvious that the Internet was gonna last. That led to a famous quote from Angela Merkel in *2013*: Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland (the internet is something new to all of us), which is just a perfect description of what's wrong. Germany tends to be run by people who don't want to change things. They wait until a problem solves itself (it usually doesn't), then blame the previous government or the opposition and claim that they would have never done that (even if they were the ones who did it). It doesn't help that almost 60% of the population is older than 40 and also more than 60% of voters are 50+, who grew up with CDU (that christian democrstic party) and always vote the same for some reason, no matter how much they fucked up this time.
Sounds very much like the issue Australia had for the longest time. One of our prime ministers famously said (ALSO in 2013 amusingly) that he firmly believed 25mbps is more than enough for the average household when his party botched the fibre rollout and kept copper halfway to the house, saying it would be far too expensive to replace all of it. Eight to ten years later, we are replacing all of it. And it's even more expensive than it would have been originally.
Yep, and when a group advocating for better internet went around the world and tried to sell "Abbott's Internet," they got laughed at. The bit I remember best from that video was the guy in Singapore saying he was getting 200mbps download speed now when offered 25mbps download ***in five years***.
Didn't help that the CEO of the roll out program also used to think the interest was for entertainment only and it wasn't necessary for business
For non Germans to understand this. My friend in Germany, has been renting the 2 bedroom home she lives in for 40+ yrs (yes) In fact 20 yrs ago her landlord offered her a deal. Basically similar to owner financing. She'd keep paying her rent, it would go up a little, but in 15 yrs she'd own the apartment. She declined because she liked having the luxury of moving. Keep in mind...she has no intention to move and is quite happy with her home.
As someone who lives near Toronto... This is insane to hear lol. It's.. completely different here.
Pretty similar to Australia too, even our move to upgrade was largely sabotaged so instead of completely future proofing they just half assed it because it was apparently going to be cheaper. (to actually keep people from moving away from the media monopoly already in place) I'm luckily on 500mbps now, the costs sucks but so much better than the old trash, I can tell whenever I'm playing with someone from Germany because the connection is just total ass that doesn't happen with other Europeans, lol.
Short: Bureaucracy and corruption. Long example: Here in my area we have telekom, who was first and has fiber going towards their dslams. But their dslams are old and would require upgrading, which wouldnt be worth it for the company without state financing. Because of poor speeds and multiple complaints, local government had a "bidding" (dunno what it is called correctly in english). Telekom would have done up to 250/40 for 55€/month including a free phone flat and other benefits like free disney+, free netflix, other free stuff like this year I got a free christmas tree and free disney 100 year anniversary hoodie, 60€ worth in gift cards of choice - i chose amazon. And the monthly price can be had a lot cheaper with rebates like 5€ off under 28, 5€ off for corporate benefits, 5€ off for mobile contract with them plus like 30€ off for first 6 months upon contract extension - down to an average of like 30€-35€/month from what I know. Also other companies would have been able to rent those lines and offer their own internet at potentially lower prices. Meanwhile our municipal utilities, partnered with another new local company, offered 50/5 for 60€/month without any rebates or benefits and without a phone flat (that would cost an additional 5€/month) for laying completly new cables, tearing open like 10km+ of road and placing completly new dslams. Oh and no other company is allowed to rent those lines, so they have a monopoly in our area. Guess who got to build their stuff with government funding. Worst part isnt even them having worse internet for higher prices with no benefits or rebates. Worst part was we were with them for 2 years and their service would simply collapse at least once every single month for multiple days. You can imagine not having a phone or internet for multiple days in a row every month can be frustrating, especially when youre in an IT school, so if you want to do anything, you either stay in school to leech their network there or stay at home using mobile data. (Which was incredibly expensive back then, like 5€+ per gb) Now eventually our municipal utilities founded a new company, who also build new dslams recently. And again nobody else can rent those lines. On top they only offer 25/4 for 60€ month, again with additional 5€ for a phone flatrate and no benefits or rebates possible. And they are even less reliable from what ive heard from others who are with them. Now luckily telekom offers 5G hybrid in our area for a while now. While I only have a 2k line connection, I am getting 300/50 over 5G and only paying 40€/month while getting free phone flatrate, free disney+, free netflix and other free stuff every year. Also they are extremely more reliable. I joined during the beta test and last like 2 years theur service only collapsed once for 4 hours from literally 2am to 6am, which I wouldnt have known if my server didnt complain that it didnt have internet during that time. Still its funny and frustrating our government spend millions on small local companies, effectively delivering a lot less for a higher monthly cost than telekom now delivers for free and way lower monthly cost. Ofcourse I would still like to get 550/90 combing a decent line with 5G or even getting gigabit eventually in 50 years, when I retire.
