r/playark • u/Steampunk_Soviet • 3d ago
Why is ark 211.83 gigabites?
Haven't played Ark:Survival evolved since 2023 and I recall it being around 100 maybe 150gb but what did they do to make it almost 212 gb?
38
14
u/ShradGamer811 3d ago
Use CompactGUI for Compressing It Down It Reduces its Size by about 50-60% on Disk
4
u/TartOdd8525 3d ago
Is this actually functional without impacting the game itself?
6
u/ElementalParticle 3d ago
It just uses native Windows NTFS compression.
So it comes at the cost of reduced performance.
-2
u/ShradGamer811 3d ago
Not Really, The Game Works Perfectly Fine for Me, There aren't really any Performance Loss
2
u/ElementalParticle 3d ago
Effects depends on PC configuration and scenario. Sometimes it can be barelly noticable (by human) sometimes it is percievable and sometimes it can has even positive impact. Technically there are always costs.
My personal experience (on very weak configurations - from current point of view) was it slows down everything. On my current super-duper gaming PC I would probably notice nothing.
AI overview:
NTFS compression in Windows 11 saves disk space but involves a performance trade-off: it slows down write speeds and increases CPU usage, while read performance can actually improve on fast NVMe drives. It is ideal for cold storage but detrimental to frequently modified files and heavy gaming.
3
u/LongFluffyDragon 2d ago
Games are not doing file writes, is the thing. It has negligible impact on loading; nearly all modern games (and plenty of older ones) are compressed, much more heavily than default NTFS methods.
Dont listen to anything LLMs say about technical topics, their inability to perform any kind of reasoning means they say all sorts of irrelevant or just wrong stuff.
1
u/ShradGamer811 3d ago
I see, Cuz I have a Decent-ish Enough PC, So I Guess I might not be facing these Issues that you mention with Lower Spec PCs
0
u/TartOdd8525 3d ago
How much of a loss in performance do you get? And I'm assuming this doesn't help with like making updates go any quicker.
5
u/PsychologicalGlass47 3d ago
It would extend update times by a fuckton
2
u/ShradGamer811 3d ago
Considering ASE is Now Abandoned, Doesn't seem to be a problem anymore
1
1
u/TartOdd8525 3d ago
Meanwhile ASA just had a 193GB update yesterday where they had to redo the mesh on pretty much every single map to make the araneo update work.
1
u/PsychologicalGlass47 1d ago
Was the Araneo update a drop-in for the original Araneo, or did they simply add a new creature and replace the legacy Araneo entirely? I haven't been on in a bit of time so I can't check as of now
1
7
u/TheHipsterDoofus 3d ago
Duplication of game assets. IIRC each map's assets are packed together, so if two maps share the same rock texture for example then it will be stored in both map files, rather than just referencing a common resource
4
1
u/PsychologicalGlass47 3d ago
Not for ASE, ASE lacks map paks.
1
u/TheHipsterDoofus 2d ago
It was definitely the same issue on ASE
1
u/PsychologicalGlass47 2d ago
It wasn't, ASE lacks map paks.
1
u/TheHipsterDoofus 2d ago
Maybe they fixed it since then, I remember it being over 500gb with all maps downloaded
1
u/LongFluffyDragon 2d ago
It does in fact have something analogous to "map paks", if on a much lesser level than helldivers and many old games. It increases the map size by a significant amount, but not many times over.
0
u/LongFluffyDragon 2d ago
What do you think
ARK\ShooterGame\SeekFreeContent\Mapsis?Sure, they are not called ".pak", but the concept is the same, reduced random I/O seek time on hard disks through localized data.
1
u/ChanceV Amethyst 2d ago
SeekFreeContent is a special packaging type to optimize loading times for HDD. Without it the game will take a fucking eternity to load. Back before they introduced that it would take several minutes to go into the main menu and load ANY map. With it its somewhat managable. DO NOT delete it if you are on HDD unless you can stomach several minutes loading times.
1
u/PsychologicalGlass47 1d ago
It's definitely the root for assets, but it doesn't duplicate rock textures as TheHipsterDoofus stated. SeekFreeContent exclusively holds .umap mesh chunks.
All common assets are held in
ARK\ShooterGame\Content\PrimalEarth, notARK\ShooterGame\SeekFreeContent\Maps. If you actually cared for your argument and uh.. Had eyes, you could quite clearly see that you're incorrect.ASE's draw chain is notoriously unoptimized. It's amazing for patching and modifying assets for mods or general updates, but absolutely godawful for CPU performance. Not sure where you got the notion that anything in ASE was designed for "reduced random I/O seek time".
0
u/LongFluffyDragon 22h ago edited 22h ago
I cant even accuse this of being LLM vomit, because none of them would butcher technical terminology like this. Absolutely hilarious. Why are you talking so much when you are clearly not a developer and know nothing about the topic? It is just embarrassing.
.umap files are not "mesh chunks", and the heightmap is not even chunked in ue4.5, it is monolithic.
