Thore Posted February 3, 2022 Share Posted February 3, 2022 I just recently started playing CM2 again so i reinstalled CMFI and CMRT. I purchased the upgrade 4.0 for Red thunder and now the game takes up a staggering 17GB !!! on my hard drive while fortress italy which is still just engine 2.0 just takes up about 1GB Why? when i look into CMRT's folder there are a lot of giant files for every update since the beginning. It makes no sense. Regards, Thore 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted February 3, 2022 Share Posted February 3, 2022 (edited) The vast majority of the space taken up by the games is in the .brz data files. These files hold graphics and sound. I'm not sure why it is so large with the 4.0 Upgrade. Often there are replacement graphics or audio files with the newer .brz files, but the older versions of these files are also kept in earlier (lower numbered) .brz files. CMFI with the 4.0 Upgrade is also over 16GB in size. I believe these older files are kept the same for possible compatibility purposes. The 3.0 and 4.0 Upgrades are all-in-one installers that can include other modules. CMFI has two modules and with CMRT there is now the 'Fire & Rubble' module which probably increased the number and size of its .brz's. Edited February 3, 2022 by Schrullenhaft 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin2k Posted February 3, 2022 Share Posted February 3, 2022 (edited) For what the CM game archives hold they are relatively big. Because the brz archive format does not compress, and the main texture format used (.bmp) does not compress either. The game installers are a lot smaller, because that is packed with 3rd party innosetup, which uses compression. So imagine that since the v2.0 engine times they increased the texture detail. Then the texture width / height goes up a factor two, texture surface area 2x2=4, installed size at least up with a factor four for just that reason. Then more of those textures for additional unit outfits, different terrain seasons (ground, trees, buildings) etc. Edited February 3, 2022 by Kevin2k 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted February 3, 2022 Share Posted February 3, 2022 7 hours ago, Thore said: I just recently started playing CM2 again so i reinstalled CMFI and CMRT. I purchased the upgrade 4.0 for Red thunder and now the game takes up a staggering 17GB !!! on my hard drive while fortress italy which is still just engine 2.0 just takes up about 1GB Why? when i look into CMRT's folder there are a lot of giant files for every update since the beginning. The games with winter textures are the big ones. Fortress Italy with the modules is 17 GB for me, too. It is all the textures. Wait until you play many PBEMs. Then the growth is impressive. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vacillator Posted February 3, 2022 Share Posted February 3, 2022 Hmmm, just checked and I have 3.6GB on my C drive for RT and a rather whopping 59.9 GB on my D drive. That is quite a lot... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hm_stanley Posted February 3, 2022 Share Posted February 3, 2022 I also believe the 4.0 installers hold the entire set of modules/games, vs. the old days where you would install on top of the game in 3.0. So, if you don't have a license to R4V or Gothic Line, your game will still be huge, since it contains those modules. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thore Posted February 4, 2022 Author Share Posted February 4, 2022 So, the basic CMRT with with the latest upgrade and upgrade and no ekstra modules purchased is 17 GB. It has no more scenarioes than CMFI and yet still is 17 times larger. Almost as much as the newest AAA titles. Shrullenhaft is likely correct that for every new version/patch, a completely new brz file is created. Why not just delete the older brz files? Frankly this is pissing me of - out of principal. I payed myself for my hardware. what if all gamedevelopers where this indifferent towards their customers computers? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuckdyke Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 28 minutes ago, Thore said: So, the basic CMRT with with the latest upgrade and upgrade and no ekstra modules purchased is 17 GB. It also contains the files of Fire and Rubble with the latest upgrade whether you purchased it or not. You don't need to download it you just purchase the Key for it. That is what makes it so big. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin2k Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 3 hours ago, Thore said: Shrullenhaft is likely correct that for every new version/patch, a completely new brz file is created. Why not just delete the older brz files? I disagree. Redundant old files in the archives are a factor that adds to the size, but currently a minor one. From what I have seen more then 90 percent of the files in the original game archives are still used by the current game versions. It is the combination of all the other mentioned reasons. About compression: Rar compression shrinks these games to an average 32% of original size. Zip does 47%, in a quick test. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Canadian Cat Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 4 hours ago, Thore said: Why not just delete the older brz files? Because they are still being used. The newer .brz files from modules contain new stuff and do NOT replace older stuff. Thus no deleting v1 .brz files when v2 comes out. Also the patches do not replace all the contents the just have the fixed versions of any items so you still need to keep the original .brz files. 4 hours ago, Thore said: Frankly this is pissing me of - out of principal. I know I risk aggravating you (and I do NOT want to) but come on man take a deep breath and enjoy the game. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BFCElvis Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 51 minutes ago, Kevin2k said: I disagree. Redundant old files in the archives are a factor that adds to the size, but currently a minor one. From what I have seen more then 90 percent of the files in the original game archives are still used by the current game versions. It is the combination of all the other mentioned reasons. About compression: Rar compression shrinks these games to an average 32% of original size. Zip does 47%, in a quick test. 4 hours ago, chuckdyke said: It also contains the files of Fire and Rubble with the latest upgrade whether you purchased it or not. You don't need to download it you just purchase the Key for it. That is what makes it so big. You guys are both 100% correct. Except none of the brz files are redundant. And it's easy enough to test that. Move one the early brz files out of the Data folder and see what happens when you play the game. There is no "indifference". These are very complex games with lots of "pieces" A very nice thing, in my opinion, about the game's that use Game Engine 4 is that they are all-in-one full game installers. It has eliminated the convoluted, often confusing, step by step installation process. Does it mean that the installed versions of the games are sometimes much larger than they used to be? Yes. But isn't that true for all software anymore? I remember when I had a 100MB hard drive and would get a game that was 1MB and think that it was gigantic (yes, I'm that old and have been around computers that long). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin2k Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 Wondered about compression versus loading times, it also improves. Quote https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/9su7p8/data_compression_games_help_me_understand/ RE: Data Compression & Games. Help me understand. The most important factor is that on most data, with most compression methods, the decompression throughput rate is several times faster than the disk read rate, even with SSDs, and even with just a single core decompressing, which means you can pull data off disk faster if it's compressed if you have just about any spare CPU capacity. There's almost no downside to compressing your game data for that reason alone. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 (edited) 3 hours ago, Kevin2k said: Wondered about compression versus loading times, it also improves. That does not apply to texture files where the textures are directly memory mapped (as opposed to all being read on block by block). This both simplifies game design and speeds things up. Also, decompression speed depends on which algorithm you picked. Most of the fast-decompress algorithms are not good at compressing raw pictures (textures) or raw audio. And the most modern NVMe are very fast, probably faster than what you can get out of a compression algorithm that is good for textures. Finally, you can turn on compression in your filesystem if you really want to load CM from a compressed storage. Edited February 4, 2022 by Redwolf 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 9 hours ago, Thore said: So, the basic CMRT with with the latest upgrade and upgrade and no ekstra modules purchased is 17 GB. It has no more scenarioes than CMFI and yet still is 17 times larger. Again, it is not. CMFI 4.0 with modules is also 17 GB. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin2k Posted February 5, 2022 Share Posted February 5, 2022 (edited) 5 hours ago, Redwolf said: That does not apply to texture files where the textures are directly memory mapped (as opposed to all being read on block by block). This both simplifies game design and speeds things up. I don't know what you mean. I figured textures go to video card memory, through OpenGL API in the case of Combat Mission. Which of the two methods you mention applies to Combat Mission? 