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Xbox Poll regarding Chapter 2

How Should We Reduce File Size

  • Total voters
    59
kinggath

kinggath

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We're incredibly close to release of Chapter 2! Which means we now have some decisions to make regarding Xbox.

Since you guys are hard up for file space, there are a few sacrifices we're going to have to make to ensure this fits. Thought I'd toss it up for a poll to see what you all think. Vote for as many as you're OK seeing implemented!

(I'll be responding to this post with more details on each poll option for those who want to further understand it.)

Without cuts or sacrifices, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 together will take up about 1.8 GB. Which for many of you would be a deal-breaker.

Note PC Players - this has no effect on you, we can include the full content for both chapters on PC regardless of what we change for Xbox release!
 
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Downscale Textures in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2:
Currently Xbox and PC use the same textures - one of the ways I can recover a significant amount of space (probably 100+ MB ), would be to downscale textures: 2k to 1k and 1k to 512. This would result in some things looking grainy.

Disable the Outfit Collection System:
One of the characters in Chapter 2 will give you a camera and allow you to snap pictures of all the various NPCs in the game, and then turn in those pictures so the character can craft you that equipment. This is how you could get access to the dozens of custom outfits SS2 includes, such as Jake's custom clothing.

We can reduce file size by about 50MB if we remove the opposite sex version of each outfit that aren't used by the NPCs.

Remove Precombine Data:
A couple of our new cells, including the location of our HQ System, demand precombine data to run decently- and those files are huge - something like 200 MB.

Disabling these would make the HQ System virtually unplayable on older Xboxes, the new Series X/S should still be able to handle it though.

Remove Custom Sounds:
We have a lot of custom sounds in the mod for things like unlocks, plot equipment, soundscapes etc, these add up to about 40MB

Disabling these would leave a lot of strange moments and dead air.

Remove Custom Animations:
Many of the animations, such as the new ones indicating NPCs are sick, or the custom furniture animations used by many building plans could be cut. These are surprisingly small overall, in total about 15 MB.

Disabling these would likely result in some t-posing.

Remove Voice Files for Recruitable NPCs:
The recruitable characters in Chapter 1 have quite a lot of voice work, we could shave about 100MB off of Chapter 1 by eliminating these.

This would result in requiring subtitles to use these characters, and it can be a little slow to get through subtitle dialogue as the game won't allow you to speed past responses by pressing activate when the voice files are missing.
 
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I won't vote because I'm on PC but would vote for textures and the outfit collection system (although I'm not really sure what was it about, I could still play without new outfits)
 
kinggath said:
We're incredibly close to release of Chapter 2!
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Stop being such a tease :rofl

In all seriousness, I voted despite not using the xbox much anymore. I still remember how hard it was so anything you can do to make it run smoothly gets an upvote from me. Anything that would make it worse obviously doens't.

The "We can reduce file size by about 50MB if we remove the opposite sex version of each outfit that aren't used by the NPCs." sounds like a given to me but then again I guess I'm not really playing SS for the outfits.

Removing the custom sounds is another I'd be willing to live without on xbox. Those would be the main 3 as far as I'm concerned.
 
Honestly as long as it comes out around 1.5 gb for sim settlements and chapter 2 your golden leaves space for UF04P. Definitely wouldn't do the precombines though sounds like a bad idea voice files are pick and choose what's important what's background noise. Texture and outfits who cares slash down the file size can't wait to try it out.
 
I can’t speak for the Xbox community of course, but the size does make for a tricky situation. Even without Chapter 2 Xbox players are largely in a SS is the only mod scenario, it’s just that now that can include add ons.
If it goes to 1.8 with just core SS, then you can’t even have like Wasteland Venturers, which is just about sacrilegious.
Having some component of the mod not work seems like a dealbreaker obviously and I don’t even have the newest X/S (though I have the newest just before those, so maybe that will work) but it may just be at the point to say older Xbox users are out of luck because that 200mb is a big deal if the alternative is no additional at all. On the other hand, some people will clearly think it’s better to at least have it than not at all.
I hate to see the voice acting go, because they are so cool, but if there is no way to get more space, I would say it’s unfortunately worth losing them.
Saving 15 mb might not really be worth it though.
Like I said, it’s tricky, and making key parts unplayable- unless you could do 2 versions for that particular feature - seems counter to having people use it. Plus, whichever way it goes Tinuvia is going to be bombarded by people asking to have WV split into two mods so they can at least have one or the other.
 
