- Joined
- 24 Feb 2004
- Posts
- 1,083
- Location
- Leeds/Cyprus
me said:
Say it once more!
No, let's say it all together: "HELMUTCHEESE MAKES BIG £££ (presumably not doing maths-intensive work) AND SPENDS IT ALL ON L337 PHAT 'ARD DRIVES!!! YOU DA MAN YO!"
PS. In all seriousness, the issue is not whether I or any individual user has enough space to download a particular demo - the issue is that the wastefulness and inelegance of it all grates on my nerves. A packed .exe installer which is zipped on top requires at least three times as much space to install! In the case of the 5GB POTBS client, you'd need 5GB to save the .zip file, 5GB to unzip the .exe installer, another 5GB (probably more) for the installer to unpack its contents into the Windows Temporary Files folder, and another 5GB for the installed game to go on. Assuming you delete the .zip immediately after unpacking the installer, that's 15GB, not to mention the time wasted time spent unzipping it! It's just so wasteful that it would annoy me even if I had 4 Terrabytes of storage and a 3.6GHz Quad Core that could unzip archives faster than I can post a rant on ocuk!
Using better compression methods like 7z or rar isn't the solution. The solution is having a little bit of consideration for the end-user and using a bit of common sense:
a. offer the damned uncompressed .exe installer! If data corruption is a serious issue use an installer with CRC checking! If gamershell and fileplanet think it is imperative that they stick their stupid little URLs in the download (as if we didn't know where the hell we just downloaded it from), there's easier and more considerate ways of doing it than zipping a massive bloody installer just so you can stick a tiny little .txt file in there: you could stick the URL at the end of the filename (eg. maxpayne_demo_downloaded_from_gamershell.com.exe) or you can unpack use an installer package to unpack the .exe file's contents and stick your stupid little .txt files inside the installer package!
b. if you MUST offer downloads in the form of archives, then the unpacked data could easily be uncompressed rather than in a single .exe installer, which is effectively a sfx archive. At least the extraction would then happen only once rather than twice!
It's just that the way people in the games industry do things reminds me of the attitude of a jobsworth who's looking for the lazy shortcut for everything they do! No wonder we have such an insanely inflationary bloating in the minimum requirements of most games for the last few years: everyone's cutting corners and expecting the end user to subsidise the time they spend playing WoW in the office!
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