I was wondering if Larian Studios have this suggestion as an option.
In fact, I would love to have a single DVD from which the game runs automatically without any installation else than installing the saved-games directory along with the options set-up configuration file.
I may put this as a suggestion now.
If L. S. made the game to run from the DVD with minimal registration file and HD usage it shall be an unprecedented product, and that might double its sales.
On the other hand there is no thinkable way to avoid producing the game on CDs as the user-base is still far from standardising DVDs as the preferable media.
I would love to hear a reply from Swen on this question.
Shall there be DVD versions of <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/riftrunner.gif" alt="" /> or no?

Cheers.

That is one thing I do agree with. By releasing the game on DVD, people will upgrade their computer to play the game, just as people started buying CDs over casette tapes. DVD is the way of the future. In fact, it's already been superceded!

Although, an optional install is possibly better as DVD drive speeds are still absolute crap compared to modern hard-drives and there's no way you'd be able to put all the data you need sequentially on the disc. One thing I can't stand is speech skipping because my bloody drive is getting up to speed.

If you're interested, go check out the sales for Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance on PC. The 2nd week after the game was out, the price dropped by half.
Still, each time I walk in the stores, I still see the 4 copies of the game, untouched. Why? Because it is on DVD. The surest way to worsen <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/riftrunner.gif" alt="" />'s sales, is to publish a DVD. Most people won't upgrade their computers because of one game, so don't expect people buy a DVD-player with RiftRunner.

Maybe you GET a DVD player with the special edition? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

but i think that DVD is going too slow to be the new standard.
it's not bad at this time, but it could be faster..

The Executable code MUST be in RAM.
The graphical background on which you shall be able to zoom in/ out MUST be in RAM, what difference does it make to load it from the DVD or the Hard Disk except wasted media and redundancy?
The DVD shall be native to play sound tracks and movie clips at highest quality per data-memory-media cost.
You never run code from a hard disk or a cd directly, so the issue here is data streaming not running code. Streaming the audio music track data from DVD to sound card directly saves CPU time by the advanced architectures available today.
Streaming the video movie clip directly to the graphics card too would be fantastic when it is compressed, for example by MPEG3 or whatever is compatible.
Metal Gear was never at the same rank of <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> to make a comparison and in my opinion it would never sell good even if they printed it on a gold dish.
I think that <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/riftrunner.gif" alt="" /> and the following Divinity II may be the best reason to push the market to upgrade.
Cheers.

[quote The Executable code MUST be in RAM.
The graphical background on which you shall be able to zoom in/ out MUST be in RAM, what difference does it make to load it from the DVD or the Hard Disk except wasted media and redundancy?
The DVD shall be native to play sound tracks and movie clips at highest quality per data-memory-media cost.
You never run code from a hard disk or a cd directly, so the issue here is data streaming not running code. Streaming the audio music track data from DVD to sound card directly saves CPU time by the advanced architectures available today.
Streaming the video movie clip directly to the graphics card too would be fantastic when it is compressed, for example by MPEG3 or whatever is compatible.
Metal Gear was never at the same rank of <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> to make a comparison and in my opinion it would never sell good even if they printed it on a gold dish.
I think that <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/riftrunner.gif" alt="" /> and the following Divinity II may be the best reason to push the market to upgrade.
Cheers.[/quote]

What I mean is: very few people have DVD players in their computers.
Also about MGS2: you like it or not, the MGS franchise was one of the most popular ever, considered by most, the best stealth game ever made for computer or PlayStation. If people don't buy MTG because it was on DVD, the chances are that even less people buy <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/riftrunner.gif" alt="" /> DVD. How many people have heard of <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" />? Everyone has heard of MGS. We have 1679 registered members, Konami of America has 7958 users on their forums. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/riftrunner.gif" alt="" /> Will NOT sell if it will be made on DVD. Besides, which game company publshes games on DVD?

on a side note.
there was an earlier version of the <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> forum before this one.
and it had more then 5000 members <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
and this was for only 1 game instead of lot's of games on the konami website

Money.

If a game is published exclusively on DVD, then I'll have to buy a DVD drive - and I can be *very* conservative on things. My burner, for example, is only one year old.

I'd prefer games on CD-ROM, because a CD-ROM drive is what nowadays everybody has.

Publishing a game on DVD ONLY is good for hardware manufacturers, but not for the one who has to spend the money.

It's too early for games being in DVD format. I'm sure many people don't accept it yet. I for instance, don't have a DVD drive in my computer yet. I don't see the point, it's wasted money. If I want to see a DVD movie, I'll use my Playstation 2. And there's hardly any software for PC that requires a DVD drive.

I won't buy a DVD drive until I REALLY need it, or my CD-ROM drive fails.

Sorry mate, I didn't meant to be disrespectful to DD or Larian or you or your best friend's neighbour's gray cat.
I just wanted to say that MGS2 was popular...

I know about the DVDroms. I have one. I bought if for one reason(hint: Jack the ___) but I didn't used it yet. So here I am, wasted $50 Can for nothing.

Don't worry you didn't <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

But the only game i know who had put a game on dvd, was the special edition of baldor's gate2
I think in about 5 years thing will be different...

