Re: Dragon Age: Origins - 20gig HD install??

Zaghadka <zaghadka@xxxxxxxxxxx> looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

On Sun, 21 Jun 2009 15:25:55 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg, CoinSpin
wrote:

Zaghadka wrote:
On Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:44:52 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg, Jonah Falcon
wrote:


http://www.gamestooge.com/2009/06/17/dragon-age-pc-specs-revealed/

The system specs for Dragon Age: Origins have been posted, and while the
technical system specs are fairly reasonable, the hard drive requirements
are massive. 20 gigabytes? That's a lot of space.


No. No it's not.

I suspect you grew up with the same computers I did, circa 80's-90's?

If so, I'd say it's safe to think of a gig as equivalent to a meg, and a meg is
now about as significant as a KB.

500GB can be had for a song these days.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

Check that out. 640 GB WD Caviar 7200RPM Sata 3.0 w/ 32MB of cache.

If only the games were getting "better" as quickly, instead of just bigger.


Really depends on your perspective... Perusing through computer mags,
the typical internal hard drive is 160 Gb as a standard, with larger
ones available as "stock" drives becoming more common.

I don't know what publications you read, but I hope you don't shop them. Dell's
$399 entry level boxes come with 500 GB of disk standard.

When you get a
gaming rig together, there are typically much larger (and often RAID)
disk arrangements, but if you look at what seems to be the "standard"
size for current and/or recent mainstream computers, 1/8 of your total
storage for a single game is indeed massive.

No it's not. Games have *always* been that big, at least since we stopped
playing the movies and music off the optical drive. I remember when a reviewer
bemoaned Pagan: Ultima VIII as being "too big" at 35MB of hard space (with
voice packs), when many people had about 250MB of hard disk space. That was
about *1/7th* of total storage.

I remember when Rebel Assault was dubbed Rebel Insult. I remember when Quake
required a Pentium, and this ticked off all the 486/DX4 owners.

Quake didn't require a pentium - I used to play it on a 486 DX/2 66.
It really needed a pentium, but it didn't require one - it just played
slow - like the six million dollar man tv show when Steve went into
bionic run mode.
The amazing thing is that is was consistently slow, no lag spikes or
anything else, just a constant (estimated) 2/3rds of normal play speed.


MDK on the other hand refused to let you play on a 486 of any variety
since it wasn't up to providing the experience the developers wanted you
to have and put up a message to that effect.

Requirements shock hasn't changed much over the years. Neither has planned
obsolescence.

And as it was in 1994, it is now (and ever shall be). If you game, then you
best have disk space and RAM.

I think it's all about the frame of reference.

Well yes, and the modern frame is that 20GB is only 1/25th of 500GB of storage.
If we set the frame to some obsoleted, legacy disk size, like 160GB, then you
can make Dragon Age's requirement seem artificially steep.

Fact is: It isn't steep. You can solve the problem for less than you can solve
a video card problem, or a single core processor problem.

I've got an Athlon 3200+. I've got an x850. I've got 320GB of storage. My
_only_ problem is number of cores, and I'm not flipping out about it. I know my
machine is a dinosaur.

Athlon 3200+ GeForce 6800 - and a touch less storage (a 15GB and a
280GB.)

I'm a little low on space, but that's because I have over 30 games
installed (as well as multiple other things) - unless I hate a game I
leave it installed so I don't have to reinstall it if I get an urge to
play it again.
Even stuff I'm not that likely to play again (like Anarchy Online,
sometimes gets left in place if it required a lot of downloading.)

Hmm, I apparently installed Dungeon Runners at some point, and I've
never actually played it at all. Never even tried to in fact.

I bought that x850 for $150 only to play NWN2. You can get the 640 GB caviar
for *half* that, and put 3 or 4 more 20 GB games on it, too.

Cry me a river. Your 160GB "frame of reference" is, IMHO, arbitrary and silly.

Only a year ago, 160 was
a pretty decent sized drive upgrade... Oh how the times they are
a-changin... heh.

This is noteworthy because? We *are* talking about computers, right?

I see no change - it's things as usual - newer, faster, bigger, every
damn year.

I haven't done much upgrading recently (obvious from the above specs)
due to there being less cash for such, and not that many high spec games
that actually make me want to play them.

Too many bugfests and console ports and one trick ponies.

That's why I read the gaming groups instead of online gaming reviews,
people here actually play (or attempt to play) the games and then tell
it how it is with no concern over advertising revenue.



Mmm, the RIAA (sorry, MAFIAA now aren't they) must hate that you can get
cheap terabyte drives now - that's a lot of mp3 storage space.
A lot of movie space too for those that download that stuff.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
.

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