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Nazo
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2002
- Messages
- 3,672
So I've noticed that even with the better data storage methods of the later Minecraft versions (it was REALLY bad back when every chunk had a separate file so now it has been better combined) Minecraft still runs notably more smoothly with a slightly higher framerate even (but it's not really about the framerates, just about making it hitch less due to storage bottlenecks) on my systems -- particularly my minimal system which is weaker to begin with and has a somewhat slower harddrive as well. (In fact, with this, combined with OptiFine, I'm actually able to play with 128x128 textures on a system that I initially thought would only barely be able to handle Minecraft at all...) Right now I'm using a pretty good ramdrive more generically (with my %temp% and such set to it as well) where basically a batch file creates a Minecraft folder on the ramdrive, copies the files over, runs the game, copies the files back, then deletes that folder and its files from the ramdrive (since I'm using it for other stuff, I can't really just leave stuff lying around on there unnecessarily. It's rarely a problem, but it's not a huge ram drive and if I get careless it can fill up.)
I noticed that most ramdisk utilities these days actually support saving an image of the ramdrive (as a matter of fact, the one I'm using now actually does this so it can load the ramdrive on startup with the NTFS filesystem formatted, configured to only use the minimum journalizing, and with directories and permissions appropriately set.) So I was thinking that it could just be a heck of a lot more convenient if I could just keep all of the actual data inside such an image file -- instead of copying data back and forth, all it would have to do is mount the image, then save it when finished before unmounting. Besides this convenience though, in particular I'd like to share this sort of setup with a few friends who have systems that are much weaker than my minimal system (while it may be built to be more minimal, it's still built to be able to handle very basic gaming whereas their systems aren't really meant for gaming at all.) The performance difference for them could be far more extreme than subtly decreasing the amount of hitches in fact.
When I looked at the files I was actually using, the size of a ramdrive dedicated solely to Minecraft would actually be quite small. I think in a worst case scenario I could allocate 256MB and have plenty of room to work with, but looking over the mess of junk I have lying around in my Minecraft files I think 128MB actually would be plenty for them without the 128x128 textures in there. I have no idea off the top of my head how much memory they have, but I do believe they can spare 128MB even with this inefficient game just ripping through ridiculous amounts of RAM for doing so little... So this shouldn't be a problem for them at all and obviously I don't need a really powerful ramdrive tool that can handle huge (> 4GB) ramdrives or anything like that.
I have one major problem with this idea though. All the ramdrive tools I've found so far require device drivers to be loaded to load and control a ram drive. This could be a problem for those friends first first of all since I'd have to get them to actually install it at the least, plus I'd have to get them to install the correct drivers (some are 32-bit, some 64-bit.) I'm also keeping this portable and would like it to be possible to run from a ramdrive even on other systems where I may not necessarily have administrative privileges. This is the biggest problem since most rely on that system-level device driver to function. But I don't really need to fool the OS into thinking it's a fake harddrive or anything like that -- Minecraft doesn't know, understand, or care where its files are just as long as it has read/write access.
Also, it needs to be something I can automate in a batch file really. Besides the fact that it would be inconvenient and annoying for me to do manually every time, at least one of my friends would be absolutely incapable of manually doing this every time short of me remotely controlling their PC... Most of these tools do seem to have a command line control, but there are probably some out there that don't.
Sadly, these are all Windows systems. I do realize how stupidly easy this would be to do on a Linux and probably most other *nix systems as well, but sadly in Windows it's a lot trickier. Does anything exist for Windows systems that can do all of this?
I noticed that most ramdisk utilities these days actually support saving an image of the ramdrive (as a matter of fact, the one I'm using now actually does this so it can load the ramdrive on startup with the NTFS filesystem formatted, configured to only use the minimum journalizing, and with directories and permissions appropriately set.) So I was thinking that it could just be a heck of a lot more convenient if I could just keep all of the actual data inside such an image file -- instead of copying data back and forth, all it would have to do is mount the image, then save it when finished before unmounting. Besides this convenience though, in particular I'd like to share this sort of setup with a few friends who have systems that are much weaker than my minimal system (while it may be built to be more minimal, it's still built to be able to handle very basic gaming whereas their systems aren't really meant for gaming at all.) The performance difference for them could be far more extreme than subtly decreasing the amount of hitches in fact.
When I looked at the files I was actually using, the size of a ramdrive dedicated solely to Minecraft would actually be quite small. I think in a worst case scenario I could allocate 256MB and have plenty of room to work with, but looking over the mess of junk I have lying around in my Minecraft files I think 128MB actually would be plenty for them without the 128x128 textures in there. I have no idea off the top of my head how much memory they have, but I do believe they can spare 128MB even with this inefficient game just ripping through ridiculous amounts of RAM for doing so little... So this shouldn't be a problem for them at all and obviously I don't need a really powerful ramdrive tool that can handle huge (> 4GB) ramdrives or anything like that.
I have one major problem with this idea though. All the ramdrive tools I've found so far require device drivers to be loaded to load and control a ram drive. This could be a problem for those friends first first of all since I'd have to get them to actually install it at the least, plus I'd have to get them to install the correct drivers (some are 32-bit, some 64-bit.) I'm also keeping this portable and would like it to be possible to run from a ramdrive even on other systems where I may not necessarily have administrative privileges. This is the biggest problem since most rely on that system-level device driver to function. But I don't really need to fool the OS into thinking it's a fake harddrive or anything like that -- Minecraft doesn't know, understand, or care where its files are just as long as it has read/write access.
Also, it needs to be something I can automate in a batch file really. Besides the fact that it would be inconvenient and annoying for me to do manually every time, at least one of my friends would be absolutely incapable of manually doing this every time short of me remotely controlling their PC... Most of these tools do seem to have a command line control, but there are probably some out there that don't.
Sadly, these are all Windows systems. I do realize how stupidly easy this would be to do on a Linux and probably most other *nix systems as well, but sadly in Windows it's a lot trickier. Does anything exist for Windows systems that can do all of this?