Ofcourse they will. I mean, I don't think you can buy CD-ROM drives anymore, and sooner or later, they will all malfunction, forcing people to buy replacements. And since there are no more CD-ROM drives, they'll buy DVD-drives. And only when this happens, will games go DVD, instead of multiple CD-ROMs.

But I think that we haven't come to that time yet.

But who has 2.7Gb of RAM in their machine? (Keep quite, I know you're out there waiting to gloat!)

Sure you must load the executable and any commonly used media into RAM, but many game leave it at that. They only load the sounds and animations of those characters currently in use, which may mean the player and Orcs, or player and townsfolk. With increasing resolutions, you can load less characters into RAM as before and so games only remember the most immediately essential characters at any one time. My DVD drive can take a whole three or four seconds to respond to a load command, and that's assuming the data is sequential. I would hate to have that everytime I shifted between the wilderness and villages.

Also, conversations are clasically only played from disc in these cases. Again with the four second delay just to say "Hi" to a merchant. RiftRunner is going to have full speech (Which is going to be good, but very quickly annoying. Remember Deckard Cane in Diablo I?) and hence a lot of loading of sound files.

To my (limited) knowledge, Metal Gear Solid is the best selling game ever on PlayStation, and most certainly one of the most critically acclaimed. It doesnt mean you or I like it, but it was a very popular game. I'm surprised people didn't upgrade their machines. I remember getting more memory just for The Sims and a better video card just for StarTopia, and then finding I needed a whole new machine to supply data to the graphics card fast enough.

I am still with a Pentium 3 666mhz, 256 PC-133 RAM and GeForce 2 GTS...

Ah, btw, I am no big fan of MGS2 <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />.

Are you telling us that you do not have a 1.44 MB floppy drive!
Why not install it from 2000 floppies? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
Ridiculous, right?
I have freakingly installed software that came on 26 floppies some years ago. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/memad.gif" alt="" />
CDs came in for the rescue.
Now the pattern is repeating itself.
With fabulous graphics and cheaper memories as well as gigantic software teams working under coordination, one expects software to inflate in size to multiples giga bytes very soon, and we are witnessing the beginning here and now, or do you not realise that <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> is a 2.6 GB software, or perfectly a DVD-full size application?
Hard disks are going to jump to a 40GB as the standard average while 60, 80, 100 and 120GB shall be common place and quite available if not already.
A game simulating reality while porting it to fantasy shall consume memory media like a hungry Orc consumes a chicken leg. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
So do expect your next favourite title to come on six CDs (600 MB each) or two DVDs as an available variety. One DVD shall be the install DVD and the other shall be the run-time DVD. It is only a matter of time until you witness my prophecy to come true.
I started programming on Holerith Cards which I doubt if you have even heard of them.
Then came in the paper tapes then the magnetic tapes and finally (then) we rejoiced when we had the 8 inch floppies that stored 160 K bytes. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
I have witnessed that pattern of media becoming obsolete to give way to a more compact media.
We almost disbelieved it when we were told that a 3.5 inch floppy could hold 360 k bytes. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
Then they told us there is yet a DOUBLE DENSITY and all our eyebrows went up.
No way, you mean 720 K bytes on one single floppy?
Then the quad density was announced and the name was changed to High Density for the 1.44 MB which is still surviving due to the size compatibility with office work and filing systems upgrade and for no other reason.
An application on 26 floppies was a cry from hell to find out an alternative for distributing that much on one platter.
There you go and CDs came into the market.
It is the demand that pushes the manufacturers to comply and not vice versa.
Now we do have DVDs available, thus it is a very wise decision to make the game available on 3 or 4 CDs as well as on one DVD as in a transitional period for the market to move on.
In 1986 I paid dearly to obtain a memory expansion card that was a mere 32 K byte to which I was grateful to have.
Today, my graphics work station holds 4 memory modules each of which is 256 MB totalling One Giga Byte RAM.
Progress is unstoppable and the Larians would regret not to share in making history and rather wait and watch.
I call for a poll.

Well, I vote DVD because I have one. I don't think I'd be too adverse to buying a DVD drive for the game though. More will follow suit.

You'd miss the opportunity for fitness and agility by not having to get up and change the CD's - stretching included. And what about brain work? Puzzling out if the correct CD is in there? The joy if it works - the despair if you just can't find the correct one, cause your table is cluttered?
DVD takes out fun, I love wading knee deep in silver <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
Kiya

BTW I've got both <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

Some DVDs are 10Gigs <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

I wonder: will Larian really publish a DVD if the poll goes well? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

DVD can be:

Single-sided: 2.6Gb
Double-layered: 5.2Gb
Double-sided: 5.2Gb
Double-sided & double-layered: 10.4Gb

And they've not got Blue Discs which run off a blue laser. You can several times more data on one of those. It's not quite ready for commercial use though.

The executable needs to be in RAM, but it's a rather small exe file and it's main tasks are checking for the disc and load all the rest. As to loading it from harddisk or DVD, well last time I checked my harddisk is a hell of a lot faster than my DVD player. You would be looking at longer loading times because of that. This was less of an issue for BGII as it had relative small areas, but for Divinity/Riftrunner this would mean that you might get screen freezes every now and then when something needds to be loaded from the DVD.

