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the XBox advantage

Started by August 31, 2000 08:35 PM
69 comments, last by Gaiiden 24 years, 3 months ago
They will probably use the HD for savegames, patches, and executables and keep most of the resources and CD music on the CD, rather than copying it, like a medium rather than complete install. This will most likely happen as soon as you put the game in the first time, like autoplay works on PCs now, you put the CD in and it installs it the first time, but in future, it just plays the game without installing.

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sharewaregames.20m.com

I agree, so it brings us to the next point...what''s the advantage of having just the EXE on HD? It''s the data that takes so long to load...


Mike
"Unintentional death of one civilian by the US is a tragedy; intentional slaughter of a million by Saddam - a statistic." - Unknown
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Mike:

No problem, I''m glad you stuck to your guns - I hate a wimp. I needed some torching anyways... I was getting a bit out of hand and everyone else confused.

As for the HD issue, you all are thinking about the HD as a computer hard drive I know you all are about to kill me right now for saying that, but bear with me, please? OK. *chuckle* I don''t what''s going on exactly, but you all are thinking of utilizing the hard drive the way you would in a PC, not a console. The main reason a HD in a console is causing a lot of hubbub is because it allows a form of extended RAM. Its slower than RAM, but faster than removable media. The way I see it, the games will install .exes on the HD and then swap files in and out during play. The HD will not fill up, since there needs to be enough room for file swapping. Patches (if they exist) will most like be downloaded off the net and auto-installed. I really don''t think the addition of the HD will require user tamperment.

As for data loading times.... I agree that most likely it will start off like a Dreamcast or Playstion game by loading files onto the HD and into RAM (whichever) every time you start a game. After that it shouldn''t have to pause to load at all, cause it would be cached onto the HD for immediate access.

Now we have a bit of development strategy - when to use the HD and when to use the RAM? Hmmm... decisions decisions....

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\\// live long and prosper; \||/ die short and rot.
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Drew Sikora
Executive Producer
GameDev.net

I''m glad you can take a bit of critism, I try not to dish anything out that I can''t take myself (the golden rule) but I may have a higher tolerance than most, not to mention that the written words always look nastier than spoken sound.

Well, if developers are limited in the permenent space they can use on the HD, it shouldn''t be a problem. But I doubt this will be the case, and the HD is not limitless, which really implies HD management. But I''m just speculating of course. I would be outright shocked if there is no way of managing the HD. HD management really does not belong in a console.

You also make some good points that I hadn''t thought of. But my bet as that HD as memory will be determined by the OS (like on the PC) not the programmer.



Mike
"Unintentional death of one civilian by the US is a tragedy; intentional slaughter of a million by Saddam - a statistic." - Unknown
Gaiiden, when you say the HD can be used as memory, are you aware that this happens on PCs? Whenevery system memory can''t be allocated, the hard drive is used. This is done by the OS normally, depending on the OS.

Also if MS aren''t using a SCSI drive, why not? It would add a great deal of speed. Also how much RAM does it have?



-=[ Lucas ]=-
-=[ Lucas ]=-
About the hard drive and the game installs. I don't know if you read the the lastest spec of directx8 which the x-box will support, but there is a new module for the installation of game. Here is how it will work on the PC :

The user will have to select a spot on it's harddrive to install games. Every game installs will have to select which files can be removed in case there is no more space for a new game. For example, let's say you install 12 games but there is isn't enough space for another one. When you'll try to install the 13th, the directx install module will look at wich of the 12 games has been less used and will call the game install that will remove some of it's program files or texture or whatever to free some space.

If there is still isn't enough space, it will look again on the hard drive for the next game that has been less used.

Now, if for some reason you want to play game #12 some time later, when you'll try to run the software, the directx install module will detect that files are missing and will redo the process above to free up space if necessary to copy the #12 files.

We can expect the X-box to work the same way. I actually think it's a pretty good idea. They will probably use a file system that doesn't need to defraged very often(probably NTFS) so that the user don't have to launch the x-box defrag every!

Edited by - Gorg on September 15, 2000 8:13:38 AM
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Lucasdg:

Yeah, i know about the swap file Windows uses to handle any excess memory issues. That''s where I got the speculation from.

Vetinari:

quote:
I would be outright shocked if there is no way of managing the HD. HD management really does not belong in a console.


This confuses me we need some clarification. And while I agree to the first point, HD management could turn off a lot of users who don''t want to have to bother with it. Microsoft isn''t just aiming for the hardcore market, you know. Therefore, i also agree with your second point

Gorg:

Sweet. That sounds just like the scheme MS would use, except i still think the HD really won''t be used for permanent installs of everything. But if they did this, then it could work out real well. But then wouldn''t it take longer to load up the game if it has to search for files, delete them and then reload game data? I would think so.

See, the HD is the really touchy issue here, cause no one has ever put one ina console before, so trying to figure out just how developers will use it and how MS will let developers use it is the biggest challenege to figure out.

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\\// live long and prosper; \||/ die short and rot.
==============================

Drew Sikora
Executive Producer
GameDev.net

I like the idea of a HD, but it seems to me that it will be inefficient as soon as it is filled up. They should have just skipped the HD and given the video card ALOT of RAM and same with the system RAM. That way you could load in alot of sprites at once at the start of the game and faster access speed than HD (by HEAPS!!).



-=[ Lucas ]=-
-=[ Lucas ]=-
Who says it has to be filled up?

==============================
\\// live long and prosper; \||/ die short and rot.
==============================

Drew Sikora
Executive Producer
GameDev.net

It could get filled up when you have lots of games (or even not very many). Considering the size of games these days.
BTW, is DirectX going to be built-in firmware?

-=[ Lucas ]=-
-=[ Lucas ]=-

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