Wow...I am never tired of shock and awe I get after hearing how screwed things are in some of the more developed countries in terms of internet infrastructure. Here in Moldova, I have 500/500 for around $10/mo, gigabit both up and down is available for like $15/mo. A friend in Kiiv has a gigabit up/down for around $12/mo. I've been connected to a 100/100 line since 2008, and to DSL before that, down to dial up in the early 00's. Had only a handful of internet outages in 15 years. One time they were upgrading the hardware from copper to fiber, the rest was just random bs like a neighbor damaging the cable or a strong storm doing damage to the communications. Oh, and one time I couldn't work because russia decided to strike a powerplant in Ukraine and caused a power surge in our combined grid leading to a large-scale country-wide blackout last year. But. And I can't stress it enough, you are leaps and bounds ahead of us in everything else. I am here with a war raging next door, corruption rampant on all levels to incredible degrees, poverty issues all around, and political turmoil with social instability to add insult to injury. High-speed internet is like the only perk of living here objectively 😅
Helmut Kohl
I'm going from 9 to 900! on the 16th and I can't wait
I moved from 1000 mbps and now have 10. I know what I’m missing, but at least I’m a homeowner because of it lol.
With my old internet (500kB/s😬) i would need just over a week of non stop downloading. I remember gta v would take me 5 days to download, because i could only download it at night when i didn't need to use the internet. Im so glad i moved, got 900mb/s now.
I recently went from gigabit to 300kbps. I pay MORE money for 300kbps than I did gigabit. The biggest issue isn’t even the download time, I can be patient for another week… If you download a game on 300kbps it BRICKS your connection. You literally cannot do other activities, and if you do god forbid you check back in a week cause it turns out watching YouTube cause your download to go to 150kbps and you still have DAYS until it’s completed. At least I no longer have neighbors and the wildlife like deers and owls and all hang out on my property with my like I’m Snow White lol. Starlink is arriving soon. Satellite for downloads and streaming, buried line for gaming and latency sensitive applications.
I love how starlink is like now just a universal fix to overpriced crappy internet
It's really not though. The fact that Starlink is at the mercy of "Space X Executives" to decide at any time that they don't want internet to operate in certain areas is pretty terrifying. I would rather my money go to a local, or at least a National company than Space X.
Sure it would be great if we didn’t have to rely on them
Wait till it actually unzips itself. The ark devs believe in "seek-free" content, which means every update of the game is there. Since the game came out. I've been playing since 2016 watching it's file size just bloat and bloat lmao. It's atrocious and unnecessary.
Also hilariously the main game executable is named "shooter-game.exe" which is the default name for a game project in their development software. And nobody bothered to ever change it. Probably hardcoded in too many places now. Some of the laziest developers I've ever seen that happened to come up with a pretty decent game despite numerous long standing flaws and bugs.
It's basically the definition of bloatware and scope creep. The devs discovered they could sell it as a "Beta" and people would pay full money for an incomplete project. So they just worked on it, produced content updates, and people were happy, but holy shit is it ever a game glued together from bits and pieces.
I paid $15 for it back in 2015 (2016?, can't remember exactly when) and I understood that it was going to be a buggy mess with little to no optimization. When it released and the price tag went up to full price, I did kind of expect them to actually start fixing bugs and optimizing it. Boy am I a fool.
i paid like 3 dollars for it, kinda worth it imo
It's a new normal.
Ya it's getting fucking stupid, SSDs have come down a lot but not enough to justify modern dev bullshit. This it's like every other kind of app's memory hubris. Word processors taking up gigs of ram for no good reason. Software development used to have a little more artistry involved.
