Zen of Streaming: Building and Loading 'Ghost of Tsushima'

In this 2021 GDC talk, lead engine programmer Adrian Bentley examines the technology choices that made Ghosts of Tsushima’s fast load times and compact patch sizes possible.
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[@SeanLumly]

A critical thing to note in this presentation is how challenging data storage and loading is when you are trying to achieve high quality and are limited to a slow storage medium (ie. HDD) -- more so when you have to coordinate across multiple disciplines (ie. art, gameplay, etc). PS5's SSD must be a godsend to devs, reducing many of the challenges of loading and managing data, and offering greater freedom of expression above all.

[@chudeexiste7329]

Hi! Could you explain what's an SSD and why it helps gamedevs? Oh ¿and what's HDD?

[@ahv007]

@@chudeexiste7329 I'm gonna assume that you're not a troll. He was talking about digital data storage. HDD is Hard Disk Drive (physically spinning disk - old school Hard Drives, which are slow, think extremely rewritable CD/DVD) SSD is Solid State Drive (stationary electronic storage which eliminates physical movement and increases speed because of it)

[@Synkhan]

@@chudeexiste7329 To go into further detail, SSD's are many many times faster than standard HDD. This in turn increases the amount of resources devs have to work with in order to achieve high quality scenes. As is explained in the video, they have to work within budgets when creating games. Having super fast SSD's increases the amount of resources they have available in order to achieve a scene many times over. In lay mans terms, SSD= More resources so larger, better, more complex scenes are possible with less work arounds to be made. HDD is the total opposite of all that.

[@ishitrealbad3039]

@@chudeexiste7329 To sum up what others have already stated, this basically means how fast assets and chunks of levels are loaded/streamed. For example it could mean that the player would constantly experience a hiccup or lower framerate in their game, due to the game having to load from an HDD. But when loaded from an SSD it would mean that things are more seamless and it doesn't interrupt the gameplay. This gives more freedom to developers.

[@surferriness]

The relative speedup is rather marginal, compared to GPU access bandwith. It is an advantage still, but you depend on a firm architecture, cleverly designed and trickery. Cant just throw your good Old assets into the Mass storage and expect them to be there in time. Worst bottleneck is RAM -> GRAM

[@GooshyG]

So cool to learn about how they optimized for such fast loading times. It really is a huge accomplishment especially developing for ps4. thanks!

[@zephyrvibe4153]

Couldn't agree more.ive bin recently enjoying your content,thanks.

[@adrianflores7616]

all these talks are so good man. especially as a CS major looking to get into game dev these things are a godsend.

[@Aranueth]

Finally a speaker with a really good recording setup!

[@lucbloom]

If you understand the subjects of this talk 100%, you probably already have a job at a big studio. I mean, he drops technique names like it’s common knowledge. Each and every scentence is worth a video to me. Can this man tell me a dev story every day please? Let’s start like 20% lower assumed tier though :-)

[@maestbobo]

Or you just suck as a dev? Most of those are techniques I would expect even an average dev to either know or to immediately understand what they are. I guess they don't teach you that at React bootcamp, though.

[@masterkutai]

@Luc Bloom yup, he is also very articulate in his explanations

[@rudisimo]

@@maestbobo Stick to making music videos, apparently you're good at that.

[@Nikolai508]

@@maestbobo There's no need to be so rude. The programming and software development world already has too many egotistical arseholes, don't add to it. Be better.

[@katiebarratt8184]

never worked for any studio but have been a self practicing cg artist since i was 13 so i get most of this stuff

[@user-rd6uc2sf6i]

no wonder games like Cyberpunk and Battlefield 2042 were struggling for the ps4. not only do you have to optimize your data streaming for a very limited amount of memory and threads but you also need to specifically optimize it for a very slow hard drive that sits in the middle of that pipeline. no wonder why Sony focused so much on the SSD in the ps5

[@ishitrealbad3039]

It really makes you think of how far behind consoles are to PCs, which is a shame really and due to shortages and prices this probably won't change in the near future.

[@EmeraldForestCat]

Huge work was done and the result was worth.

[@r1pfake521]

Do they have a talk about their new (improved?) mission system which was mentioned?

[@sebastienbarre]

6:42 80G of text?! Thank god text compresses well, but that's a lot of text! (or was it meant to be "recorded dialogues"?).

[@NSG0079]

It might be literal text as almost all dialogue has accompanying subtitle files; not to mention item descriptions, location names on the map, HUB items, etc.

[@sebastienbarre]

@@NSG0079 That would still be absurdly big. Googling various sources, the estimate is about 500,000 to 678,000 pages of raw text per GB. That's 40 to 54 million pages for 80GB. Nobody would have the time to read that, the entire written works of Shakespeare fits in 5M, you could fit 16,000 copies of that in 80GB. Even divided by the number of languages it shipped with, say 10, it’s humongous.

[@EngineEngineer0]

This game shipped with support for more than 10+ languages, 80G is reasonable when it's all uncompressed.

[@0ooTheMAXXoo0]

@@EngineEngineer0 For voices for all languages, the 80 Gb makes sense. Text is so much smaller than this. Maybe if the text is all graphic images instead of actual text data?

[@0ooTheMAXXoo0]

It is called "dialogue" on the next slide... So includes audio and text... Lots of text languages and a few spoken languages would make sense...

[@roarlisfang2860]

Wish there were more details on the 7-level Quad Trees

[@nexovec]

Got into a duel with your horse? Watch this video for guidance.

[@ihateevilbill]

Interested

[@austinhearn6111]

Good video

[@monhoobatraa3967]

I always optimize my assets for games, it's really make very faster render and help to animate. It very interesting video to watch 😁

[@tanver3d982]

10:47 WHAT DID HE SAYYYY

[@8butsideways295]

This man is a true magician

[@ThomasChen-ur2gt]

lost after 10 mins

[@bvionis]

The story was kind of slow paced and boring at times, but the ending made it worth it to me. I also enjoyed the fact that the story posed difficult moral questions to the player and allows for some ambiguity rather than forcing anything down your throat. The gameplay is pretty fun too, not to mention the beautiful graphics and environment.

[@bryanaustin8362]

I wish I was wealthy enough to work on games with a guy like this and not need the pressure of earning income at the same time.

[@chrisvarns]

to be clear, we are paid.

[@nintendude794]

@@chrisvarns lol, exactly

[@josecr9ify]

First good for me for being first I accomplished a lot for being first Thank you thank you.

[@soraaoixxthebluesky]

Same goes to me for being second

[@TyrJustice]

I guess I'm gay for being 3rd

[@josecr9ify]

@@8kbox666 no me not AI

[@benjaminyoung9694]

This game sure was basic and forgettable

[@thepuppetmaster9284]

You’re trippin son

[@webhead4414]

And yet you're here watching and commenting on a video about how it was developed. You have absolutely no reason to be here commenting what you did other than to troll, because that's what basic and forgettable people do.

[@leonprowse5806]

On all these GDC talks I've seen a comment like this. Gotta place your soapbox somewhere I guess

[@ivanleon6164]

lmao, u really came here to spread that, see the video and learn something.