Brendan Armstrong, a deputy technical director at Arrowhead Game Studios, addressed a common concern in the Helldivers 2 subreddit, revealing why the PC version of the game is approximately 150GB compared to about one-third of that on consoles.
According to Armstrong, this significant size difference is primarily due to the proportion of PC players still using traditional hard disk drives (HDD) instead of solid-state drives (SSD).
“An HDD stores data on a spinning platter, and a physical arm with a read head has to move across the platter to find and retrieve data,” Armstrong explains. “The time it takes for this arm to ‘seek’ or move to the correct location is a significant performance bottleneck.”
To combat this issue, the developers duplicate various data files, so when levels load, the read head can access necessary information more quickly without having to ‘seek’ different locations. For instance, a tree texture can be stored in proximity to level geometry data, minimizing loading times.
However, the reliance on HDDs complicates the optimization process.
Armstrong shared that around 12% of their player base likely still uses HDDs, indicating a notable number of users affected by this problem. He clarified that removing duplicated assets without affecting loading times for HDD users would be unacceptable.
“We cannot eliminate all duplication without making loading times for mechanical HDDs 10 times slower,” Armstrong stated, underscoring the balance the studio aims to achieve.
While adjustments to the installation size and loading processes are on the horizon, including potentially de-duplicating less impactful assets into bundled packages, no swift resolution is forthcoming. Armstrong concluded, “There are no easy solutions… sacrificing some extra hard drive space is necessary to ensure we’re all able to load into missions in a reasonable amount of time.”
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