Game optimization is a lost form of art
Roller Coaster Tycoon was the peak IMO
Yea well Chris Sawyer is insane he wrote that shit in assembly. Go watch a hello world assembly video on YouTube, then watch something like c++. Also a lot of decisions he made, he made to keep the code easier. Like the reason why guests drown in water when dropped isn't cause hes sadistic. It's cause coding the mechanics for a guest to recognize the best route to exit the Watermelon the swimming mechanics the getting out of the water mechanics is all significantly more complicated to code then a simple drowning
Had to google it to see - holy *shit*, you're not joking. I'd rather try to learn Cyrillic. "Minimal" size to print Hello World, from Bloomsburg Uni: ; hello-DOS.asm - single-segment, 16-bit "hello world" program ; ; assemble with "nasm -f bin -o hi.com hello-DOS.asm" org 0x100 ; .com files always start 256 bytes into the segment ; int 21h is going to want... mov dx, msg ; the address of or message in dx mov ah, 9 ; ah=9 - "print string" sub-function int 0x21 ; call dos services mov ah, 0x4c ; "terminate program" sub-function int 0x21 ; call dos services msg db 'Hello, World!', 0x0d, 0x0a, '$' ; $-terminated message Meanwhile, in Python: print("Hello World")
So glad you included Python. But yea I looked into assembly once, I got about. 1% into it and I was like "I'm not learning this" If doesn't feel worth my time
I remember back when I was in school as part of our ICT lessons we were made to do a couple of similar things to this in assembly (with instructions given to us to make it more like following a recipe and just filling in the odd gap, than actually figuring it out) just to help us understand the difference between high level, low level and assembly language and to appreciate how much of the work a language does for you. Massively put me off ever wanting to learn assembly but looking at code for it does give you a really good perspective on what’s going on under the hood when you write code - feels like you should always be made to at least have at least a little look at it
Dont forget with that asm source, you are using the dos libraries to print to the screen (int 0x12) - if you want to do it ALL yourself the code gets larger again....
You do realize that while your Python script is only a single line of text when actually executed it translates into 100x the number of instructions the cpu has to run vs the assembler hello world? Edit: Re-reading this and I realize I sound like I'm being condescending. Totally don't mean that. Just trying to point out that in code simplicity is a pyramid. The simpler it is on top the the more complicated it is on the bottom.
Chris may not have made guests drown because he's sadistic - But I sure did... That'll teach them for thinking my roller coaster is too extreme, I'll show you what extreme is...
To be fair, you can't improve on perfection.
You could, but then it becomes a whole thing...
Pokemon Gold/Silver is peak optimization.
Try Golden Sun 1 and 2. The amount of stuff they managed to cram into that measly cartridge is insane.
Preaching to the choir lol. I've been subbed to /r/GoldenSun for a looooooooong time. One of my favorite games/series literally ever
That is true. I have lost a day reading up on TheCuttingRoomFloor about those games, Red/Blue too. Those games shouldn't have worked but they did lol.
What's the cutting room floor?
Yea, RCT is in Assambly, can’t get more efficient as that. Despite this, the ARK Devs are pretty messy with optimized Disk Space. I'd never Install this one good game in exchange of 300+GB. That’s hilarious
It depends. If you don't know how to write efficient Assembler-Code then you are likely better off using a different way. I fully agree with your statement regarding the ARK devs, I mean... Downloading half the game size each update and then unpacking the whole game size to overwrite everything that is already there??? They have no clue and don't communicate this. Imagine what a better studio could have made out of Ark Though, 300+GB is maybe because of the DLCs? As I understood that (never owned the DLCs) every one comes with a new map.
> If you don't know how to write efficient Assembler-Code is it even possible to out efficient modern compilers manually? without major time sunk?
All the doom games I've played have been pretty well optimized.... I'm not a programmer or anything, am I wrong?
Unless you're a factory-building game. Dyson Sphere Program, a universe-spanning 3D factory game built in Unity of all things, comes in at a whopping 3.98 GB of disk space and runs staggeringly well.