5 hours ago, Redwolf said: Also, decompression speed depends on which algorithm you picked. Most of the fast-decompress algorithms are not good at compressing raw pictures (textures) or raw audio. Like I wrote earlier, the ancient zip compression reduces the size of the combat mission archives to 47% already. Old call of Duty games used .pk3 archives which were just renamed zip archives. I don't know what modern games do though, since I hardly use any. (Edit; I remember ArmA 2 uses this: https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/PBO_File_Format It does mention that archive compression is becoming less popular there. But the textures themselves are in often in .paa (dds DXT-variant) format, and when I save such a .paa texture as .TGA instead: it takes eight times the space) It is no surprise though, that 47% compression. Combat mission uses .bmp format which can waste space like crazy. For example when a bmp has a mostly empty alpha channel, it still stores all those same value bytes in a long row, that is a quarter of the texture containing just repetitive bytes. (If I have a choice, I always use png instead) I suppose combat mission does not support .dds / .png / .jpg textures since there are none in the game. Neither are there any compressed audio formats like ogg and mp3. I do wonder what is the rationale behind it. 5 hours ago, Redwolf said: And the most modern NVMe are very fast, probably faster than what you can get out of a compression algorithm that is good for textures. If you say so, but how about the past, and people without NVMe SSDs? 5 hours ago, Redwolf said: Finally, you can turn on compression in your filesystem if you really want to load CM from a compressed storage. I have no experience with it. But it is an interesting option. Edited February 5, 2022 by Kevin2k 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Commanderski Posted February 5, 2022 Share Posted February 5, 2022 9 hours ago, BFCElvis said: I remember when I had a 100MB hard drive and would get a game that was 1MB and think that it was gigantic (yes, I'm that old and have been around computers that long). And games came on multiple floppy disks... The amount of RAM we have now is more than what the hard drives and RAM combined used to be. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucky_Strike Posted February 5, 2022 Share Posted February 5, 2022 So a while back I did a little experiment and some tinkering with the BRZ archive files. It occurred to me that there is quite a bit of crud in those files and maybe getting rid of it would make life a little easier for this befuddled old modder. I was forever swapping stuff in and out of my Z folder and rummaging in the BRZ archives. What I discovered was that it's possible to get rid of all the crud in the BRZs the game simply carries on regardless. Does it save a huge amount of space - a bit and not a lot: Sizes with all BRZ archives exploded, all modules, battle packs etc - there's no particular compression the BRZs are just a container/delivery method for the files. CMBN clean exploded v4.03 as installed 10.6GB CMBN edited removing all redundant files 8.3GB CMFB clean exploded v2.03 as installed 12.9GB CMFB edited removing all redundant files 12.65GB CMFI clean exploded v2.11 as installed 17.5GB CMFI edited removing all redundant files 15.97GB CMRT clean exploded v2.11 as installed 18.2GB CMRT edited removing all redundant files 17GB These are sizes on a Mac but the exact same files are used across both OS's so the only real differences in game size will be whether one is talking exe or app ... not much difference at all. So I now run my games with fully exploded Data sets and tiny empty BRZs named in the exact same way as the originals installed by the games. In terms of game loading time - not a lot if any difference was encountered. The one major plus from my point of view is I can now find files I need quickly and organise them how I want, so long as they are in the Data folder - as I add finished mods, which I know I will keep, I can add those to my Data folders set - that is they don't need to be in a special Z folder. And yes I have everything backed up for when my brain stops functioning correctly. Note: this was done during lockdown - I had a bit of time on my hands ... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin2k Posted February 5, 2022 Share Posted February 5, 2022 (edited) So 78%, 98%, 91%, 93% remaining. The average of these four numbers is my earlier guess 90%. Edited February 5, 2022 by Kevin2k 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
herr_oberst Posted April 10, 2022 Share Posted April 10, 2022 Yes, the installed games are big. But then again, what's a terabyte drive cost nowadays? On my mac I've a 2TB drive, and used 486GB... with CMBN, CMBS, CMCW, CMFB, CMFI, and CMRT (about 75GB, not counting the maps I'm working on), but I'm less than 30% full... I use Crossover to support a Windows game... , counting the Crossover support, that 60GB by itself... Cool stuff (i.e., graphics heavy) takes space. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Codreanu Posted April 10, 2022 Share Posted April 10, 2022 On 2/4/2022 at 2:37 AM, Thore said: So, the basic CMRT with with the latest upgrade and upgrade and no ekstra modules purchased is 17 GB. It has no more scenarioes than CMFI and yet still is 17 times larger. Almost as much as the newest AAA titles. I wish new AAA titles were only 17 GB, a lot of them are over 100 and most are in the 70s and 80s. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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