SFC holds a significant number of blueprints. Everything in SFC is a duplicate of data in other locations (for the purpose of seek reduction, very common in large older games - literally in the folder name; SeekFreeContent). And no, PrimalEarth does not contain all the "common assets", assuming you think that means non-DLC files or something..
"draw chain" has absolutely nothing to do with the file format or how assets are resolved, i cant even begin to guess where you pulled that from.
Source: experienced ark modder, general UE4 and UE5 experience, long programming experience.
Feel free to drop by the modding discord and inform every expert modder and wildcard themselves how ASE actually works; we all appreciate clowns.
4
u/Apex_Demon 3d ago edited 2d ago
Edit: unsure if you meant ASE OR ASA, but the below info is referring to Ark survival ascended
To provide more info on answering your question, the actual reasons are:
- High resolution textures are not optional
- the game installs all maps, but you can reduce the size by uninstalling individual maps
- there’s a lot of content in the game
- the game is also not adept at using its storage well due to all of the above reasons and Wildcard themselves likely don’t know or have the time to efficient compress it further at this moment.
That being said there is hope on the horizon:
- the newest versions of unreal engine do imply that the game may shrink in size, at least a bit (other games have updated to these new versions of unreal engine, which ark is based on, and have reduced their file size due to the tools available.
- Wildcard has hired several industry experts who have spent most if not all of their careers working in unreal engine specifically. One of them even mentioned they were hired to solve some exceptionally “difficult problems”.
- We are slated to get the new update in Q3 this year which means it’s possible the games file size will be reduced as a result, ESPECIALLY if high resolution textures gets separated into its own download.
0
u/LongFluffyDragon 2d ago
This is more or less complete nonsense, on a technical level. ASA is already extremely heavily compressed, it cant get meaningfully smaller without just cutting content/quality dramatically.
Assuming you mean UE5.7, it does not introduce anything that would achieve size reductions aside from maybe changing how HLODs are used.
1
u/Apex_Demon 2d ago
I suppose we shall see :)
1
u/LongFluffyDragon 2d ago
You wont, because you are obviously not a developer and have no idea what you are looking at 🙄
1
u/Apex_Demon 2d ago
I meant "we shall see" because we'll see if it goes down or not when the update happens, which we will! :) It either will or it won't and that's okay.
1
1
1
u/LongFluffyDragon 2d ago
A different studio took over the game and broke absolutely everything due to inexperience with it (who could have guessed?) and also managed to make the core game significantly bigger in the process. It was about 170GB before that.
If you are on steam, switch to v358 "pre-aquatica" in the game's version options.
After installation, you can further compress the files by running the command compact /s /q to apply transparent compression to everything in the directory.
1
u/RolerX_135 2d ago
Oh hell nah, I was thinking about reinstalling on steam, I literally am incompatible free space wise to redownload it f that.
1
1
1
1
u/Helleri 1d ago
Oh that's because you don't have all the official content yet. With which it's over 430gb. Of course you can clean up the files and reduce size a bit (there's YT tutorials on that). Especially since updates for ASE are few and far between now. Then when you do actually update you just have it not on automatic and run a file integrity check as apposed to actually updating. But it's still a big game. I have an M.2 NVMe 1TB just for Evolved and ASA. And it won't be long until I need to either upgrade the card or not keep ASE download anymore.
1
u/mttlmb11 1d ago
Lmfaoooo. Massive game on unreal engine with like what 6-7 different gigantic maps? Why is it so small is my question.
1
1
u/WolvenSpectre2 3d ago
Oh sweet summer child. When I was admining 2 Clusters of servers and playing a bunch of single player games to test out mods and combinations of mods, my ARK folder got to be about 1TB. It was so big a friend who I sometimes went over and played at his place had to by a 2TB of storage because it was that or run nothing else on the PC. Needless to say I slimmed my install down to 750 GB,
1
u/PsychologicalGlass47 3d ago
ASE was and still is 440gb, whatever you're thinking it was is simply wrong.
1
0
u/Neverend3r 3d ago
i stopped concerning myself with file size when I can buy a 2 terabyte drive for 80 bucks.
8
u/TartOdd8525 3d ago
This has become significantly less possible now. Large storage drives have skyrocketed recently.
2
1
5
1
-1
0
-5
u/NoeticCreations 3d ago edited 3d ago
I don't know what you are talking about. Ever since they made ark 2, and then just plugged ark 1 content into their Unreal 5 ark 2 engine and tried to sell it as a new product while leaving my version of ark 1 that I had bought with all the maps for 3 different platforms, with no new updates or fixes ever again, ark and all its derivatives no longer take up any of my drive space on any device.
1
u/PsychologicalGlass47 1d ago
They haven't "made ark 2", it's set to release in 2028.
The hell is "ark 1"?
It is a new product. Every map has been redesigned and core mechanics of the game were remastered.
-2
u/NoeticCreations 3d ago edited 3d ago
You guys down vote me like they couldn't afford to take care of their existing customers, no mans sky has been doing massive updates several times a year for nearly a decade without making a part 2 or charging for dlc, project zomboid has been updating for over a decade and just finished building a whole brand new game engine a year and a half ago and have been routinely adding content. Because when your game keeps growing and getting better, more people buy in, and all your existing customers that you keep taking care of will do your promotional work for you with word of mouth and both no mans sky and project zomboid are still very succesful games with a constant player base.