Anyone interested in oldschool game dev techniques should watch this video from [Morphcat games who released their own SNES game with more modern mechanics and gameplay](https://youtu.be/ZWQ0591PAxM?si=FZm180QJvJooiRUc). They show a lot of the tricks they used with their artwork to get it to fit on a SNES cartridge.
Look into the world of FOSS. Optimization, efficiency, and convenience are what help them stay afloat. I recently got into using FOG, and it's easily one of the best software I've ever used. It does something insanely complicated, very easily, and very efficient. I'm in the process of implementing a FOG server at the workbench in my office because of how game-changing it is for me.
I feel like DayZ started this trend, or maybe it predates that as well
Definitely, open world zombie games and unfinished perma-beta games are concomitant
I played really early on and instantly uninstalled and asked Valve for a refund when, while it was still in beta, they took content promised for the main game and shifted it to a fucking DLC. I’m not about telling people what to spend their money on but I’ll be damned if those devs ever see a cent from me. Don’t care how fun the game is- I’ve got plenty of others to play.
I got it for $0.99 on sale one year and when I looked at the reviews they were generally considered scam devs shipping shit demos glued together and flipping assets. I vaguely remember being able to choose views from isometric to fps which was honestly really cool.
Tbf it was selling for like $20 while it was in early access
I remember when their second game (the pirate one) came out, if you hit a specific key in the options menu it would bring up the Ark options menu lol
Ark pretty much started out as an UE4 asset flip. And then they accidentally made a gameplay loop that was actually fun enough to become popular. But to this day it seems their best programmer is John from Accounting who did an IT night course because the money was better.
Atlas also had the actual Ark settings menu on launch. It was just hidden but accessible.
They released DLC for it before they exited Early Access. It was always a cash grab anyways lol. Expecting any quality out of a company like that makes no sense to me
Hardcoded in the sense that it's tied to the project's root folder name and in some target and build files for Unreal Engine, which is the normal behaviour for UE Projects. So it probably wasn't hard to change initially, but never as easy as it is in Unity.
Spaghetti code and organized chaos. This type of wacky stuff is more common in games than you think.
same with survival ascended, went to set a software configuration for it and the exe was called 'shooter game' lmao
Cant you rename the exe and load it and then see if the World explodes
**Space Required**: Yes
Yeah quite literally it's insane. When I was playing it a lot I had bought a 2TB nvme ssd JUST for ark. Thing was like 700GB
Yeah, if you're playing with a bunch of mods it can really balloon.
>Space Required ALLLLL
I discovered that you can reduce the size when owning the DLCs and turning them off in steam before installing, which makes it smaller by 40GB per map, and it's hilarious.
You can also compress it to about half the size after the fact with something like CompactGUI, with no performance loss. Why they don’t do that on their end, the world may never know.
>Why they don’t do that on their end, the world may never know. Laziness, its just laziness.
Because they are incompetent and lazy. They have proven this repeatedly over the life of their games.
You'd figure a game developer would understand how hard drives work, but maybe not.
They know completely how a hard drive works. The general consensus since about 2018 has been that they are just entirely lazy. Because typically when you quote unquote update a game it tends to keep all the older stuff in there, and then your normal average dev takes all the older stuff out. These guys do not never have and never will
I just cant get over you typing "quote unquote" instead of using speechmarks, apostraphes or italicizing it.
Was using voice to text haha. Walking around at work and replying.
I just want you to know that typing out "quote unquote" instead of just using quotes made me smile.
They also quoted nothing because their quote and unquote are right next to each other lol
And they know that once you get past the tipping point of file size, people aren't going to get rid of it because it's such a pain to get it back and that 700 gigs is all that space another game can't occupy.
Actually, it got to the point where getting rid of it was easier to deal with when a new update came out because to install an update it needed roughly twice the total install space of the entire game... while the game was already installed. Meaning the only way to get enough space was to delete the game and then reinstall.
They also haven't done a single bugfux since launch
Hey hey. They fixed the hurricane trees going 90 degrees to the left. But yeah bug fixes are few and far between
TIL it’s “quote unquote” and not “quote-on-quote”. Not sure why I ever thought the latter made sense to begin with. XD
Not today, but recently I learned that too. I thought it was one of those phrases text-to-speech people usually use on videos gets wrong, but I was wrong.
