Hey i got a pretty awkward issue patching ark.
a couple of recent patches gave me and my tribemate a wierd issue.
we ran out of diskspace pretty quick even though we had 22gb left on our SSD's and also those patches weren't big (400mb) but reserving >20gb disk space to patch the game?
is there a way to change the steams cached download folder? or do i have to redownload the whole game from now on to get patches.
Posted Jan 1, 2016, 9:41 AM UTC
I don't know why this is getting down voted this is a major issue. A single game should not take up so much space OR they should tell you how much space it ACTUALLY takes before you start the download so you don't wait an hour just to find out it didn't work. The fact that they say 200 mb and then it takes 10 gb does not feel right no matter how you explain it. If they mean for it to take up 10 gigs, tell me that then please. This type of thing needs to take priority over useless Dino's and overblown seasonal events.
Yeah, I think I'll take this opportunity to delete the game entirely and reassess their development process in a couple of months and see if things have improved. If Easter comes around and we have another alpha-stage seasonal event, I think I'll be saying goodbye for good.
Ah, someone doesn't know how Steam updates work, or how patching packed files work. First, Steam makes a copy of the file to apply that patch to. This is so that it doesn't accidentally corrupt the live file in case something goes wrong; it just deletes the bad new copy and leaves the old "known good" in place.
Second, packed files are packed to reduce their filesize. In order to patch packed files you generally need to unpack them. Guess how large those files really are? Roughly 20GB, perhaps? Then, once it's done patching the contents of that file it repacks it and, assuming the install has gone well, replaces the old file.
Ta-da! You now know what has been told to several other people who can't google.
Edit: Say a file is 2GB packed. Inside that file is 10GB of raw data. In order to patch a specific set of data in that file you must unpack it, patch, then repack it. You still only need to download the 2GB file for an install, and maybe a ~200mb file to patch, but you must unpack that file to patch it. That's why such updates take ~20GB.
This. It's what the "free-seek packages" are. So glad it was finally implemented. Not so glad I have to transfer off my OS's SSD and then back again to apply every fucking patch because I can't afford a 500GB secondary SSD just yet. T_T
Are you subbed to r/buildapcsales? They had a 500GB Samsung SSD on the for like $130 the other day.
How do you transfer things off the ssd? I've wanted to transfer some games to save some much needed ssd space.
First, make sure you've set up a second folder for your games through Steam.
Copy the game folder from steam/steamapps/common/ into the new Steam library on your new HDD (making sure to also put it into that folder's steamapps/common/ folder).
In the Steam client, right click and "Delete Local Content..." of the game you just moved.
Again in Steam, right click and "Install Game..." of that same game.
When it asks you where you would like to install the game, direct it to your other Steam library where your copy of Ark has been moved to.
Wait for the game to find and validate the files (will still take some time, as the client will need to checksum the files.)
Play. =]
so you're telling me this is a fucking 51gb+ game i have downloaded? you're losing your fucking mind. simple patching and compression details are obvious to any potato but there is an overly obvious amount of redundant fuckery going on here. i have a 120gb ssd for my games since i dont play that many at a time, all of 3 games. this one game is getting close to 50% of my storage space. kind of absurd dont you think?
There are a lot of huge games out. Sorry you are currently playing one of the larger ones?
Yep their patching system is horrible. I have had to reinstall it many times because of my 120g SSD. It is only about a 9gig download, I have to redownload it because of the 'fuckery' LOL. Fucking stupid but what can ya do. Hope you have fast internet =p
i download really fast but i dont want to have to redownload the full game for every patch. thats just fucking silly. though i guess its the only viable option every few patches or something so my ssd isnt full of shit. had to uninstall a game for the last patch to even download -_-
I totally understand lol. I need to get my other SSD attached to this computer, I just got this game for me and my step son as a Christmas present. I wasn't expecting it to take up my entire drive lol. I suggested the download again thing because it was the only way I could get it to work, very odd. The game is what 5-8x larger then what they say. Wonder when the release actually is.