Rant: Unreal Engine 3 games eat up too much space
If you’re as cheap as I am, then you’re probably holding off on that PC upgrade for years. A couple of months ago, I probably would’ve said that despite the age of my current rig, it has yet to disappoint. While it can still manage to run Mass Effect, I noticed that I can only install a couple of games on my hard drive because of space restrictions.
Are the size of current games really growing? I decided to do a little more digging.
I looked at the games installed on my hard drive. What do Gears of War, Bioshock, and Mass Effect have in common? Yes, they’re “shooters,” but not in the strictest sense. Notice anything else?
The three games are all powered by Unreal Engine 3. Interestingly, each game consumes almost 10GB of hard disk space. Gears of War gets 9.96GB, Mass Effect eats up 9.87GB, and Bioshock in the neighborhood of 8GB.
In comparison, Clive Barker’s Jericho, another current shooter, requires a mere 2GB of space. Jericho and Gears both came out in November 2007.
What is up with Unreal Engine 3, Epic? Why can’t you be like other developers and design a game that can look as purdy and manage to stay smaller than 5GB? Are you turning into Microsoft? Can’t you trim your humongous engine? Who knows, maybe your games would run much smoother in older systems, translating to even better sales.
To be fair, Mass Effect is running quite well in my aging PC, which doesn’t meet the RPG/shooter’s minimum system requirements. However, my PC can also run Gears of War handily at medium detail settings. Strangely, my rig is having a more difficult time running Mass Effect even if both games use the same engine.
Bottom line: Cliffy B. and company should try a bit harder to optimize their game engine. Yes, it’s already running relatively well, but I believe it could get even better. Games may have to be delayed a bit, but trimming Unreal Engine 3 to around half its original size would do wonders to performance and even sales.
Image of Mass Effect for the PC is courtesy of EA.
Actually, Epic’s UT3 takes up 5.5Gb, if you don’t count the SP bink movies, just like UT2004. As for the size – compare Jericho at high settings and compare Gears. Last one has much more detail in the environment than Jericho.
Also, that’s not really a problem of the Unreal Engine. There are UE3 powered games that are sold via Xbox Live Arcade – this means they’re smaller then 50 megs. These are Roboblitz and Undertow. The core of the engine is really small. Most of the size of the games is used by textures and meshes and this depends not on Epic but on the developer. Like I said before they can fit a game under 50 megs, but in that case don’t expect it to look as good as Gears. Or they can go for detail and end up with 8-10 gigs of various content but the game will good.
Very good point. However, does the difference in detail between these two games equate to 6-8GB?
Don’t these games use advanced techniques to render textures without consuming as much space and processing power?
You provided the example yourself: UT3 eats up a “mere” 5.5GB, and it’s as pretty or maybe even prettier than Gears of War.
Hate to burst your bubble _Lynx but those games on XBLA run on the Original Unreal engine. (UE1)