Heavy caching?

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Heavy caching?

Post by dubq »

Found this while searching for Skyrim news updates on Google:

Via http://blog.mmoga.com/2011/10/skyrim-ma ... y-caching/
“It would seem that Skyrim doesnt like it when you play any games other than Skyrim itself. We just received our review copy for Skyrim and we noticed during our unboxing, a notice that states:” – JPS
…
Skyrim Makes Use of Heavy Caching
The text at the bottom is a link that leads to N4G, but the page doesn't exist anymore, it seems:

http://n4g.com/news/875481/skyrim-makes ... vy-caching

There was also a similar link that came up from Just Push Start, but it's also not in existence anymore.

I hope this is just a screw up.. WWE All Stars had a mandatory caching process that you had to sit through EVERY time you loaded the game after playing a different game prior. Their process was about five minutes, man, I can only imagine how long Skyrim's would take. Again, hope this is just a screw up.
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Re: Heavy caching?

Post by xopsi »

What game would you possibly play other than Skyrim?
Not changing this until Skyrim comes out, and even then, I'll probably be too busy... playing Skyrim...
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Re: Heavy caching?

Post by dubq »

xopsi wrote:What game would you possibly play other than Skyrim?
lol that was actually something I said to myself... That it won't be that big of a deal since the Skyrim disc probably won't leave my PS3 for several months anyway. ;)
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Re: Heavy caching?

Post by xopsi »

My very thought. By the time i take it out of my xbox, i'll have forgotten what a disc tray is.
Not changing this until Skyrim comes out, and even then, I'll probably be too busy... playing Skyrim...
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Re: Heavy caching?

Post by Conzeq »

<3 PC
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Re: Heavy caching?

Post by dubq »

The article works now:
It would seem that Skyrim doesn’t like it when you play any games other than Skyrim itself. We just received our review copy for Skyrim and we noticed during our unboxing, a notice that states:
“Skyrim makes heavy use of caching to the hard drive, and the initial load could take more time if the game is not fully cached already, or installed to the hard drive. Caching takes place over the normal course of gameplay but can be cleared by playing other games or manually cleared in the XBox Dashboard. Save game load times could also potentially take longer if the cache is cleared. ”
So any time you decide to take a break from playing Skyrim and go to play another game, when you come back to Skyrim, it will in fact take longer to load than if you had never stopped playing. All the more reason to shut out the world on 11-11-11 and play with your Dragon non-stop until you are no longer among the living…..or until you beat Elder Scrolls V, you know, whichever comes first.
Hoping that this is just a 360 issue..
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Re: Heavy caching?

Post by Dark Spark »

I just knew there was something hinky about cramming Skyrim onto a single DVD for the Xbox.
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Re: Heavy caching?

Post by Spiney »

This won't be a PC issue, since it works in a different way.
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Re: Heavy caching?

Post by Dark Spark »

Now my question is how the retail PC version of Skyrim will come out— a single DVD as well, multi-DVD, or will they release a single Blu-Ray edition?
Baurus: Our job is to get the Emperor out of situations like this. Though I'll admit, things aren't going exactly to plan.

Casandra: At the moment, the deadliest weapon at my disposal is a goblin's head on a stick. I'd be worried if this was the plan.
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Re: Heavy caching?

Post by Eltee »

I tend to agree with the sentiment of Xopsi. Except for occasional online games of Battlefield 3 with my friends. But, still, a five minute load-up time is totally bearable, in my opinion. Morrowind on Xbox took longer near every time, but I still play the hell out of that game.
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Re: Heavy caching?

Post by JJKG »

How much memory will it take up on my hard drive if I install it?
Spoiler:
That's right, you're going to die in here!
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Re: Heavy caching?

Post by Dark Spark »

JJKG wrote:How much memory will it take up on my hard drive if I install it?
Typical Xbox game installations take up around 6.7 GB, but what happens there is an 'image' of the disc is copied to your HDD.

What it comes across to me is that Skyrim is carried on that single DVD in a compressed format. Even if you copy game data on your HDD, the code still has to unfold from its compressed code and expand into the Xbox's cache.
Baurus: Our job is to get the Emperor out of situations like this. Though I'll admit, things aren't going exactly to plan.

Casandra: At the moment, the deadliest weapon at my disposal is a goblin's head on a stick. I'd be worried if this was the plan.
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Re: Heavy caching?

Post by Spiney »

Dark Spark wrote:Now my question is how the retail PC version of Skyrim will come out— a single DVD as well, multi-DVD, or will they release a single Blu-Ray edition?
Microsoft doesn't hold the rights to use a Blu-ray codec, so it won't be that one.
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Re: Heavy caching?

Post by OblivionDuruza »

My guess is that the PC will only need 1 DVD. A double layered single sided DVD can get around 8 Gigs of storage, and I don't think the game will exceed that.
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Re: Heavy caching?

Post by Farlace »

Dark Spark wrote:Now my question is how the retail PC version of Skyrim will come out— a single DVD as well, multi-DVD, or will they release a single Blu-Ray edition?
It will be one DVD. Unless you got the CE, there is two other seperate DVDs for, I think it is, a "making of" Skyrim.
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Re: Heavy caching?

Post by Pobatti »

Wasn't this always the case?

I'm not sure about the XBox360, but with Oblivion on the PS3 - although there was no actual install, the game still generated a rather large file on the system that was understood to essentially serve as a swap file. The game would pre-cache data into this swap file on the fly, and loading from the blu-ray would only take place if data needed to be loaded that was not already in the cache and this data replaced other data that the game deemed unlikely to be needed in the short term.

What this meant was the game could be played straight out of the box with zero install, but areas would eventually begin to load up quicker over time due to data already having been pre-loaded into the cache beforehand.

On the XBox360, there's both a cache (which can be manually cleared), and a programs folder (that serves as the location where the PS3 Oblivion stores it's cache data). Has it actually been confirmed that the 360 Skyrim uses the actual cache (rather than just creating a large file in the programs folder), because this is the only way it could be affected by the loading of other games.

I'm not quite up on the details so I could be totally wrong - but if the 360 version just behaves how PS3 Oblivion did and the player has a large enough hard drive, no other game could possibly interfere with the file it creates.
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