You got the DVD capacities completely wrong.

A DVD can be:

DVD-5 (12cm, SS/SL): 4.38 gig (4.7 G) of data, over 2 hours of video
DVD-9 (12cm, SS/DL): 7.95 gig (8.5 G), about 4 hours
DVD-10 (12cm, DS/SL): 8.75 gig (9.4 G), about 4.5 hours
DVD-14 (12cm, DS/ML): 12.33 gig (13.24 G), about 6.5 hours
DVD-18 (12cm, DS/DL): 15.90 gig (17 G), over 8 hours
DVD-1 (8cm, SS/SL): 1.36 gig (1.4 G), about half an hour
DVD-2 (8cm, SS/DL): 2.48 gig (2.7 G), about 1.3 hours
DVD-3 (8cm, DS/SL): 2.72 gig (2.9 G), about 1.4 hours
DVD-4 (8cm, DS/DL): 4.95 gig (5.3 G), about 2.5 hours
DVD-R (12cm, SS/SL): 3.68 gig (3.95 G)
DVD-R (12cm, DS/SL): 7.38 gig (7.9 G)
DVD-R (8cm, SS/SL): 1.15 gig (1.23 G)
DVD-R (8cm, DS/SL): 2.29 gig (2.46 G)
DVD-RAM (12cm, SS/SL): 2.40 gig (2.58 G)
DVD-RAM (12cm, DS/SL): 4.80 gig (5.16 G)

In this list, the DVD+R sizes are missing, but AFAIR they are nearly identical to DVD-5.

Standard are the DVD-5 and DVD-9 versions. Perhaps you mixed those sizes up with DVD-RAM (which isn't a DVD at all, but rather a MO-disk)

I have no DVD-rom (many other neither) DX9 worries me 2...

We are discussing two different topics in here: First one being whether the game should be released on DVD, the second one being whether the game should offer a minimal installation option with only a few MB on the HDD.

Ad 1: DVD-Only is not a good idea. The comparisons here are rather interesting. Yes, CD-ROM drives became popular, but which was the first well known CD-only game? Rebel Assault I'd say... and I wouldn't compare Rebel Assault to RRR. Rebel Assault was LucasArts and StarWars universe, RRR is Larian Studios and DivDiv universe. Now, what might be the difference here?
Fact is that with making a DVD-only game, you might be very brave but in the same time rather silly since - as others pointed out - nobody will buy new hardware for a game unless it's a dead popular title like HL2 for example. And RRR is NOT popular (no problem for me, I'll like it anyway). So, is it a good idea to release a game only for a few members of the huge gamer society? No, it isn't if there is another way - and there is: just release the game on CD (AND DVD if you really want).

Ad 2: Minimal installation is a very ridiculous idea. 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?

Bingo.
I never hoped for anything more than Availability



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.



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="" />

[quoteNow 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="" />[/quote]

My point is that a whole world (say, the Rivertown map) would not fit in memory. You could store the entire map layout, but you could only load the media for the creatures around you. Most machines would not be able to store the media for the healers, the orcs, the trolls, the undead, the villagers, the poor people, the knights, the animals, the spiders, the dwarves, and the elves simultaniously, not to mention the data for every single interactable item on the map. The characters are stored on the hard drive and the items in swap-memory. If the characters were stored on the disc, there would be a significant loading time between Aleroth and the forest and the farmlands and the Cursed Abbey and Stormfist Castle and the Dwarven Hills and the Orc Plains...

Jerky gameplay has been an eternal thorn in gamers sides. I was very impressed with the way that MDK2 and Dungeon Seige handled this. You could not detect loading times in either of those games.

But finally, it can all be answered with the miricle of options. As long as RiftRunner has the option of Minimum, Typical, and Full installs, everyone will be happy (except those with a P2 who can't play the game).

If you have several games installee at the *same time* you quickliy runh out of space. I know that. I have experienced it myself.

I got 20Gigs <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/disagree.gif" alt="" />.

I have 40Gb. I was only going to get 20Gb, but the 40Gb Seagate drive was AU$20 extra and was twice as fast.

My laptop is Toshiba's Satellite 5100-503, which came with a 40 GB HD.
I was not fast enough to grab the only one that came with a 60GB before another customer did and I was really in a hurry to buy a laptop while overseas for emergency communications that demanded buying one but I am finicky, fussy, picky and choosy as ever. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

However, <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> still demands a score of seconds to load the next world’s background.
You are making a technical mistake by imagining the diametrical opposite of the situation to be the case.
To scroll the background smoothly, the desktop virtual resolution must be redefined to hold ALL the background of that world. There is no possible compromise here.
When your hero walks or runs through the coordinate system of THAT background, the random character generator is given orders by the program to generate a set of foes related to your location on the map. Other rules involve your current level, status, experience points and if you were indoors or outdoors because indoors have a bit more special rules and possibly a preset number of characters to generate within an area.
In that way, by the time you advance in your direction of motion the characters have been already generated and you do not feel any jerky performance. The program shall only update the animation of the character within the visible window of the scene and shall only update a single coordinate per NPC within the battlefield outside the visible zone, which may be seen on the mini-map as a bright green or red dot while you are a blue five-pixels-cross.

