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Forums - Sony Discussion - Penny-Arcade- interesting note about MGS4 install times

IllegalPaladin on 14 June 2008
elnino334 said:
I just think is funny the game makes fun of multi disk yet has install between acts. Both multi disk and install suck because is time spent not playing the game. Hopefully someday we won't need neither.

Perhaps, though I've been planning install times so I can start it when I have things to do so I can instantly play it when I'm done. With MGS4, after spending 4 hours straight in the first act (or any other act), it was time to take a much needed break while the install took place.



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DMeisterJ on 14 June 2008

All this install whining is such old news.

People really need to get over themselves.

If there is nothing bad to say about the game, you have to say something about installs.

I guess it just goes to show how much of a masterpiece MGS4 is. So let all the "ZOMG the installz" whine about that while PS3 owners get to enjoy a marvel, one of the greatest games of the generation. I give Kojima props for his game being so good, that all people can hate on is install times.



windbane on 14 June 2008
ZenfoldorVGI said:
JSF said:
twesterm said:

I read this over on Penny-Arcade and thought it was pretty interesting (NOTE-- whole post here):

In the space of our play experience, we've already seen two separate installs. The game is still broken up into discrete areas, which I found odd, the assumption being that if we were taking time out to install shit it was because we were doing it to sustain a single world. You would have a hard time convincing me that multiple installs over the course of playing a videogame are worse than disc swapping. This has become some kind of theological question on forums, a kind of philosophical pinata, except no matter how many times you strike it no reward is forthcoming. Blu-Ray is only a convenience if it is actually convenient, if it doesn't require concessions either at the beginning of an experience or at several points throughout. It's amazing to me that this is considered progress.

They do raise a good point there. Is BluRay really convenient if instead of swapping discs you get installs at various points in your game?


What's your definition of "convenient"? If it means not having to get up at all, it's obviously a convenience. If it means having to find physical storage space for one disk versus many, it's obviously a convenience. If you're a messy sort of fellow and it means having many fewer disks to misplace, it's obviously a convenience.

The point itself they are trying to make is really premature. How one game decided to use the Blu-Ray storage does not automatically make it representative of all games that will use Blu-Ray. It remains to be seen.

Also, it is incorrect to assume that, had the game been broken out into many DVD's, there would be no installations required. If you look at a game like Mass Effect, you can easily see that some DVD games could really benefit from installs. That's not even a "maybe it'd be better." Mass Effect would 100% absolutely benefited from installations despite being on DVD9.

Penny Arcade lost any image of non-partisanship when they developed a game for XBLA. (Obviously, if people don't have that particular console, they can't buy your game.) I feel Blu-Ray is progress, just as DVD was progress over the CD. It's not innovation, but it is progress nevertheless.

 


I think they mean that it's easier to change a disc 3 times, which might take 30 seconds total, than wait for 3 installs at 5 minutes a piece.


The first install is 8 minutes, the ones inbetween are 2-3 minutes. This is the only game that does this, and as he says, it doesn't say anything about Blu-ray at all.



windbane on 14 June 2008
DMeisterJ said:
All this install whining is such old news.

People really need to get over themselves.

If there is nothing bad to say about the game, you have to say something about installs.

I guess it just goes to show how much of a masterpiece MGS4 is. So let all the "ZOMG the installz" whine about that while PS3 owners get to enjoy a marvel, one of the greatest games of the generation. I give Kojima props for his game being so good, that all people can hate on is install times.

The option should be there to install all of the files at the start rather than waiting 2-3 minutes every act. That's a fair criticism. It is a testament to how much is going on that installs are required to begin with, but the legitmate complaint has always been lack of options when it comes to installs.



Kasz216 on 14 June 2008
Saiyar said:
Kasz216 said:
starcraft said:
Saiyar said:
Kasz216 said:
Saiyar said:
 

I am a bit confused as to why you think this is relavent? The size of the game data isn't going to change just because it is on DVD instead of blu-ray

It will if it's on 2 or 3 DVDs. The data would be split up so their would be less space to cover.

Now i am really confused. Just because it is split up doesn't mean there is less space to cover (it is not like the 360 can read form 3 DVDs at once). 25GB on a BD is the same as 25GB on 3 DVDs.

The only thing I can think of he might mean is that fact that most Blu-Ray disk games reproduce identical data due to the Blu-Ray disk drive's lower maximum read speed. Thats why you can have multiplatform games that come on a DVD9 for 360 but take up 15GB of a Blu-Ray disk for PS3.

But he is a bit confusing today, so he may mean something else.

 


Yeah it does.

When Blu Ray is trying to find something on it's 25GB disc it takes longer then DVD despite being slightly faster because it has 25GB to work through instead of 9.

The bigger the size of the disc, the slower the readtime is going to be, hence why the PS3 does reproduce a lot of identical data.

Since Metal Gear Solid takes place in many different locations that are very varied it would actually be quicker to have differnt locations on different discs since their shouldn't be too much reuse of graphical assets.

 


You are talking about seek times, not read times. Across a whole disc Blu-ray is slower but Blu-ray has a slightly faster seek time than DVD over a similar sized data sector so unless the placement of game data is very random this shouldn't be an issue.


 Then why are load times worse on PS3 in many cases without manual downloads.



