Games Files could be 70% smaller

One of the most interesting talks at London's GDC (Games Developers Conference) this week came form one of the lesser known companies called Allegorithmic, who claim they will be able to reduce texture file sizes in games by up to 70%.

Their new programs, that they hope development artists will soon be using as an industry standard, are called ProFX and MaP Zone 2. Their ambition is to keep the graphical quality of game textures at the same standards as current games, whilst dramatically reducing the amount of data required for the game to work.

[DreDawgg06]

Makes Blue-Ray seem very unnecassary for video games...Would`nt be suprised if microsoft started using this soon.

[TheMART]

Nice to see someone with the name:

"PS3ROCKS"

Helps to make the BR even looking more useless. Imagine that. If ever in this gen 5 year lifecycle the DL-DVD max is reached there are techniques like this.

Costprice DVD player: 20 dollar
Costprice BR player: 300 dollar

Now think what is a wise investment seen from a console producer...

[whateva]

think about it, it just make things better no matter what the game is on so a blu-ray can now hold about 100gigs of textures and a dvd can hold around 15gigs of textures You didn't think about that did you

anything DVD can do Blu-ray can do better!

[Boink]

I was going to say the same thing...MS should buy these folks quick:)

[kmis87]

There are already compression algorithms out there. They use it for video, audio, images, and other things. A decent algorithm already reduces the size of images by 85% with very little noticeable lack of quality. If they're claiming they've improved on those algorithms by 70%, then I'll have to see an image that is compressed to 95% of the original and doesn't look blocky as hell. Let's see some before and after pics, shouldn't be too hard to produce if they're telling the truth.

[Jay da 2KBalla]

It seems microsoft was right not to include blu-ray or hd-dvd in their console. Im glad because the games are still great and the console costs 200 dollars less than the rival console.

And as a side note I dont care what any sony dev says, if Oblivion a game that looks great and has 200 hours plus of gameplay is only 4.2gbs then dvd will be sufficient for ANY game.

And to add to what kmis said about compression algorithms, I can name some such as speed tree, procedural synthesis etc. Dev tools and optimization of code play a role in size as well and components such as xna are a great example for increased quality in tools used in development.

O and obviously it has been previously said but the fact that map zone2 and profx can reduce file sizes by 70% with no loss in quality will even further make blu-ray in the ps3 seem unnessary and a plea by sony to push its movie format into homes making the ps3 seem as a movie player first, game player second.

[kmis87]

Speed tree is a program that procedurally generates trees and foliage, and procedural synthesis is not a compression algorithm. Procedural synthesis allows the developers to create things from a smaller set of building blocks. For example, in Oblivion, all the blades of grass weren't individually rendered, but instead were procedurally generated by the speedtree program. Similarly, a lot of the dungeons and cave systems weren't all rendered individually, but were procedurally generated from a much smaller set of building blocks. This allows a giant game world, with many hours of gameplay, with a minimum of programming work. Advantages are that it keeps the cost down, speeds release, and saves space. Disadvantages are that it can get real repetetive because all of the environments aren't entirely unique(I know, I bought it for the pc). In certain games, FPS, platformer for some examples, procedurally generating environments is not very useful and can detract from the quality of the game.

A compression algorithm, in this example I'll use an image algorithm, analyzes a data file and determines which parts of the image can use less detail and still look the same. Then it can reduce the quality in specific parts of the image, while still having it look like the original image. 70-85% image compression is already in wide use, and they maintain enough image quality to look like the original. The original still looks much better when viewed side by side, but for all intents and purposes it's still very clear what the original image was. The developers at Insomniac have stated that although their game does take up over 20Gigs, they are still using compression to get it that low. Going past this to 90-96% compression, which I think this article might be talking about, usually makes the image blocky and, while you could still easily identify it as the original image, it will still look a lot worse, like a still from a very, very grainy movie.

[DC RID3R]

for texture storage, then i'll admit that blue-ray is the way forward, until then............

[jtdonnelly]

I know a lot of people on here don't like the Final Fantasy CGI cutscenes, but I love em. It's amazing to see how realistic the ps2 could get showing off FFX cutscenes. I wish microsoft would throw some beautiful cutscenes in once in a while, but I know that's not their thing. Going by that I think that this will be a great way to ensure the DVD9 will have enough space for microsoft until we start seeing digital distribution. Sony, on the other hand may end up looking good for choosing blu-ray. Both consoles chose good drives for what kind of games they have.