Disc storage capacity and utilisation on current gen discs!

It has already been said numerous times that the PC version can't be used to prove anything as the data stored on its mediums are highly compressed and are uncompressed during installs onto the harddrive making the resulting space required much higher than what the CD or DVD holds.

As a reminder: GameCube doesn't have a harddrive.

 

My gta 3 install on my pc was just under 1 gig .....

 

multi-disc/tray consoles

 

Oh no!!! That's so 1995!!!

 

THAT CAN'T BEEE!!!!

 

Do you need to keep the disc in the drive while playing GTA on PC? Just need to know cause i passed it on PS2 but might just pick it up for PC one of these days, it's cheap as chips these days... And i hate it when a game takes up GB's off your harddrive but still wants u to keep the disc inside... *COUGH*DOOM3*COUGH*FarCry*COUGH*

 

eh i dunno i use no cd patches

 

london-boy

There definitely wouldn't be any need for a disc per area. You'd end up with 20 discs or something At worst GC would need a disc per every couple of cities. Although looking at what storage space GTA Vice City needs and True Crime on GC I doubt very much that San Andreas would even need more then one GC disc.

BTW those pauses between area's in San Andreas could possibly be removed or at least lessened on GC version. If they loaded new area data from disc to A-Ram on the fly as your coming close to the area. Then when you enter the new area instead of having to stream data from the disc to main ram they could just take it straight from A-Ram instead. Or maybe not, just an idea.

JVD

Obviously it doesn't then if you use a no CD patch.

 

There are no pauses between outdoor areas in San Andreas. You can fly from one end of the map to the other without a single loading screen. Do you mean when you enter a building? There are loading screens between cities in GTA3, if that's what you meant. I don't know about Vice City, since I skipped it.

 

Ah right ok, I was only basing that on what london-boy said in his first post. I got the impression he was saying there were small pauses as you go from one area of a city to another (similar to THPS4). Obviously he didn't mean that then.

 

No, i meant, in GTA3 there are loading screens (the "welcome to..." screens) when you enter a new island. I haven't played ViceCity or SanAndreas.

I think the biggest problem in GTA games is that there is a whole lot of music. And i mean a lot.

I'm sure it can all be done on GC somehow, but it would have to be compressed quite a lot, if it's not compressed already on the PS2 version. I'm assuming all the music is stored in MP3 files. There's just a lot of them.

 

i'm not sure why the ps version can't be used as a comparison. if the game installs to less than 1GB then all of the game data should fit easily onto a 1.5GB GOD.

even then, things could easily be streamlined to save a bit of space if they needed to. textures for example could be saved in a compressed format if they are not on other platforms. music and audio could be compressed a bit more (with a drop in quality as well, but with no DA out would any gamecube owners notice?). i think any of the GTA games could be pruned to fit on a single GOD if they needed to be.

 

I'm not going to argue that it isn't possible - hypothetically, you could also simplify textures, geometry and just about everything in the game to meet memory demands...

Obviously though, and given that the available console versions of the GTA games do use much more space than the PC equivilant (in the Gigabytes range), it should make one wonder why all that space is needed. In a game like GTA, redundant data surely is required to speed up data but also to make access quicker and dimish loading times when going from one side of the city to the other. On a further note, it's also quite obvious that the consoles (GameCube included) have very limited memory on board - so all the techniques including redundant blocks of data is most likely needed or even required.