New compression tool shows DVD-9 is right for this gen.

[Mentok]

SONY fail again...

News of a new texture compression tool that shrinks huge announts of texture data down by up to 70%.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/10/04/Game_file_sizes_could_soon_be_70_smaller/

One of the most interesting talks at London’s GDC (Games Developers Conference) this week came form one of the lesser known companies called Allegorithmic, who claim they will be able to reduce texture file sizes in games by up to 70%.

The next demo was of a game that is due to come out for the XBOX Live Arcade called ‘Roboblitz’. Due to the requirement to get the game under 50MB, the developers needed to keep the textures as small in filesize as possible. Using the new texture system the overall size for all the textures was less than 280KB – watching the game (which runs on the Unreal 3 engine) I was amazed.

Confused by the fact that I hadn’t heard about this technology before, I spoke to one of the men behind it directly - Dr Sébastien Deguy. He assured me that there were no catches with his system, that if a game contained 1GB of textures he would be able to reduce that to 300MB and lose no quality. When I asked why everyone wasn’t using the program at the moment he explained it was due to people needing to be retrained in learning a new system. He was optimistic however, that soon all games companies will be using their new texture tools.

This is huge news for both DVD-9 and for XBOX live games. Full games can now be available for download at a fraction of the size they once were. That means more options for developers and potential full game downloads in minutes

 

[imdaly]

Very very cool.

Looking at the screenshots of that "Roboblitz" game, and knowing that the entire game is less than 50MB is all the proof I need to know that we're sitting just fine with DVD9 for at LEAST the entirety of this new-Gen.


What now, Sony? Hmm?

 

[WhatsHisFace]

This also means faster load times and more stuff that can go on at once thanks to heavily freed up RAM. Compression is an amazing thing.

 

[GuntherHermann]

Just to give you an idea of how amazing compression is...

That entire game is under 50mb. That means the textures you are seeing there are, at best, a few hundred KB. Pretty damn amazing.

 

[WhatsHisFace]

Just to give you an idea of how amazing compression is...

That entire game is under 50mb. That means the textures you are seeing there are, at best, a few hundred KB. Pretty damn amazing.

I wish they had this back on the Xbox. It would have made such a difference for Fable's world.

 

[GuntherHermann]

Forget the last xbox, I wish Microsoft just had the forsight to see that this kind of technology was around so that we wouldn't have been asked to pay $200 extra dollars for an expensive storage format that wasn't needed at all...

 

[WhatsHisFace]

What are you talking about, the harddrive or the HD DVD player?

 

[GuntherHermann]

Seriously?

 

[WhatsHisFace]

Yeah. Sorry I'm really slow tonight.

 

[GuntherHermann]

It was a stab at blu-ray

 

[WhatsHisFace]

Then why did you blame Microsoft?

 

[GuntherHermann]

It was sarcasm. Microsoft did see that it was not needed, which is what I was sarcastically wishing had happened, even though it had happened. Come on man

 

[WhatsHisFace]

Sorry, I just finished 33% of my speech, ended an oddly sexual conversation and am about to go nuts if I can't sleep tonight.

 

[Fran]

It is apparently the wrong figure. It's not 70% file reduction, it's 70% texture size. The file reduction is only .007%!

http://www.gametab.com/news/701169/

 

[WhatsHisFace]

Which is only 0.7% overall...

 

[블라스]

It is apparently the wrong figure. It's not 70% file reduction, it's 70% texture size. The file reduction is only .007%!

http://www.gametab.com/news/701169/

Bond....James Bond

 

[GuntherHermann]

Editor's Note: This article is basically pointless as it doesn't even understand what its arguing about. Move along...nothing to see here.

So yeah, that link is wrong on several levels. Textures a small part of game size? My ass. Take a look at a 720p (or, god forbid, a 1080p) texture sometime and tell me that doesn't eat ram and bandwidth. Texture and sound files are the two biggest in-game memory eaters, and this and ogg-vorbis help those problems big time.

 

[Avalanche]

SONY fail again...

 

[WhatsHisFace]

Bond....James Bond

YES!!!! t:

 

[Mentok]

Shut up... Go on and ignore my threads as POINTLESS *****ING. Thats all your lame SONY humping ass is good for

You want roll your eyes yet you totally failed in my thread asking about BR-DVD. Its your usual tactic. Ignore anything you dont like and its why no one here takes you seriously.

Not to mention you being a total fanboy in the thread discussing the recent SONY stock drop.

 

[Mentok]

It is apparently the wrong figure. It's not 70% file reduction, it's 70% texture size. The file reduction is only .007%!

http://www.gametab.com/news/701169/

Its a good thing I was talking about the compression percentage to texture file size. Not the total file size of the game then.

 

[BatFitz]

In the words of the guy from TheDigitalbits.com on the Loop on Attack of the show: DVD is going to be around for a looooooooooooong time.

 

[MulligaN Stew]

This is huge news for both DVD-9 and for XBOX live games. Full games can now be available for download at a fraction of the size they once were. That means more options for developers and potential full game downloads in minutes

[Sony Gaming Execs] Oh no's!!! [/Sony Gaming Execs]

This is excellent news. I haven't been updating myself with a lot of interesting tidbits such as this; I merely felt chills at the possibilities. Good stuff.

 

[Zenien]

Roboblitz is not pushing texture quality to previously unheard of levels by any stretch. We've heard of miracle cures before... I'd be surpised if you see this making it's way into the mainstream games outside of XBL since there's bound to be some lengthly decompression requirements with this technique.

 

[gtkilla]

In the words of the guy from TheDigitalbits.com on the Loop on Attack of the show: DVD is going to be around for a looooooooooooong time.

people still watch attack of the show?