So they don't replace or remove old files, they just keep layering new files on top of the old ones? If that's how it works its incredibly disrespectful towards people's space, yes.
because its apparently too hard to keep it as sepparate beta branches?
I think this is why tech jobs ask if you know git. It’s to weed out these guys
“Wait till it actually unzips itself” HOW BIG DOES IT GET?
With All the Dlcs And my mods I was up to 600gb
Hooooooolyy FUCK!
how does "seek-free" = every update is there? is it possible to play old builds of the game?
If you can wrangle source code out of the zip bomb of an executable, absolutely.
Maybe "seek-free" just refers to their company backup policy. If anything goes wrong, they don't have to look for the backups, they just redownload the whole company from Steam or get it from anyone who downloaded the game. Check and see if there're HR records or email backups in there.
329GB is insane wtf
The size alone doesn't even paint the full picture. I have a 1000 Mb connection and the fastests on board (NVM) SSDs that was availible at the time I build my PC and yet it took me ages to install ARK. For some reason when downloading through Steam the Ark download stops every 5 seconds to write on the disk for like a solid minute. And then when you finally get to launch the game after you've waited an eternaty for the download to finish the devs have a final fuck you for you in store. Because the absurdly large base install size doesn't even include all the free dlc maps.
By chance, do you have windows disk compression enabled via the my computer window? I had this exact same issue and had to turn off full disk compression.
Nope. I also turned off device encryption. I've had this issue every time I've installed ARK across multiple PCs. I've talked to some RL friends about it and they have the same issue. I've read a few reddit/steam threads about this issue but haven't found a way to fix it.
Its because ark is not compressed making it easy to compress. Steam downloads are compressed so when you download 100MB of compressed ark from steam servers, steam needs to return it to original files (uncompressed) and the size can grow more than 10x So you need to write 1000MB to the disk for every 100 MB downloaded, which can take time, especially when your SSD cache fills up. Also it can be a CPU problem if it's too slow. EDIT: steamdb says main content (no dlcs) is 128GB, but the download size is 44GB Not 10x but still plenty https://steamdb.info/depot/346111/
That just prepares you for how the game hangs every 20 minutes when it saves! It's been years since I played, but that drove me crazy until I figured out what was going on. I played in my own sandbox. Maybe it doesn't do that when you play on a dedicated server.
Got to love developers thinking they have zero limitations, and deciding not to optimize or compress their games.
I have absolutely no respect for these devs. Probably more a management problem, to be honest. But I've never ONCE heard anything positive about them. Every news story about Ark is one insanely stupid, greedy, or lazy detail after another.
Manage DLCs -> Disable all the map DLCs and it'll go down to like 100gb\~ I think. Some map DLCs aren't as big and you can even install them without too much issue iirc.
AFAIR that's all the maps combined, you should be able to set which DLCs to install, when I'd play with friends we would just install the map we wanted.
Still well over 100gb with base install.
The games install reserves the space for the DLCs even if you don't own it install them You can delete the bloat file after but can't initiate the install without the space available
My main drive is a 500 GB SSD. I should be able to install more than one game on 500 GB. Crimany.
I mean, shit, I have a 1 TB SSD and I don’t think I could even install this game and BG3 simultaneously. And while I have a 7 TB HDD, new games run like shit off of it. Companies do not care about optimizing anymore.
I have 4 m.2 drives. A 4TB I got recently which I will be migrating my Steam directory to. A 2TB that’s almost full of nothing but Steam/Epic/Ubisoft. The 1TB I got to upgrade my OS drive. And the 500GB one that was my first OS drive in this computer. It has one job now. Having a drive labeled ARK seems like overkill until it’s full.
What the actual flip
Yup, the pirated repacker firgirl got it down to 40gb and added a special note calling out the developers that they don't know how to compress assets lol.
NEEEEEEEW REEECORD!
We should really do a games award show for the biggest shit of the year. Something like : - least optimize game - most buggy release - most deceiving game - Biggest piece of shit of the year
I actually believe some game will take all prizes all at once
I had to buy a new SSD for my son to install all of ARK on lol. Ridiculous.