Everything the program needs within a world MUST be in RAM.
This also includes the cross-worlds database of information that keeps up with the development of the character, the quests achieved and all the kills database which you may brows at will any time.
Even the conversations are in RAM.
But you may not even see the open-ground map while you are in a dungeon under that map as such is considered to be another world even though it is resident for fast swapping of maps by reassigning the origin pointer of that map.

I asked you to take my word for it but I can see that you are still struggling and arguing.
Believe me, RAM is the bottle neck of game performance within a world.
Data streaming from hard-disks or from DVDs makes no difference when the data-stream demands a transfer rate lower than both.
What you experience in <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> as a delay is nothing else than the huge background map loading time, AND the huge data that accompanies each world. Because you need to know about roofs that fade in and out and every single item that you can manipulate within that world such as doors, chests, hatches, wells, etcetera.
Those are called graphic overlays and they occupy the ancient and well known sprite space.

No game designer may gamble by keeping that data on a hard disk as quality tests shall disqualify the design instantly.

Therefore your argument for Hard Disks having a privilege over DVDs is point moot.
Does your favourite movie star look sexier than usual when you run a movie from hard disk rather than from the DVD? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

Swen announced that <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/riftrunner.gif" alt="" /> shall have a random battlefield generator. This means that even a huge bitmap for the background is not going to be loaded but rather the elements from which the scene shall be randomly generated. This means that the world loading time is based on the sprite loading time plus those random generation elements. Let us say that it would take 3 seconds at worst cases.

Scene generation would be in the order of one or two seconds per battle field if it was bigger than your screen, which is most probable, and you have zooming in and out options too.
You may not zoom in on static-bitmap-data without having big solid funny squares filling your screen. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
If it can be recalculated on the fly then it can be generated on the fly too.


Now the issue becomes whether playing the game from a DVD directly is cheaper or not.
Read the list of merits please.
1- It saves wasted space on your hard disk for valuable data you wish to save.
2- It saves you the clumsy operation of swapping disks or the pop up window of please insert the second, third, and fourth CD.
3- You do not even need an installation procedure but rather a registration and configuration procedure done once, and every time you load your DVD inside the drive, automatically you are on and playing your game.

If you can trust Zandalor in the game you should be able to trust me on this.
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mage.gif" alt="" />

No problems there. I believe they use a tile based system so that they can reuse graphics and save space.


I have no qualms with the performance of the creatures of creatures. I have a problem that my game already starts behaving jerkilly when I encounter a type of character that I haven't seen for a while (e.g. Travelling from Orc lands to the Cursed Abbey) The game jerks while it loads the animations and sounds for the undead creatures as each unique type appears. The jerk isn't much, only a quater of a second, perhaps. But if they were being loaded from disc, the disc would have to speed up, track to where the data was, and then copy it at a rate far slower than my hard-drive already can.


Wrong. Everything you can see and hear must be in RAM. The rest can can be omitted until it is required.


That's true. The quest log isn't a memory issue because at it's largest I doubt it would be pushing 1Mb of text.


Again, only as required. When it loads a character such as the statue in Nericon's garden, any other features it are loaded along with it. The actual speech often isn't loaded, but streamed directly from which ever drive it's on.


I think that Divine Divinity has two maps loaded simultaniously, the main map and the underground. When you move from main map to main map, the program loads the other two maps that apply to the new area you're in.


No, I don't see why I should take your word as gospel. This is an open forum where people can discuss and debate things.


You are right that data-stream rates are fine, but access time between the two is a great difference and was my point from the beginning. To access a file on a disc takes about 3 or 4 seconds. To access the same file on a hard drive is almost instantanious.


I don't mind the big load between maps as I can see the importance of that. It's the loading times within a map, and especially during travel that I don't want.


Yet that is one of the key components of almost every business database in the world. Databases aren't stored in memory because they are too big.


Yes, because when I stream data from a disc, it comes in buffered bursts (much to my annoyance) and shuts down between reads. I have frequent pauses during the movie which I don't get if I copy the movie to the hard drive. And besides, I prefer watch them in the living room on a TV.


All very true and positive. However, for me:
1- Hard drive space is not an issue as I only play a few games at a time.
2- Swapping discs is only required during installation, but then, I'm all for DVD anyway.
3- Installation happens once and that's it.

The other problem with not installing the game is that it makes patching very difficult. When Larian released the patch to fix all of the quests, that modified files that, by your proposed idea, would be loaded from the disc. It's very difficult to alter a disc! Hard drives have always been a far more flexable method of data storage and manipulation, beaten only by Flash-RAM (which still has poor capacity (I think)).

I'm not saying that running the game from disc won't work, but these issues all apply and have to be considered.

Have Fun!

Indeed they do, but don’t you think that after filling the world with grass tiles they need to place the houses, the fences and every rock and tree that act as a three-dimensional object behind which you may hide?
Are those 3D objects TILES too?
The loading time you see on the Divinity-sward-meter MUST include populating the world with every object you might use other than the randomly generated items that never come to be until you identify them.
Do you think that the game shall load the objects within a house every time you enter it and unload it every time you leave it? If you do then you are wrong. If you do not think so then you certainly agree that the world tiles and objects must be loaded once you travel to that world. If you do agree again then what I taught you was correct from start and needed not all that argumentation from you.



