ARK: Survival Evolved

ARK: Survival Evolved

Party of Six
Lao 27 Sep, 2017 @ 10:51pm
Thoughts on mod size / content
First of all, please know that I love this mod. My server has been running this mod for a while now and we all have appreciated it greatly. I do, however, have a request.

So, I did a bit of testing a while back, and one of the things I discovered is that the size of mod has a significant impact on client and server loading time and resource usage (and rate of resource usage increase). This is especially true for any player that does not have an SSD. One of the things that makes Ark loads so painful is the mods. And it's not an insignificant difference. On SSD, with 15-20 small mods (keeping the total mod size under 100MB) the game loads in a few seconds (usually around 15-20). With 5 large mods (500MB+, such as Castles and Keeps, Annunaki, etc), it can take over a minute and a half. Again, that's an SSD. There is also a huge performance gain in Ark when using an SSD over an HDD. This isn't necessarily mod-related, but being mod-heavy does make that difference more prevalent. Also, please note that I did hundreds of loads on the same (one very high-end, one mid-grade) systems to do this analysis.

After doing my analysis, in order for out server to be more accessible, I have placed a constraint on which mods we can use. I have a hard limit of up to 1GB worth of mods (installed). This might not seem like a lot, but we're running almost 30 mods and are under that threshold. In fact, we were only @ ~60%, until this mod doubled in size.

So, on to the point. We really want the powers that this mod has to offer. A lot. We intend to make it an integral part of both our PvP and PvE. However, the new loot is adding a LOT to the size. Using WinDirStat on this mod in its installation folder (ShooterGame/Content/Mods/1113088471), we see that the "Loot" folder is 56.5% of the size of the mod. 52.1% of that is the weapons. 83.5% of weapons is in Hammer. And so forth. We're not really using these parts of the mod, and now the size is to the point where we're considering removing except for special events. Again, all in the sake of making our server more accessible to anyone. I am NOT saying no one uses them or that they're not worth while. However, my request, and that of our server, is if the mod could possibly be split, ala Capitalism modules, so that anyone who wants the quests and armor can have both, and those of us who have a size constraint can still use the core of this awesome mod?

I know what I'm asking for is a major pain and might be for a small audience, but I know most people on my cluster don't have amazing machines (apart from myself and a couple others), and we LOVE this mod. We would even be happy with just an older version before the items were introduced.

Please let me know your thoughts on this.
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Showing 1-4 of 4 comments
ReptileQueen 28 Sep, 2017 @ 8:09am 
I play on the server together with Lao, and although I was extremely sceptical to this mod when I was first introduced to it, I now absolutely love it! (Minus the changes to the controls, I like the x/z controls better). I agree with Lao on what he has to say when it comes to the mod size. I almost feel like I need this mod on our server at this point, but the size might make that impossible since we also have other mods that we'd like to keep for quality of life. Please consider our suggestion to either splitting the mod into sections or make an older version available, it would be greatly appreciated by a lot of people on our server.
Maveritchell  [developer] 28 Sep, 2017 @ 9:14am 
I'll definitely take segmenting the mod into consideration, although it's not my first choice. What I'll do as a first step in the next patch is reduce the size of the assets used for the loot assets (identifying pain points, like the hammer model, is super-helpful, so thanks!).
Lao 28 Sep, 2017 @ 12:52pm 
Thank you very much for your consideration! Obviously we'd love to play with the full mod as you intend it, performance being our only constraint.

Again, thank you very much.
Maveritchell  [developer] 1 Oct, 2017 @ 2:00am 
Just a heads-up, I went ahead and reduced several filesizes in this version of the mod. Some things you'll likely have patched in directly (as they're direct replacements), but to fully reduce the size of the mod, you may want to unsubscribe and resubscribe.

Please let me know how things shake out for your server performance. I'll keep an ear out!
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