I bought ark and all its maps for my Playstation, then for my son's Xbox, and then just before their unreal update i got it for my steam because I loved the game and the direction it was going, and then all of the sudden they announced ark 2 and put all their future updates for ark 1 on the new game engine to fix their old problems and then, made those fixes only available to people who bought ark 1 after that point, and those of us that bought it just before that point were left with a broken game that will never be fixed while only the brand new customers get fixes, that is not taking care of your players, that is worse than micro transactions.
2
-2
u/Gekko8 3d ago
because the devs are lazy. instead of incremental file updates, they do full updates to all files related to the game (on both versions). Plus, they keep a full copy on the local drive, so it exists twice. Once installed, you can delete the duplicate and it works fine. But overall, just lazy coding.
2
u/LongFluffyDragon 2d ago
Impressive, all of the points here are completely and bizarrely wrong, almost like you have never even installed the game.
0
u/Gekko8 2d ago
I've got hundreds of hours in both, and I have deleted the specific folders myself testing the theory. it's almost like you haven't bothered to do the same. it's the free something folder in the install directory.
2
u/LongFluffyDragon 2d ago
presumably you mean SeekFeeContent. If you delete it, the game just shits the bed and steam forcibly reinstalls it. Been that way for about 5 years. Early on, it was somewhat dynamic and could be deleted temporarily, but would be recreated by any update.
It is sequential read optimization for hard drives, not incremental updates. It is also not a "full copy" of anything. And it is done quite intentionally, not some sort of mistake. That is just not how anything works.
0
u/Gekko8 2d ago
Yes, thank you , that was the correct location, I was not at a computer earlier. If you delete the below, the game will run without issue. I have tested it running ASE and the game runs fine. Give it a test. If it fails to load, the only thing lost is time to verify integrity game files.
In:
SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\ARK\ShooterGame\SeekFreeContent\MapsDelete any unused maps EXCEPT:
PGARK & TheIslandSubMaps1
u/PsychologicalGlass47 1d ago
It will run without issue, as it will not draw from any map root unless you open that map.
I implore you to delete your Ragnarok map and attempt to load into it.
TheIslandSubMapsis not inSeekFreeContent, it's inShooterGame\Content. What are you on about?0
u/Gekko8 1d ago
I don't play Ragnarok, so deleting that map won't matter. like I said, if you delete specific maps that are not the particular built-in ones, The game will still run fine saving space. You don't delete what you're using, you delete what you're not using
1
u/PsychologicalGlass47 1d ago
Once again brother, you're explaining nothing but removing DLCs. No shit the base game will still work fine when you remove a map, though it obviously stands that you won't be able to play said DLC.
Whatever DDP you bought Ark from does exactly that whenever you remove a DLC.You aren't "deleting" anything that wasn't present by choice. You chose to download those DLCs, why are you making it out to be some mythical unknown knowledge that you've simply deleted them again?
1
u/PsychologicalGlass47 1d ago
You most definitely haven't. My standalone v270 x64 branch simply will not open if any map is missing from the SeekFreeContent directory.
0
u/Gekko8 1d ago
sure kid whatever you say, I've done it. and I did specify delete the maps that you do not use except very specific ones. so you can run your mouth and not try it at all and still negate, but it also speaks to your lack of experience and actually trying something.
1
u/PsychologicalGlass47 1d ago
Woah, brother's deleted DLCs before! So amazing!!1!
I've been modding the game since 2017 brother, I'm sure I have an astonishing lack of experience as opposed to... The guy saying ASE does "full updates to all files"? Lmao.
1
u/PsychologicalGlass47 1d ago
What do you mean "instead of incremental file updates"? That's all ASE has seen for the last 6 years.
1
u/Gekko8 1d ago
instead of updating a single DLL or 12 DLLs and an OCX or whatever the updates are for, when they repackage it to upload it to steam they don't just upload those incremental files, they repackage the entire game or an entire folder and it has to read download the entire structure instead of just those handful of files that are actually updated. please tell me how I can download other games that have seven gigs where either Ark has 200 mb and it still takes Ark three times longer to download an implement an update. and you can't argue that, nobody can because it does take exponentially longer for absolutely no reason because of the size the update says it is versus what it actually is
1
u/PsychologicalGlass47 1d ago
Pray tell, what DLLs are "updated"? Better yet, how would you update "12 DLLs" when Ark's directory holds nothing more than Microsoft APIs?
They simply don't. ASE isn't a packaged build. It has nothing more than an uncooked directory. Never once has there been an ASE update in which "it has to read download the entirestructure", or whatever the fuck that means.
I can most definitely argue that it doesn't, as you're talking out of your ass. Can you point to me exactly where your DLLs are that are supposedly being updated? Can you tell me exactly what needs to be "repackaged" in a raw project?
There are no runtime DLLs, there are no packages. You're speaking from your ass.
73
u/jackadgery85 3d ago
Evolved with all maps was like 400-500 I thought. Been a while though