Who told you that what you believe to be true must be true! It is not true.
Firstly, the jerkiness you experience must be related to mouse pointer update rate and image update rate mismatch. If a character is involved then that burp is related to time of character generation stopping your character from smoothly advancing at the expected rate. Once the characters are generated you shall never feel that jerk even if you exit and re-enter the abbey hundreds of times.
One serious cause of jerkiness is the loading of wave files from media on demand, such as that monolog you say on entering the abbey for the first time calling it a creepy place. That is the case of narrated monologs and dialogs. All those are programming glitches that can be improved when the team at Larian Studios gain the required experience through fan-feedback. They are quite capable people you know but they need to be more professional than genius.



Says who, YOU? If it is not in RAM then the programmer made a mistake he regrets right now reading your sad words. Everything within a world needed by that world is absolutely REQUIRED.
When would be that UNTIL, when you need to see it and oops we have to load it and your game JERKS? Give me a break. I am not telling you what the geniuses do here and there; I am telling you what we teach in the University for the want-to-be-programmers.




Oh! Thank you dearly SIR.
This might even mean that I may pass the exams, no? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />





You misunderstood my quote, as I pointed to the conversations archive that you seem to have never read.
It is on the page right before your commented status.




But I DID write the Gospel on the subject of concern.
You may wish to debate with other students as you wish, but with me on electronics and information technology please do not refrain from asking and I shall be very generous. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />



And that is why we taught our students that critical data must be RAM Resident.
Your pseudo-instantaneous does not measure up to multiples of the speed of light which is not instantaneous either. So loading time must be eliminated altogether because execution time is quite a burden by itself.
Now, did you understand?




I told you it was an ox and yet you demand milking it. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
There is no need altogether to load anything at run time, which should be dedicated to calculations and commanding data streams’ traffic. During running the executable code the owner of execution receives the events generated by the user and other devices. The code must service those events in real time to maximise the game performance. Any time spent in loading and saving data is dead time in which the program is technically HALTED
Now, did you understand?




So what is your freaking point, or did you even have a point at all, or are you just quibbling?
Aren’t we discussing real time performance of RPG games!
What does BUSINESS applications have to do with our discussion sir?




In that case you might consider the serious consultation of a hardware expert on your PC system.
Hard disks, Cds and DVDs all need to speed up and lock on a phase-locked-loop based synchroniser before data may be written or read reliably from such media. You have pick up the hardware-software combination that keeps your disk turning during running your application to avoid that problem.
Hard disks are no different on this issue except that they begin turning from BIOS and never stop unless the system is shut down or hibernated. Therefore do not blame the device but blame the superman who is programming.





Hard disk space is not an issue for you but it is a very big issue for millions of computer based applications users.
Swapping (floppy) disks is definitely responsible for half the crazy people on this forum including me. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
Installation should never happen because there are systems that run from flash memory cards.
This means that for now it is a step of technical advancement to load and run applications automatically with every possible plug and play automatic detection.
In the future, your DVD-RAM should be your bootable drive from which you may run your favourite or multiple operating systems.
The inflated arsenal of devices has caused a lengthy installation of operating systems, but if hardware settles on landmark standards, then applications may build on the expected rather than detecting the unexpected. We are a long way from that now because greed has no end.
Take for example Play Station II and realise that a DVD application does exist in the manner I describe.
You turn on the power, open the DVD drawer, place your DVD game, close the drawer and snatch your game pad because you are in.
Do you think that Play Station II is jerky in its performance because its games run from DVD or CD?

Now I am off.
No more following up on this never ending P.I.S.S.I.N.G contest.

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/memad.gif" alt="" />

OK, you are an expert in this field as you say. But experts seem to lose contact to the "real" world (believe me, I am an expert in that!) and tend to forget what was before they created some cool tings.

Means: Haven't you ever played a game from CD by now? Let alone the loading time at the beginning of a "level", especially the sound issue is very annoying. Why annoying you will ask? I don't know what a real expert can do with CDs/DVDs, but my experience with games shows me that there is a significant amount of loading whenever music and sound is involved. DivDiv has different music tracks for different areas for example... RRR might have the same. Then maybe different music tracks for different fight situations... not to forget the speech system... and all of that loading from DVD? I still doubt the fact that this might get as fast as from HDD - and (which is almost more important for me) the drive would have to work all the time. Now, do you know how annoying such a working DVD-Rom can be?
Fact is that personally, I always disabled music whenever it was directly from CD. And I'd rather chop my hands off than doing this with DivDiv's or RRR's music (which will be as good as in DivDiv I hope).

CD-ROM drives can be annoying loud. I explicitely wanted a *silent* one, when I bought my own PC <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

i had some bad experience too with cd's with the game "the 7th gest"
a kind of myst-game but in a spooky house.
when you entered a room. sometimes a ghost appeared or something happende to make you scared. but i always knew that "something" will happen because i heard my cd-rom drive for the loading of the animations...BEFORE the animation whent on the screen

I fail to see why it needs to load everything possible. You can't jump throught the game to an arbitrary loction so loading everything outside a few screens of your range is useless. The world maps are huge and so are the amount of creatures and items on them. It's a waste of space to have them all loaded when nobody can see them. Actually I played a debug version of Divinity once and I could jump to any location anywhere on the map. After jumping the map was empty. It contained all the 'fixed' objects like the trees, plants, fences and houses, but all the dynamic objects took a short time to show up. The static map alone is already a few hundred megabytes in size, let alone a map filled with everything it needs to have.

