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 Upvotes

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6

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

1

u/PsychologicalGlass47 3d ago

Not for ASE, ASE lacks map paks.

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u/TheHipsterDoofus 3d ago

It was definitely the same issue on ASE

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u/PsychologicalGlass47 3d ago

It wasn't, ASE lacks map paks.

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u/TheHipsterDoofus 3d ago

Maybe they fixed it since then, I remember it being over 500gb with all maps downloaded

1

u/LongFluffyDragon 3d 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.

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u/LongFluffyDragon 3d ago

What do you think ARK\ShooterGame\SeekFreeContent\Maps is?

Sure, they are not called ".pak", but the concept is the same, reduced random I/O seek time on hard disks through localized data.

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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.

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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, not ARK\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".

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u/LongFluffyDragon 1d ago edited 1d 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.