Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) Suggestions A DVD versus 4 Cds

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="" />