I especially like this statement from you:


You might consider applying this on your own beliefs. Unless you have a trackrecord on designing games or spend time with the Larians while they were developing, all of what you say is speculation.
In my programming career I've seen different people tackle the same problem in differen ways with different effects. I've come to belief that there is no single solution for any given problem. Any solution can be improved upon.




Duh! That's some statements you fearlessly make there.




You have to be kidding me. What is taught in University is the one and only truth? LOL




Maybe Lar should consider hiring you, there is nothing better than to have the God of game programming at your side. Please if you do intend to enlighten us again with your answers for our mere mortals could you also add the list of games you worked on and bedazzle us with your expertise and knowledge?

Hi all. I think I just found the right topic to join the general discussion <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

@DAD:
Sorry, but I somehow fail to see your point. Why?

First: Consoles use the system you described. There are no rpgs like <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> or Baldur's Gate for consoles...

Second: RAM isn't big enough to load all data required for playing a game. Harddrives are superior to dvd drives concerning speed...

As long as no one can come up with a convincing explanation/solution for these two issues, I'll still install all my games to my loved harddisk.

And now to get back on topic: If I had the choice between a cd and a dvd edition, I would take the latter; but, as many people already mentioned, I'm not sure if the time is already right for such experiments...

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/offtopic.gif" alt="" /> Nice to be here and I hope <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/riftrunner.gif" alt="" /> will be a great game...

welcome to the forums......xypher... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wave.gif" alt="" />
...hope your stay will be a long one.... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

DVD or CD doesn't matter to me.....i'm buying it anyway
i've got both so it doesn't really matter... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

^ I second that!

Ah, also hello to all the s.

Getting pretty tired of Mister DAD knows it all

Welkom, xypher
and let's hope you don't betray your new buddies like you did in the Matrix movie <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

Only I do experience it again when I move from section to section. It has nothing to do with the mouse. What did yuo mean by this? I realise there is a jerk as random stats are appied to objects and creatures, but they are almost undetectable. I mean pauses that last a quarter to half a second.



That is to be expected. And that's why I want the sound files on my hard-drive.


Emphasis on can. It is not a requirement. In the strictest sense, you only require your immediate surroundings in RAM. Look at Dungeon Siege. It is one entire seemless world. Is that all loaded into RAM when you start the game?


Sorry, my mistake. I took that as the spoken conversation.


I said almost instantanious. I do understand the principals (spelling?) of inertia and energy flow. Yes, I do understand and see your point. My opinion on the matter is that medai should be cached ahead of time, but still remain within memory size restrictions.

For someone so concerned about hard-drive space, you seem to have a lot of RAM to spare. That is another luxury many do not have.


Not necessarily. You can have hard-drive operations in the back-gorund. Windows does it all the time. Provided the code managing the data flow doesn't take CPU time away form the game processes, there is little trouble.


My freaking point is that you seem to be saying that hard-drives are an inappropriate choice for storing excess data required during run-time. Swap files and real-time hard-drive access is used in most software applications, whether business or entertainment. Plenty of games use hard-drives effectively for storage of temporarily static components.


And RAM for the rest of us.


I hate swapping discs too, but I don't mind it during installation if it means not having to do it agian.


Which most computers do not support. When flash memory takes off, after DVD does, I'm sure software will be released on it and it will be better than ever.
Hell, let's just go back to cartridges. They're fast and have the storage of whatever modern ROM chips can provide.




So you put the Windows (or Linux or whatever) disc in, turn on the computer, swap discs to load your application, and swap discs again to get the datafiles you need to work/play.

I hated doing that on the Commodore Amiga 1000.

I think if you can have all of your favourite applications on the hard-drive, it takes away the need to ever swap discs for any application ever. If a reliable alternative to CD-Key can be invented, it would be a disc free system. Hell, you could download everything you ever needed off the Internet!


Good point. Aside from the OS is hard-coded into the machine, that is a near perfect hard-drive free game system. If they could somehow save save-games to the DVD, it would be even better.


Good point. Although, I'm yet to see a Play Station game that has an entire world in one and not separate levels that take minutes to load. If you can point me at one, I'll have a look.

Sleep well! Stay bouncy!

Did I ever say that CDs or DVDs better a HD on access time! Quote me.
The problem in this discussion is that you all seem to be arguing on the wrong issue.
I am one step ahead on solution.
If LOADING time is a problem then we have to get rid of LOADING during RUNTIME.
A good programmer must make the decision of WHAT is necessary and needed versus unnecessary from a time sequence criterion point of view.
Within a world, the graphic ELEMENTS are not that much of a huge chunk of data before assembly.
With fast processors, and Swen announced Pentium III 445 MHZ as a minimal requirement and 128 MB RAM. I think that Larian Studios have already calculated the requirements. Add to that the hint on demanding DX 9.0 compliancy for direct 3D and bingo it is all clear.
So basically speaking they shall LOAD the graphic elements of a world into RAM then assemble the world by executing the code. As for sound and music streams they may be channelled through DMA advanced architecture from DVD or CD to the sound card directly under code instructions without any LOADING
If I am still not clear on this topic please let me know the point on which you may wish for me to expand on.