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finalsquall on 14 June 2008

I don't mind installs - I go and make a cuppa - have a quick break. It allows me to think about the game and and go through some questions I have.... ok... you got me... I actually practice my stealthing ability in my house and use cqc on my family.

There it is... The truth of what I do install breaks... What do you really do? Eh!?



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labrats5 on 14 June 2008

My opinion on installs is that they always suck unless I can now play the game from my hard drive and toss the disc into the furnace. That is why PC installs never bothered me.

I still prefer installs to disc swapping for the simple reason that I hate physical media. It's breakable, losable, scratchable, and an all around pain in the neck. Having to keep track of and maintain one disc is bad enough, why would I want 3 or 4?

It's not that I'm lazy or careless, but there is a reason ipods sell better than portable CD players. Let me have all my games on a hard drive, and let me back up those games to a small portable hard drive that I can boot from to play my games on other machines. Convenient, secure, fast and easy.



omgwtfbbq on 14 June 2008
Saiyar said:
Kasz216 said:
starcraft said:
Saiyar said:
Kasz216 said:
Saiyar said:
 

I am a bit confused as to why you think this is relavent? The size of the game data isn't going to change just because it is on DVD instead of blu-ray

It will if it's on 2 or 3 DVDs. The data would be split up so their would be less space to cover.

Now i am really confused. Just because it is split up doesn't mean there is less space to cover (it is not like the 360 can read form 3 DVDs at once). 25GB on a BD is the same as 25GB on 3 DVDs.

The only thing I can think of he might mean is that fact that most Blu-Ray disk games reproduce identical data due to the Blu-Ray disk drive's lower maximum read speed. Thats why you can have multiplatform games that come on a DVD9 for 360 but take up 15GB of a Blu-Ray disk for PS3.

But he is a bit confusing today, so he may mean something else.

 


Yeah it does.

When Blu Ray is trying to find something on it's 25GB disc it takes longer then DVD despite being slightly faster because it has 25GB to work through instead of 9.

The bigger the size of the disc, the slower the readtime is going to be, hence why the PS3 does reproduce a lot of identical data.

Since Metal Gear Solid takes place in many different locations that are very varied it would actually be quicker to have differnt locations on different discs since their shouldn't be too much reuse of graphical assets.

 


You are talking about seek times, not read times. Across a whole disc Blu-ray is slower but Blu-ray has a slightly faster seek time than DVD over a similar sized data sector so unless the placement of game data is very random this shouldn't be an issue.

I think you must be confusing seek times and reading speed.

The Blu-Ray specification states 1x speed is equal to 36Mbps, which makes 2x Blu-ray 72Mbps. http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#bluray_speed
The dvd specification states 1x speed  approx 10.5Mbps, or126 Mbps for a 12x DVD drive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvd

the 12x DVD drive has a noticably higher read speed than the 2x Blu Ray. Which means when loading (as loading is generally done from a contiguous or multiple contiguous chunks of data), the reading speed is the limiting factor, and loading times for the same amount of data will be faster on the Xbox360. 

As for seek times, I can't comment as I don't know the data (seek times are dependant on the drive itself, not part of the specification), but a low seek time would help when the data placement is random, not when the data placement is contiguous (as it usually is for loading large chunks of data). So I'm sorry to disappoint you, but you've completely misunderstood the point here, and have been spouting nonsense for the entire thread.

edit: I will mention, just to play devil's advocate, that a DVD actually reads faster the further out on the disc the data is, whereas the blu-ray speed is constant. The minimum speed of a 12x dvd is slightly lower than that of a 2x Blu-ray. clever developers will, of course, place large data near the outside of the disk to improve load times)



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blizzid on 14 June 2008

I can't find specs for the exact drives in the 360/PS3, but seek times for generic drives are easy to google. Seek times for a 12x DVD drive seem to be in the 100ms-120ms range, while 2x Blu Ray is around 350ms. (In other words, DVD seek times are 3-3.5 times faster than Blu Ray.)

Also, what is this about Uncharted having no load times and streaming all data? I have nothing against the game, and it'll be the first one I buy if/when I get a PS3. But the part I played at a friend's house had plenty of loading. Sure, the word "Loading..." never popped up on screen. But every time a pointless and unskippable cutscene plays, that's a load time. Drawn-out scenes showing a doorway closing behind you as a door opens in front of you - that's not even a well-hidden load.



ZenfoldorVGI on 14 June 2008
windbane said:
ZenfoldorVGI said:
 

I think they mean that it's easier to change a disc 3 times, which might take 30 seconds total, than wait for 3 installs at 5 minutes a piece.


The first install is 8 minutes, the ones inbetween are 2-3 minutes. This is the only game that does this, and as he says, it doesn't say anything about Blu-ray at all.


As I understood it, data is streamed quicker off a DL DVD9 than from a Blu-Ray disc. Thus, the reason for the install times is to reduce the otherwise un-necessarily lengthy load times.

I'm not really up on this subject, but from reading the replies on this topic, nobody really seems to know for sure. So, aren't you really telling me what you hope is true, and not what you know is true?

 

I simply said what Penny-Arcade is implying, not what I believe, and if you'll read their article, you'll see that I'm correct. They are certainly inferring that.

Don't worry though, people infer things that aren't true about the Wii all the time. Hasn't hurt sales any, despite the hopes of millions.



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