One local download of a game - all computers can load from

[SBSpecial]

Hi there,

 

We have a few different gaming computers in my household and started to think how it would be great if I could have some sort of set-up that allowed all machines to be able to run off the same local install of any game, in order to save space on every machine and not have 3 - 5 different installs of the same game. Tried googling it and didn't have much luck. Is this something that is even possible? and what would I need in order to pull it off?

 

I remember seeing a video where Linus showed off a cache system so each machine could install the same game quicker but is there no way to point a server and have it fetch the files it needs and run the game like that? (Please forgive my complete lack of networking knowledge).

[aDoomGuy]

Well I know Steam lets you stream a game from another PC on local network. Never tried it though.

[SBSpecial]

3 minutes ago, aDoomGuy said:

Well I know Steam lets you stream a game from another PC on local network. Never tried it though.

Yeah I remember trying it quite a few years ago and having some pretty poor results with it randomly going blurry and input delay being a consist. Might be worth looking into again and seeing if any improvements have been made 

[Eigenvektor]

You could certainly try to install the game on some network drive that is then connected on all machines. Just keep in mind that software doesn't always like to be installed on or run off of a network drive.

 

Such an install would probably cause all kinds of headache when Steam detects an update and multiple machines tried to update the same installation. So you'd have to keep an eye out for that.  Also installation in the first place. You could have one computer install it and then the others try to restore from there, but could get messy.

 

Configuration files stored alongside the game files would also overwrite one another if multiple machines were using that same installation. And last but not least, network drives are slow compared to a local drive, so load times would most likely be through the roof.

[SBSpecial]

3 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

You could certainly try to install the game on some network drive that is then connected on all machines. Just keep in mind that software doesn't always like to be installed on or run off of a network drive.

 

Such an install would probably cause all kinds of headache when Steam detects an update and multiple machines tried to update the same installation. So you'd have to keep an eye out for that.  Also installation in the first place. You could have one computer install it and then the others try to restore from there, but could get messy.

 

Configuration files stored alongside the game files would also overwrite one another if multiple machines were using that same installation. And last but not least, network drives are slow compared to a local drive, so load times would most likely be through the roof.

Interesting, thank you for the info! 

 

Sounds like while possible, it is not really practical which is a real shame. Sounds like the only real use case would be for much older (DRM free) titles that we not be updated but even then those titles are usually so small you're better off keeping them local and save the hassle of conflicting/overridden config files.

 

Perhaps going with the cache system I saw would be better so at least I can save on download times

[Catsrules]

You can do it but it would be very complex and cost way more then just buying a bigger storage for each computer.

 

LMG actually did it already in their 7 gamers 1 CPU. They have a mega PC that runs 7 VMs. Those VMs are linked clones of a base VM. It is linked so they all think they have there own dedicated copy of a file but in reality all 7 are referencing the same physical data locations on the storage. But this works really well because if a VM changes the data the back end storage is smart enough to give it it own dedicated copy of the file containing the just the changes it made so it doesn't affect the other VMs. This way you can get around configuration files have might have changed etc..

 

Linus explains it better in the video around the 10:45 time stamp

 

 

 

You actuality could probably do something similar without using VM and just using Unraid or FreeNAS and using a standard Windows file share or probably better a iSCSI connection to each of your computers. However you would most definetly run into performance issues especially on newer games that are expecting very fast SSD storage to load assets into the game. You would probably want 2.5 or 10GB networking (no wireless at all) and have very high performance SSD raid array on the backed storage.  None of that is going to be cheap. But I bet that would be good enough to run everything with little downsides from local storage.

 

Also  game updates would be a pain to deal with as some updates basically change all of the files so you would have to create a new base image of a game and then delete and recreate all of the linked files for each computer. It would get really messy really fast.

[SBSpecial]

9 minutes ago, Catsrules said:

You can do it but it would be very complex and cost way more then just buying a bigger storage for each computer.

 

LMG actually did it already in their 7 gamers 1 CPU. They have a mega PC that runs 7 VMs. Those VMs are linked clones of a base VM. It is linked so they all think they have there own dedicated copy of a file but in reality all 7 are referencing the same physical data locations on the storage. But this works really well because it is refferencing the same data if a VM change the data the back end storage is smart enought to give it it own dedicated copy of the file containing the just the changes so it doesn't affect the other VMs. This way you can get around configuration files have might have changed etc..

 

Linus explains it better in the video around the 10:45 time stamp

 

 

 

You actuality could probably do something similar without using VM and just using Unraid or FreeNAS and using a standard Windows file share or probably better a iSCSI connection to each of your computers. However you would most definetly run into performance issues especially on newer games that are expecting very fast SSD storage to load assets into the game. You would probably want 2.5 or 10GB networking (no wireless at all) and have very high performance SSD raid array on the backed storage.  None of that is going to be cheap. But I bet that would be good enough to run everything with little downsides from local storage.

Ahh interesting! Thank you!

 

I'll for sure look into this, never heard of iSCSI so sounds like i've got a lot of reading up to do but it now sounds like it could be a practical just a pricey option. I've heard Linus talk about Unraid and FreeNAS before but to be honest still don't fully understand it. 

 

Thank you again!