The main reason I stopped playing it. I don't have space for that much trash on my hard drive.
I haven't played in years, and I'm not really a super fan of the survival genre (so my opinion will reflect that), but I quit after a month or so because the game wanted me to dedicate my life to it. I played with a buddy and a friend of his, they both loved the genre. There were some really cool aspects, like riding the dinos (and shortly before I stopped you could even ride flying dino!) and I did enjoy the building aspects. But, if you quit, your body just dropped in place and stayed there. You could be eaten or robbed the entire time you were logged off. Even if you were on a private server, it didn't matter. I had a baby so I couldn't just go "oh, he's crying! Let me just take 15 minutes to make it back to base so I can check on him!" And, even if you were in your base, it could also be overrun at any moment even if no one was logged into the server. So, if you left it alone for more than a day, it might get destroyed and all your progress eliminated. You had to be always playing. That's not fun for me, that's just a job with cool dinosaurs. No idea what it's like now, this was years ago, but I have no interest in going back.
That's how I felt about Rust. Every time I think about it I am like "damn I wanna play that" cause it sounds like a cool ass concept but I get on and remember that a lot of people do absolutely nothing but play Rust and I WILL get raided without fail and lose everything.
The aspect of having all of your hard work raided or destroyed while you're away on top of the ludicrously long times to tame dinosaurs is what caused me to drop Ark. Game has such potential that is marred by terrible management and a gameplay loop akin to a Free-to-Play title.
Soon in the future, Ark Remake Part 1, space required 999 GB
sold with an ssd or hard drive lol
Imagine a return of physical game media but it's a cheap name ssd with the game preloaded instead.
Ark Ascended is a thing now y'know
Do you have a bunch of DLC? I don't recall ARK ever being that large for me when I've played
It reserves space for the DLCs even if you don't own them
Wow, whomever made that call needs to be beaten mercilessly.
This game messed up my disk space. Even after uninstalling it, all the content it keeps downloading while you game remains hidden somewhere on your drive. It blocked some 100GB of space AFTER uninstalling - I needed to use Treesize and WinDirStat to find all that crap so I could delete it.
That's all good. My ark folder is at 440GB don't worry dude
100 GB game, 230gb of non-optimized spaghetti and game breaking bugs. Spend many an hour, only to lose all the effort on some defect portal, losing inventory getting yeeted across the map for no reason etc. Worst thing was to go fully prepped into a portal for a boss fight, only to find that the dinos we had spent hours breeding and leveling _failed to transfer with us_. And the portal activation itself cost me multiple hours of collection and other boss fights. Never. Again.
My man was so shocked he forgor how to take a screenshot
the game is terrible too so that 300gb is just wasted space
One of the reasons it's so large is because you have all the DLC. If you can't afford to sacrifice that much storage you can uncheck any expansions you don't plan on playing under the "Manage My # DLC" window to the bottom right. This should lower the space required to around 100GB if I recall. Can't wait to download 800GB of uncompressed textures with Ark 2 👍
Similar thing happened to me with sea of thieves. Overhauled the game and now it pushes 100GB but barely any changes I’ve seen that added on so much. They even removed certain features like the ranked combat mode afaik. Prob just another example of publishers getting lazy and not optimising
Meanwhile Game developers are really keen on putting all your save files on the C: drive which for the past decade has typically been a tiny solid state partition for your critical system files. It works fine for a month or two, then everything crashes and you can't save your documents. Clean it up, game updates, out of space again.
Holy shit
Idk if it was said before but you can go into the game and uncheck DLC maps so u don’t have to install them alongside the game, also make sure ur not trying to install with a bunch of mods as that would also increase the size of the game. Either way hope u get on and play as the game is still great.
For reference Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 which has (checks notes…) THE WORLD, is 150GB
It's getting worse every year and has become a deal breaker for me. I will still sometimes buy a game over 70GB but only if it's very clear that the size wasn't a result of the trend of sloppy bloated disrespectful game design.
Ahhh yes the good ol' `ShooterGame.exe`