Rocola said:
I won't vote because I'm on PC but would vote for textures and the outfit collection system (although I'm not really sure what was it about, I could still play without new outfits)
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I’m in the same boat I play on pc but my vote would be like this and in this order.
1 textures
2 sounds
3 outfits
 
Beowulf said:
kinggath, if it's not difficult, read a private message on Nexus about the translation of the second part
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I'm about a month behind on my Nexus messages - have been in non-stop crunch mode since the C2 trailer dropped as I'm trying to get this thing shining like a diamond!
 
kinggath said:
I'm about a month behind on my Nexus messages - have been in non-stop crunch mode since the C2 trailer dropped as I'm trying to get this thing shining like a diamond!
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Yes, I understood that from your workload. That's why I wrote here) I'll repeat my letter from the nexus here in a private message...
 
kinggath said:
Remove Precombine Data:
A couple of our new cells, including the location of our HQ System, demand precombine data to run decently- and those files are huge - something like 200 MB.

Disabling these would make the HQ System virtually unplayable on older Xboxes, the new Series X/S should still be able to handle it though.
Click to expand...
Has your team looked into using static collections and optimization planes instead of previs in these cells, at least for xBox? If done right, it can have a really similar impact on performance (see Goodneighbor Expanded as an example - I know that example is an exterior cell, but the performance is comparable between both the previs and non-previs versions due to the use of static collections and optimization planes - https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/37961)
 
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Candied_Skull said:
Has your team looked into using static collections and optimization planes in these cells, at least for xBox? If done right, it can have a really similar impact on performance (see Goodneighbor Expanded as an example - I know that example is an exterior cell, but the performance is comparable between both the previs and non-previs versions due to the use of static collections and optimization planes - https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/37961)
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I’ve used that mod and the previs patch for it wasnt a bad setup. But previs precombines are not the place to save space at not to mention the system your talking about using probably wouldn’t be much different as far as saving a few MB’. Textures make for a much better savings with minimal change unless your playing this at 4K.

not to mention the clothing part is not a big deal either same with custom sounds.

the best option is probably a mix of textures sounds and clothing that way you don’t have to remove all of 1 thing.
 
At least for me, the only outfits I really want are the gunner marine armor and whatever power armor that older gunner guy is wearing in the chapter 2 trailer. Anything else i can trade(steal) off the settlers. Lol. I like having new armors/clothes so imo, textures are where to make the most savings, then maybe a bit of the rest EXCEPT precombines. Thus far it runs fine on my xbox without a bunch of optimization mods and I'd like to keep it that way.
Thanks for the great work and get well soon.
 
I voted to downgrade textures & disable the outfit collection system, maybe make the outfit collection system a separate mod add on & also do the same for the voice files so it's completely optional
 
As an Xbox user, this is what I will say about MOD space. I would play SS2 even if all space was taken up by mods needed to play just SS2.
I have about 450mb of non-SS2 mods loaded. It would be nice to have them but I couls live without them and be happy playing SS2.
 
leelazarous said:
Staff feel free to correct me, but I don't think you guys are having content cut because you don't have the same file size limitations as console.
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That's why there's an extra file on Nexus called "SS2 Extended" - that's where the stuff that they didn't put in the Xbox version goes.
 
Not sure this would help or not but could some of the textures be replaced by the regular fo4 textures. Like say you guys add shack wall plus textures for it. Could it not just use the regular shack wall textures from fo4 and not have added textures. Obviously some of the new stuff requires textures to work.

this may already be in practice for all I know since I’m a pc player.
 
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