There is no such things as an 'ssd optimized' download. That literally has zero meaning. If a game is a specific size, its that size for a reason. "using disk space" is not "bloat"

Originally posted by LeChuckster:

Give Devs the ability to give us SSD optimized downloads

I am so tired spending money on an SSD only for it to be bloated and not used correctly. How do we know? Because PS5 versions of the same game are usually half the size from not requiring duplicate assets.

Seriously just give Devs something to upload both versions and let us choose which one we want because hacking DLC or Branches is not a standardized solution and just confuses people.

Is this about Helldivers 2 again?

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/games/553850/announcements/detail/543369627969783287

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Originally posted by LeChuckster:

Give Devs the ability to give us SSD optimized downloads

I am so tired spending money on an SSD only for it to be bloated and not used correctly. How do we know? Because PS5 versions of the same game are usually half the size from not requiring duplicate assets.

Seriously just give Devs something to upload both versions and let us choose which one we want because hacking DLC or Branches is not a standardized solution and just confuses people.

Is this about Helldivers 2 again?

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/games/553850/announcements/detail/543369627969783287

:nkCool:

Sounds like it.

https://stanleyparable.com/hds/1/

I do think that this is a use case that Steam could do a better job of.

As it is, you could kind of hack together a solution using optional DLC and a bit of duct tape; a broad outline would be that you'd put the versions of files which include duplicated assets into an optional DLC, and then after the game launches, the game could detect the type of drive it's installed on and call a Steam API to programatically either install / uninstall the DLC to match the type of drive.

This would kind of work, but there's so much potential for jank. There's a decent chance that the update which moves over to this scheme will basically be a full redownload of the game, and the expected path for getting the right version of the game would likely be: update game, launch game, have game tell you you need to shut the game down to switch the content type over, get update, launch game again. That's kind of bad.

Steam could provide a better system for this kind of thing. My kind of outline for a feature would be that Steam could allow developers to upload multiple variants of their content, and allow developers to provide a map of how different system features map to which variants to pick.

A simple map might be something like: "if installedOnDriveType == SSD then variant A; else variant B". Exposing other types of property could enable other opportunities in the same framework. For example, a map based on CPU family or supported CPU features could allow developers to ship code which has been compiled with optimisations enabled for particular CPUs, rather than one-size-fits-all executables.

To the user, this would be totally transparent; no need to configure anything. And the game would just be the right version when it starts up, no need to do runtime detection and call APIs to mess around installing DLC.

There's definitely some work in expanding this out from a sketch of an idea into something practical to integrate into Steam as it stands (how exactly does this interact with the way optional language, OS, etc. depots are currently set up, for example), and for devs to be able to fit into their workflows, but I think it could work.

Originally posted by aiusepsi:

As it is, you could kind of hack together a solution using optional DLC and a bit of duct tape

You are way overcomplicating how to actually do this properly.

Easier solution: beta participation option to select a different depot for a game.

Originally posted by aiusepsi:

As it is, you could kind of hack together a solution using optional DLC and a bit of duct tape; a broad outline would be that you'd put the versions of files which include duplicated assets into an optional DLC, and then after the game launches, the game could detect the type of drive it's installed on and call a Steam API to programatically either install / uninstall the DLC to match the type of drive.

The thing is that entirely depends on how developers structure their builds. If the devs cram all DLC together in the base build of the game there's going to be very little Steam can do about it.

There's no such thing as SSD optimized date storage.
Now there is such a thing as SSD optimized file access but that sucks ass since its justthe game beign designed to expect a certain transfer rate

Originally posted by LeChuckster:

I am so tired spending money on an SSD only for it to be bloated and not used correctly. How do we know? Because PS5 versions of the same game are usually half the size from not requiring duplicate assets.

PS5 versions have typically fewer features and options, hence this.
I.e PC versions have to account for more resolution types, more hardware types, etc etc.
And even that is down to how any sopecific dev chooses to set up their installers.

Not something Steam/Valve has any say in.

The thing that Arrowhead games is doing (which can be found in Hotsauce's link) is putting multiple copies of frequently used files in their game's data so that hard drives can access the data more quickly.

But doing that assumes that you're on an operating system that doesn't have read caching (which is exactly zero of the operating systems that Helldivers 2 runs on) and also makes the game bigger, resulting in the important data being more spread out anyway.

Plus, this only affects loading screen times. The game isn't loading and unloading 3D models of trees while you're playing a level.

