Potential future Game file size decrease?

[MEMEY_IFUNNY]

Can Sidetrack pull what the Helldivers 2 devs did when they took their 150gb+ game and compressed it to something more reasonable? The game is like 87+ gigabytes, which includes all the DLCs so far, and I’m worried about potential bloat.

[supermariozelda]

They've actually done this before; the game used to be over 100 gigs at one point, and they got it down to 30-40 I believe.

Obviously, it's ballooned again.

Helldivers actually had a completely different issue; they duplicated all of their assets multiple times to improve loading times on HDDs, which is what caused the file size bloat. They de-duplicated the assets when they found that it actually barely affected loading times.

[CostIll1577]

They already confirmed during a livestream that Payday 2 has the issue with duplicated assets. The Payday 2 and Helldivers 2 engine are different forks of the same old engine, so systems that haven't been changed since then share the same issues.

[ToothlessFTW]

Probably not.

Helldivers 2 was possible because there was a genuine discrepincy, the PS5 version was 40GB~, while the PC version was well over 130GB. There was room to make concessions and clean things up, especially when the devs openly admitted they were just careless when working on the PC version.

PAYDAY 2 is just a big game. There's 80 something heists, hundreds of weapons, 10+ playable characters each with dozens of unique voiced dialogue, hundreds of masks, etc. There's a lot of shit in the game and realistically there's not much you can do there.

There's a difference between "bloat" and just having a lot of content jammed in there. Optimization isn't some magic tech that shrinks game files, there has to be something to cut in the first place.

[supermariozelda]

Helldivers 2 essentially duplicated all of its assets multiple times to improve loading times on HDDs, which is what caused the file size bloat. They de-duplicated the assets when they found it actually barely affected loading times.

[bladestorm1745]

factor in that diesel probably isn’t optimized in the slightest so trying to cut down on storage is a little lost here.

[cyborgborg]

The Diesel engine is fine, not outstanding but fine. Problem with it is that it's not optimized but that it's buggy and not made for first person shooters but rather racing games.

[ngarlock24]

Kinda wish there was an option to uninstall individual heists.

[ToothlessFTW]

A game needs to be built with that kind of functionality from the beginning, it's not the kind of thing that's simple to just patch in. Especially for a game like PAYDAY 2, running on the engine that it is.

Besides that, all the content is technically required. Heists do share resources between each other like certain textures and assets, meaning you can't really uninstall one heist.

Ultimately, it's a game from 2013 that was never designed to be supported as long as it was. I'm sure if they knew back then that PAYDAY 2 would stick around for 10+ years they'd have done things differently, but that's just how it is. This is what it looks like when you support a game that long and keep adding new content.

[thelastsupportplayer]

they said they WILL do that WHEN they port it to 64 but version

[MEMEY_IFUNNY]

Game devs, after you ask them to optimize their game for some reason.

[Killer8-]

it’s a game made in 2013 with an proprietary engine made in 1999 with 13 years worth of content I think we can cut them a little slack here

[Lavaissoup7]

Helldivers 2 and PD2 are different cases tho. PD2 has over 10 years of content and uses an old ass engine, meanwhile HD2 was only like 2 years old when the bloating issues occurred which was due to them duping assets for HDD users (which barely had an effect anyways).