Kind regards.

Firstly, I did not describe any consoles.
Secondly, Swen already announced that <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/riftrunner.gif" alt="" /> demands 128 MB RAM and those who do not have that much MUST upgrade their systems to play the game.
Thirdly: We need not compare the access time of data from a media when no access is required at all.
Fourthly: thank you for making the right choice by favouring a DVD.
Sixthly: Welcome to the forum. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Drink your Super Yellow Potion. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
You might be able to keep up then. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

But how on earth did you guess that I knew it all if I never revealed that secret. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
You must have noticed. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
Keep it as a secret, OK? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wave.gif" alt="" />

Academia is the house of research and knowledge.
Ignorance is not to be shamed of for those who seek knowledge.
Others SHOULD duck.
You are welcome to challenge a professor on his subject, but you should welcome the black ball and the F.
Fair is fair, right?

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

We seem to have made progress in this discussion although it was advancing on a parallel rail rather than perfectly on topic.
I feel being forced to be more verbose and I should apologise to those who love short notes.

Now I shall not wade into simulations such as Sim City more than just mentioning it for reflection.
Please recall any game that comes with an editor to grasp the concepts.
1- There is a basic land size option.
2- There is a basic pallet for the terrain and water types which are based on bitmap tiles.
3- There are land/ sea options which you may overlay the scenery with.
4- There are static or non-functional graphic features that do not register hot points detectable by mouse pointer.
5- Finally you add the active graphics coordinates to which the user may interact or is being automated by software.

On the other side of this issue we have a graphics card that comes with a special type of memory accessed by the graphics processor to display its contents.

I shall discard my case where my system can display 1600 x 1200 pixels at full 32 bit colour descriptors.
So let us visit the standards.
Larian Studios was quite professional on the resolution choices to cover the market.
640 x 480, 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 are the standard three resolutions we have around.
Now let us investigate the limits of demanding RAM.
1024 x 768 x 16 bit colour for (565) technique was quite a professional choice.
This means that each screen you see demands 12,582,912 bytes or 12 MB for short.
It so happens that we can define a virtual screen with a much higher resolution and swap memory content in a flash of time the first upper level is 4 visible screen tiles with a total of 48 MB.
The second upper level is 9 visible screen tiles totalling 108 MB.
Now read carefully.
In this situation you have a screen right in front of your eyes and 8 screens ready for scrolling and inspection. With a 128 MB RAM you have 20 MB available for system dynamic link libraries and your game. Some graphics cards come with 32, 64 or 128 MB of Video-RAM, which means that the system is relieved from being concerned about the place in which to place the graphics.
Once your character becomes technically inside a new screen some programmers on sensing that condition reconstructs the set of nine screens and that is a very bad decision.
A much better technique is the mini-map and the virtual border; with all your graphics elements resident in RAM you only need to update the hidden border as your character advances in coordinates without any loading from media during runtime. This means that your virtual screen may be only slightly bigger than the standard resolution such as 1200 x 1000 x 16, which is only 19.2 MB.
Some programmers prefer to use 80 x 80 graphic background tiles while others prefer a 64, 92 or 128 squares for addressing issues, but all should do fine.
The divinity wizard male is the largest graphics description files and they total 172 MB; now that may not be in RAM of course so how does the programmer use those files.
We all know that a character could be standing, walking, running or fighting and simply those files contain all such 3D animations. This fact dictates and demands LOADING data in real time from media to use in the game. There is a technical error made by L.S. in which they keep full graphics of 3D which absolutely unnecessary because you cannot rotate the world. North, South, East and west are fixed for the background.
Your character may be ordered to move in any direction in 360 degrees but only 8 gifs are required per status of motion (Standing, walking, running and fighting), so we are talking about 32 gifs but we need to consider the armour/ weapon combinations too. And here is the dilemma; can those bitmaps be saved statically beside the image lists used for constructing worlds?
Advanced techniques may save the day by applying skins and motion skeletons as well as making house construction sets RAM resident. This means that you shall see your character holding the correct weapon image rather than a standard axe for all axes. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />
This means that you shall see fabulous armour and style sets being animated on the fly.
So rather than wasting the power of your CPU in data transfer between media and RAM the CPU power shall be dedicated to calculate the skins wrapping the skeleton in a specific direction of motion to create a specific gif on the fly and voila. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />
That is why I complained from the fact that <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> had hundreds of useless weapons and Swen already acknowledged this problem and :rift; shall have less but more unique and fabulous weapons. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />
Random battlefield generators mean that no static libraries shall ever be in service of the game in the way it was in <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" />.
So what do we have here now with such very advanced programming technology; we have a graphics construction set rather than Pre-rendered gifs (animated clips).
We have one animation queue to fill rather than 8 at a time and we can do it On The Fly.
If the game demands 64 MB RAM and put every skin and skeletal description in that RAM then you have a fabulous performance that was absolutely impossible on the Z80 Sinclair.
A Pentium III running at 500 MHZ with 128 MB RAM is a very fair demand today.
The data bus never runs at the high frequency of the processor but typically runs at 33 or 66 MHZ only.
Thus, even the RAM data transfers are not as fast as you might believe it is or should be.