In my opinion, less duplication with slightly longer load times for people on spinning rust hard drives is better. If they want faster loads, they can just get an SSD. They're not hard to find.

Originally posted by Ben Lubar:

The thing that Arrowhead games is doing (which can be found in Hotsauce's link) is putting multiple copies of frequently used files in their game's data so that hard drives can access the data more quickly.

But doing that assumes that you're on an operating system that doesn't have read caching (which is exactly zero of the operating systems that Helldivers 2 runs on) and also makes the game bigger, resulting in the important data being more spread out anyway.

Plus, this only affects loading screen times. The game isn't loading and unloading 3D models of trees while you're playing a level.

In my opinion, less duplication with slightly longer load times for people on spinning rust hard drives is better. If they want faster loads, they can just get an SSD. They're not hard to find.

but like the devs said

the drop time is dependent on the slowest load time

that leaves the ssd users at the "mercy" of the hdd's

may not be a huge difference

but i can see it getting annoying

Originally posted by aiusepsi:

Steam could provide a better system for this kind of thing. My kind of outline for a feature would be that Steam could allow developers to upload multiple variants of their content, and allow developers to provide a map of how different system features map to which variants to pick.

not sure how it is a steam issue, really

the devs have said they are optimizing for the use of the hdd's

which creates duplicates of files for faster loading

something they say the do not have to do and are thinking about on the regular

right now they could offer both

it would just be extra work

not sure how much and if it would be a constant need or a one off thing

From the devs are optiomizing for HDDs ten ironically that will just as likely boost SSD performance as well.

Originally posted by 13119205187913161:

Originally posted by Ben Lubar:

The thing that Arrowhead games is doing (which can be found in Hotsauce's link) is putting multiple copies of frequently used files in their game's data so that hard drives can access the data more quickly.

But doing that assumes that you're on an operating system that doesn't have read caching (which is exactly zero of the operating systems that Helldivers 2 runs on) and also makes the game bigger, resulting in the important data being more spread out anyway.

Plus, this only affects loading screen times. The game isn't loading and unloading 3D models of trees while you're playing a level.

In my opinion, less duplication with slightly longer load times for people on spinning rust hard drives is better. If they want faster loads, they can just get an SSD. They're not hard to find.

but like the devs said

the drop time is dependent on the slowest load time

that leaves the ssd users at the "mercy" of the hdd's

may not be a huge difference

but i can see it getting annoying

A hard drive is already much slower than an SSD. No amount of clever optimization can make a physical motion faster than electricity. I'd much rather wait a few seconds longer to start a mission whenever a player without an SSD is in my squad than have the game be three times the size it could be with exactly the same content.

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

Originally posted by aiusepsi:

As it is, you could kind of hack together a solution using optional DLC and a bit of duct tape; a broad outline would be that you'd put the versions of files which include duplicated assets into an optional DLC, and then after the game launches, the game could detect the type of drive it's installed on and call a Steam API to programatically either install / uninstall the DLC to match the type of drive.

The thing is that entirely depends on how developers structure their builds. If the devs cram all DLC together in the base build of the game there's going to be very little Steam can do about it.

Also developers tend to NOT want to do this. Because its much easier for users to simply buy a DLC and then immediately play. This makes for a much better experience overall. If someone has to download more stuff, this can negatively impact them especially if the DLC is extremely large. At which point you might lose the player entirely. Its really important to keep players engaged and quickly and to NOT provide them with any friction for off ramping.

Also a lot of times companies may want users to see DLC content, even if they cannot interact with it directly. For example many games allow users to play on DLC content they don't own, if someone else hosts that content. Or they may want cosmetics to be available to all users to see, even if a particular user doesn't own that cosmetic.

Originally posted by Ben Lubar:

A hard drive is already much slower than an SSD. No amount of clever optimization can make a physical motion faster than electricity. I'd much rather wait a few seconds longer to start a mission whenever a player without an SSD is in my squad than have the game be three times the size it could be with exactly the same content.

Note that unless your hard drive is extremely old, a modern 7200 rpm drive is basically fine? Note that for the OS drive, due to SSD main benefit of sequential reads being fast, its helpful. But because patching files is functionally the worst case scenario for all drives, the difference between patching on an SSD vs a 7200rpm drive is not as expansive as you'd imagine. Its not like Helldivesr2 would take 1 hour to patch on a 7200rpm drive vs an M2 SSD

99% of the time people have IO issues, its due to their anti-virus locking the IO down so much that it drags the peformance down. Once they add anti-virus whitelisting the performance increases dramatically.