How big are the Alpha Builds?

GuruNot · Feb 15, 2014

I was wondering if anyone had been making a note of how much disk space each Alpha build has used?

I appreciate each Alpha has a narrow focus and potentially only contains the data needed.

If this has already been covered, could someone please point me in the direction of the appropriate forum article.

Thanks.

JeffRyan · Feb 15, 2014

In honour of the 30th Anniversary the builds are being kept to 32k.

PS. My program disinstall thing on the control panel say 929MB

Patrick_68000 · Feb 15, 2014

Disk space, I do not know, but the RAM space, I read on the forum, 2.5 GB for alpha now

Wardiaper · Feb 15, 2014

It takes up 1.8 GB hard drive space installed for the latest Alpha that has the single player plus the multiplayer scenarios, but who knows how many files are shared with other parts of the game. It looks like it keeps the 900 MB installer in a separate folder, so it might only be 900 MB installed for the game right now.

The game has a tiny RAM footprint, at least in the first single player scenario, only using just over 300 MB.

Toumal · Feb 15, 2014

Yup, 950MB for the actual game, the 924MB installer is also saved in an "installer" directory, the launcher/updater program is 15MB. Total is about 1.9GB

There's a bit of load time when you start a scenario, but it's nowhere near as bad as Battlefield 3/4 and the program launch itself is super fast. There's a little splash screen and then you're in the menu. The alpha "feels" very fast and efficient. And I can confirm that the RAM usage is extremely low, to the point where I have to ask...

What the hell are those other games using all that RAM for?

Steve50 · Feb 15, 2014

Toumal said:
Yup, 950MB for the actual game, the 924MB installer is also saved in an "installer" directory, the launcher/updater program is 15MB. Total is about 1.9GB

There's a bit of load time when you start a scenario, but it's nowhere near as bad as Battlefield 3/4 and the program launch itself is super fast. There's a little splash screen and then you're in the menu. The alpha "feels" very fast and efficient. And I can confirm that the RAM usage is extremely low, to the point where I have to ask...

What the hell are those other games using all that RAM for?

DB has always written tight and highly optimised code, modern coders could learn a lot from him.

Wardiaper · Feb 15, 2014

In comparison - Star Citizen hangar module is 4.18 GB with my one ship (Avenger) and that's just walking around the hanger and feeling cool I guess :/

Elite is gonna be great. Star Citizen is going to have it's work cut out for it trying to keep up. Once beta open up hopefully the $$ will start flowing Elite's way.

GuruNot · Feb 15, 2014

Thanks for the Info

Thank you for the info. I just checked my StarCitizen folder and my Hangar Module install (with just one ship) is indeed 4.18GB!!

Pretty impressive that the Elite Alpha comes in at under 1GB, which means running it in a RAMDisk is looking quite feasible at the moment.

It will be interesting to see how much it has grown by the time I get my hands on the first Beta.

Memnoch · Feb 15, 2014

4GB. What makes it so large? High quality textures? I am genuinely interested after seeing many YT videos of the hangar.

Wardiaper · Feb 15, 2014

Memnoch said:
4GB. What makes it so large? High quality textures? I am genuinely interested after seeing many YT videos of the hangar.

Looking through the files it is all in the data folder full of pak files that open with 7zip, so they are compressed. One ship is 435 MB (probably half that size compressed) and the textures are 378 MB of that. So I would guess around 2/3 to 3/4 of the install is textures alone.

There is a great vid of David Braben talking about procedural generation in Elite, how they used it in the previous games, how are using it in Dangerous. You can see how excited he gets about this topic.

I've got both games, but way more excited about Elite as a game/sim. Star Citizen seems like they are trying to make a big interactive movie that is going to require a supercomputer to run at full detail. It will be a great showcase for the people that put graphics as their #1 feature. Elite will look fantastic, won't require a future computer to look it's best, and will put gameplay first.

GuruNot · Feb 16, 2014

Wardiaper said:
Looking through the files it is all in the data folder full of pak files that open with 7zip, so they are compressed. One ship is 435 MB (probably half that size compressed) and the textures are 378 MB of that. So I would guess around 2/3 to 3/4 of the install is textures alone.

I concur.