Now, by applying THIS advanced programming technology, we eliminate data loading at runtime completely and we do not need to worry about the performance of hard disks CDs or DVDs at runtime.
The music data Stream may be channelled to the audio card to run concurrently and without any supervision keeping the DVD running and hot for an audio-wave clip on demand.
Finally, we may have a bonus of video clips at the end of each act or even at critical quest-completion events to run directly from DVD, and we shall never experience any jerks of any sort whatsoever.

When the game starts, it needs to read a tiny configuration file to setup the resolution appropriately and nothing more. Occasionally you would want to save your game and rather than saving 48 MB for each game you only need to save key information, which is mainly significant numbers for counting things and saving coordinates of those things. My estimate is below 1MB of memory for each save.

So, mainly, our discussion included arguments passing over heads, because I never endorsed the current programming techniques, which demand installation on hard disks as an obvious solution.

My proposal was to adopt a much more advanced programming technology to get rid of hard disk runtime loading dependencies. I believe that Larian Studios are on their way to do just that even though in steps or in a little bit different way.

Read the latest interview with Swen and you shall catch the drift.

Cheers.

Yawn

Indeed.
I didn't read that. It's too much, what are you arguing about anyway, CD or DVD? The game will be on CDs as 9/10 of the consumers don't have DVDroms.

They can do both. I know of a handful of games that were released on both formats. Riven and Baulders Gate spring to mind.

riven? the sequel of myst?
i'm surpriced! wasn't that an "older" game?
that's r(eminds me i just bought myst 3 and hadn't the chanche of playing it yet <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif" alt="" />

Exile isn't as good as Riven. It has a story, but is more formulatic than a mysterious adventure. The puzzles are a lot more obvious, except for in the tree.

Voting for 4 CD's. I just see no need to buy one, yet. Maybe when games get to the point of "please insert CD #35 when installing a game, well then I'll buy a DVD. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/silly.gif" alt="" />

Yeah, I think everyone has to drink a whole lot of Stamina drinks to keep up here

*slapshisforehead* OMG! Why didn't I think of this before?! This simple idea should have come into my mind years ago! Actually when I played VC-20 games and waited some 10 minutes for a game being loaded from cassette! That was great and you didn't have loading during the rest of the game. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/silly.gif" alt="" />

+1 CD expantion <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />


Then we should buy a full garbage bag of RAM and leave <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/riftrunner.gif" alt="" /> to load overnight to play in the morning.

isn't RAM mutch faster then a harddisk?
if the RAM prices is going to get down even more.isn't it possible that in some time (10 years?) the harddisk would be replaced bij some kind of RAM? now that would be nice <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

I wonder what the RAMifications of implementing something like that would be <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

The othe thing is that most comercial computers have a RAM limit. Mine's about 2.0Gb, not enough to copy a DVD into.

You might try duct tape... I am not sure if it will work <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/silly.gif" alt="" /> but maybe DAD succeeded in it.

nice to have healthy arguments all around but things are a tad 2 tense here. or is it just me?

DAD makes good point(s) but just because he knows his stuff (the guy's a pro) & he struts it don't make him a roaring lion. he's telling it like it is. yeah, ok, so he roars a bit.

the matter at heart still stands at where it should be: 4 CDs vs 1 DVD.

DAD, if u're as good as what u say, i sure hope Larian will ask u 2 join the team 2 make the best game ever. just don't make us spend more than what we can afford. ;-)

man, this forum & its populace never cease 2 amaze me. don't hold back your genius now. jest is alright, not sarcasm.

& yes, my 2 cents. & if i'm ever wrong in any way, please accept my apologies & do tell me where i got it wrong.

Well ... views differ I guess.

Where's my own fan-club ? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/badsmile2.gif" alt="" />

Every opinion relies on experience.

But - as we all know, different people encounter different experiences.

Which could drive the own opinion (which is mainly based on experience) into the one direction or another.

Therefore opinions differ.

I only rely on my own opinions, but am willing to learn - as far as everything is reasonable.

(Apart from simple experiences I cannot explain, but they do exist.)

Congrats, DAD, you got yourself your first fanboy <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />.

hell, i never like to be off topic but i'm no DAD's fanboy. i just feel that he's right in what he said in this particular thread. & that's according to his XP.

i jumped in b'cos i felt that this thread was close 2 flame (& maybe it's just me again) & the underlying tone all over smells of brimstone.

hey alrik, i'm sure u have fan boy/girl somewhere. maybe u can start a thread on that.

as 4 deathatthedoor, u have great ideas as well. keep on spilling them here & i'm sure everyone will keep the ball rolling.

sorry, lynn. this one's way off topic.

Even people like DAD can be right sometimes <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />


Nah, we're all friends here, the love for Larian binds us together and prevents us from hurting each other <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/alien.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />


Maybe. On that poll in the Chat (Everything) he posted many people voted that he's hot <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />.


Cool! I have a fanboy!


It happens.