Steam - New File System

Posted by Prog · 06/24/06 @11:52 pm · general · add comment

It seems Valve is planning to release a new file system for Steam. The new system aims to reduce the huge loading times of Valve games: the slow GCF files have been replaced with NCF files, apparantly much faster and smaller than the current files. Unfortunately, this new system is currently avaible to Red Orchesta only, and it is still under Beta development. Read on!

One of the things that we try to do as a company is really listen to feedback from our fans. An issue that has probably been mentioned the most has been the map load times. For our recent patch we put a lot of work into optimizations to improve the load times. At the same time Valve has been hard at work developing a new file system which can be used with RO. This new file system will allow Red Orchestra to be run directly from the hard drive instead of through Steam caches. This has a lot of benefits, including vastly improved load times as well as fixing a lot of compatibility issues with anti-virus and other software. This new file system combined with the optimizations that we made for the latest patch result in MUCH faster load times (up to three times faster on some machines).

We’re looking for volunteers to help us put this new file system through its paces. This is a beta and as such could have bugs, so PLEASE do not participate unless you’re willing to take that risk. To try the new file system you need to add special parameters to your Steam commandline. You will need to modify the desktop shortcut that launches Steam by adding the following parameters at the end of the commandline [right-click on the shortcut, then Properties and the commandline is in the "Target" box]:

-clientbeta newfs –beta fs
This will launch Steam with the new filesystem for RO. The first tim it will unpack RO to a new directory, and copy all your custom content and config files over to that new directory. Once that is done just launch RO from the Steam UI as usual. For those of you who are making custom maps or mods, we would highly suggest you backup your content before running this beta. Additionally, you’ll need to update any tools that you use to point to the new RO folder. The Red Orchestra install directory will be moving to a new location here:

"<steam install path>SteamAppscommonred orchestra"

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