Question about storage

[codecrush7]

Hello, I just have two questions regarding storage.

if I move the game folder (not the "game" folder inside the game but the entire game itself) to a completely different drive, would this cause any problems? I believe renpy save files are either in the game folder itself or in C:\ drive right? Just want to make sure the game still runs since I am running out of room on this hard drive lol

Second question I have is more for general storage itself. I built this computer back in 2017 and back then video games usually doesn't take that much space so the 500gb SSD and the later 1 TB SSD I added was sufficient. But nowadays I notice most AAA titles and even MMOs are growing easily to close or even over 100 GB each. What are you guys using nowadays for modern gaming? Do you buy the slower 4 TB to 8 TB+ hard drives to install new games on or the lesser space 1 TB to 2 TB SSD or nvme for the same price?

 

[Meaning Less]

1.No, In most cases this isn't an issue.
This could be an issue for games that rely on third party launchers like steam, but in such cases you can ask steam itself to move the library into another location.

2.Nowadays internet is so fast that usually I just delete what I'm not playing anymore and if I ever decide to play something again I just re-download, not worth relying on slower HDD disks for AAA titles.

 

[M$hot]

Regarding save storage (Not counting HTML Games, but at least for Ren'py) it's stored in the AppData on the drive your Windows is installed on. The entire path is hardcoded in so it shouldn't change. Hell, I play my adult games from the E: drive with the saves stored on the C: drive.

Regarding filestorage, I have 4TB 7200RPM HDD "slow storage" for stuff that doesn't take a lot to run properly, like video files, music, Adult games etc. For my bootdrive and for more intense/AAA games I use a 2TB PCI-E 4.0 NVME M.2 Drive. Video editing I do on C: but the results are stored on E: or F:. Storage speed CAN be a bottleneck if something is very demanding, so that's why I think you're generally splitting it. High intensity programs on M.2, low intensity programs and simple files/games on the slow storage.

While it would be dope to run a 16TB NVME M.2 UNRAID setup, I just can't justify the additional costs. And the price per GB at least over here is 4-6x as high for M.2 compared to HDD, so I'd rather have my 10TB (2 fast/8 slow) than 4TB fast. Then again, I'm also not a massive gamer so a 2TB boot/game drive is plenty, I barely use 500GB of it.

 

[mattmotor]

1. More info on RenPy, it reads/writes save files in both %APPDATA%\renpy and in GameDirectory\game\saves. A bit convoluted tbf, but eh. I have yet to see a RenPy game that doesnt store save files in its own game directory so you can usually delete the save files in appdata without issue.
2. I use to have 1x512GB NVMe for the OS/main game, 2x1TB SATA SSDs for games/programs/scratch drive for random production stuff/etc, and 1x6TB HDD for archival stuff and my homework collection. However I managed to get an allegedly new 8TB SATA SSD on the second hand market for like 50% of the post-tax retail price at the time I bought it (~$390 USD). So now Im just doing 1x512GB NVMe for the OS and 1x8TB SATA SSD for everything else. If you're looking for recommendations then 2TB NVMe SSDs are getting to be fairly decent at price/GB now-a-days, esp in the US market (ex:
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   ). I could give some recommendations if you arent a human made from the USA soil.
3. Back to point #1, sounds like you're running out of storage. I'd recommend WinDirStat for clearing the drive of large folders/files that arent needed.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Regarding save storage (Not counting HTML Games, but at least for Ren'py) it's stored in the AppData on the drive your Windows is installed on. The entire path is hardcoded in so it shouldn't change.

Doubly wrong for Ren'Py.
The data are just also stored in the AppData, but you can perfectly forget about it as long as you keep the "save" folder located in the game directory. What mean that you can perfectly have your Ren'Py games on an external hard drive or NAS, and play them from whatever computer you want without loosing your progression. And the path can perfectly be changed through a basic two lines mod:
[whatever.rpy]

python early:
    config.savedir = "D:/my own RenPy save/" + config.save_directory

then drop this in the "[path to the game]/game" directory.

 

[M$hot]

Doubly wrong for Ren'Py.
The data are just also stored in the AppData, but you can perfectly forget about it as long as you keep the "save" folder located in the game directory. What mean that you can perfectly have your Ren'Py games on an external hard drive or NAS, and play them from whatever computer you want without loosing your progression. And the path can perfectly be changed through a basic two lines mod:

How is it double wrong when you agree it's stored in AppData? At worst it was an incomplete answer. Also, some people delete the games (and the included save folder) upon completion for oversight/preserving storage. In which case you rely far more on the AppData saves anyway.
And I didn't say the path couldn't be changed, I'm saying that it starts all the way at the drive letter, meaning the game knows how to find the AppData saves even if it's on a different drive. I suppose I may have misused 'hardcoded', that's my bad. I just meant that as long as you don't move your Windows Installation to a different drive, deleting and redownloading your game to a different drive shouldn't change anything, due to the location of AppData being unchanging.

Though good to know you can change the path I suppose.