just release the game on CD (AND DVD if you really want).
I never hoped for anything more than
Availability Ad 2: Minimal installation is a very ridiculous idea.
Not in an absolute sense, no, it is never ridiculous to hope for
Zero installation. Saving your position in the game is obviously a must but else than that can be worked out. The only other thing that needs to be saved to hard disk would be the setup options and user settings.
The differences in data transfer rates of HDDs and disk drives are breathtaking, and why would someone choose to live with much higher loading times with playing from DVD when they can just install the game on their some hundred GB harddisk and get rather short loading times? Of course, people who have only a 5gb harddisk might be interested in such a thing, but honestly, how many people do have such harddisks AND play sophisticated games like DivDiv and (hopefully) RRR?
Ah! Now let us talk professionally a bit more.
As I said,
RUNNING a program
MUST be from
RAM.
Thus, a huge game might demand a minimum size of RAM to run.
Loading from media is absolutely related to game design.
Now I do agree with you that with the current game design of <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> no one wants to go to-and-fro between worlds with every time a minimum of 5 seconds or more to continue playing.
If each act is self contained and with a random quest generator running that could keep you busy for 8 hours, then 5 or even 10 seconds after 8 hours should never hurt, and in fact it is for your good health to stop playing every two hours at most and stretch your jerky-stiff muscles. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
I think you misunderstood my technical proposal.
Utilising a DVD with mixed formats allows digital code data, music data streams and video data streams.
I apologise for those who are not acquainted with highly technical issues I talk about.
What I wish for is that game executable data (The 3D Engine, event and response monitor, etc.) must obviously be loaded into RAM only once at the beginning of every session.
If you happen to finish the quests within a world and new graphic data need to be loaded then a 5 to 10 seconds loading is quite tolerable if it was once every 8 hours play, very roughly estimating.
On the other hand, during playing in one and only one world at a time, you gain the fabulous digital sound tracks streaming directly from DVD into your sound card and on to your valuable ears. Similarly, video-clips may be played as native video formats directly into hardware equipped for playback of MP3 formats or whatever the standard may be.
I think you are confusing
Data Streaming with code loading.
Data Streaming is a very advanced concept in which the CPU initiates the process only while the data-stream is transferred from source to destination without CPU intervention at all.
Why do you need to worry about the transfer rate if you can hear the music/sound and watch the video in perfect performance!
Larian Studios is definitely to blame on setting up this misconception by the very bad decision on the scenario of <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> in which you are forced to hop between worlds madly to complete a sub-sub-quest.
If <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/riftrunner.gif" alt="" /> avoided this silly requirement then the game performance shall improve drastically.
What would your response be if all the game was residing on your fabulous and fast hard disk, all the code is in your magnificent RAM, but the random quest generator took 30 seconds to generate a scene?
Personally, I would throw the game in garbage.
Never blame the game code performance on media, because this advice comes from me to you.
I earned money from a Japanese Company that manufactured Multi-Head-Embroidery-Machines that are fully computerised with automated control when I rewrote the software (Firmware) that loads the designs from floppies such that 10,000 (x, y, command) sets were loaded in 6 seconds rather than three and a half minutes as they produced it. I squeezed the code until using barrel shifts for multiplication operations.
So never blame a floppy for the bad performance caused by a flipping programmer or a DVD for a drunken game designer.
Take my word for it, I am the expert here.
Cheers.
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mage.gif" alt="" />
