USB Gaming?

[codyvamp]

Stay with me.. 

 

CD's were great cause you didn't need a lot of storage on consoles and you didn't have to wait hours for a game to download.

with some really great USB's (128gb 3.0) only costing 15 dollars ish, 

 

Could I Game right off the USB or would I have to transfer the game from the USB to my SSD, I could still see it saving time Don't have the best internet here so downloading games usually takes 1-2 hours 

 

my Dream would be a Wall full of USB's with name tags of games that are ready to play right away, thought this would be the only place someone might of already tried this lately FEED BACK is very much wanted 

 

 

Edit: The type of games I was thinking about running off of USB was old call of duty's (sometimes I want to replay the single player or hop on zombies) 

so I'm not really worried about performance its more about saving time (wanting to play a game for an hour or two but having to wait an hour or two for it to download stops me from revisiting a lot of games I use to love 

[Shimejii]

3 minutes ago, codyvamp said:

Stay with me.. 

 

CD's were great cause you didn't need a lot of storage on consoles and you didn't have to wait hours for a game to download.

with some really great USB's (128gb 3.0) only costing 15 dollars ish, 

 

Could I Game right off the USB or would I have to transfer the game from the USB to my SSD, I could still see it saving time Don't have the best internet here so downloading games usually takes 1-2 hours 

 

my Dream would be a Wall full of USB's with name tags of games that are ready to play right away, thought this would be the only place someone might of already tried this lately FEED BACK is very much wanted 

Yes you can. I dont reccomend USB  Thumbsticks though, i would suggest a external HDD or SSD since the USB will be pretty slow.

[porina]

USB sticks could be used as install media, so you'd still have to install locally most likely.

If the files were supplied uncompressed you could run off USB too, but performance here is very hit and miss. Generally speaking, performance of a typical low cost flash drive would be lower than a SATA SSD. 

 

2 minutes ago, Shimejii said:

Yes you can. I dont reccomend USB though, i would suggest a external HDD or SSD since the USB will be pretty slow.

The problem there is you're massively increasing cost. It isn't clear to me but OP could be talking two scenarios: USB as distribution media, and USB as game storage. I'd rather use internal for storage unless it is impossible e.g. a laptop without any free internal expansion.

[Shimejii]

7 minutes ago, porina said:

USB sticks could be used as install media, so you'd still have to install locally most likely.

If the files were supplied uncompressed you could run off USB too, but performance here is very hit and miss. Generally speaking, performance of a typical low cost flash drive would be lower than a SATA SSD. 

 

The problem there is you're massively increasing cost. It isn't clear to me but OP could be talking two scenarios: USB as distribution media, and USB as game storage. I'd rather use internal for storage unless it is impossible e.g. a laptop without any free internal expansion.

512 GB SSDs are around 15-20$ now. But yes it is an understandable price difference thing.

[scrumptious starfruit]

External SSD would be cheaper per GB by quite a bit once you get to 500+ GB range, it's mainly a question of how much space is needed. Samsung 256GB flash drive for $24 means $0.09/GB. Samsung T7 external SSD 1TB at $84 is only $0.08/GB, and the 2TB model is $0.06/GB. Would definitely recommend SSD over flash drive unless you know you won't need more than one or two hundred gb. SSD will also be faster and should last longer b/c the memory controller is more careful about how the flash is written to than flash drives are.

[manikyath]

i did this a lot back in the day.. because school computers ofcourse didnt have games on them, but we all needed a USB stick to save out work on... it just so happens that an 8GB stick fit a lot of games back in the day.

 

but ideally, dont use a cheap one.. because they dont cope well with the (even relatively mild) sustained load of running a game. they get hot, they get slow, and they might even kick the bucket outright.

i've had one USB drive die after playing a game for an hour or so, right after copying it to the drive.

 

having all that said.. unless you have multiple computers you game on, this:

31 minutes ago, codyvamp said:

a Wall full of USB's with name tags of games that are ready to play right away

is just a roundabout way to just having a bigger SSD in your computer, with the game installed on your SSD.

[codyvamp]

23 minutes ago, porina said:

USB sticks could be used as install media, so you'd still have to install locally most likely.

If the files were supplied uncompressed you could run off USB too, but performance here is very hit and miss. Generally speaking, performance of a typical low cost flash drive would be lower than a SATA SSD. 

 

The problem there is you're massively increasing cost. It isn't clear to me but OP could be talking two scenarios: USB as distribution media, and USB as game storage. I'd rather use internal for storage unless it is impossible e.g. a laptop without any free internal expansion.

I 100% want to use USB as game Storage, The Idea of having a "physical copy" of my games ready to plug and play just tickles a part of me hahaha. 

I understand that an external drive would be better then flash drives but they take up so much more space. for example black ops 1 and 2 and MW2 single player only comes to 30gb, having a dedicated flash drive just for them seems "fun" 

[codyvamp]

7 minutes ago, manikyath said:

 

having all that said.. unless you have multiple computers you game on, this:

is just a roundabout way to just having a bigger SSD in your computer, with the game installed on your SSD.

Damn your not wrong. I think I'm just a little nostalgic about plugin/putting a hard copy of a game into my PC/console and seeing it boot up 

or seeing an old game case on under the living room chair and getting exegeted to play a game I complete forgot about... 

 

I really believe that games not being physical anymore really took something special out of gaming  OFC non-physical gaming brought in a lot of great things too (not having to replace CD's cause of use and abuse or not having to rebuy games every time a new console comes out etc etc)  

[scrumptious starfruit]

The Samsung SSD I mentioned is pretty small, bigger than flash drive but smaller than a phone. But if you like the feeling of a physical copy for each game that's respectable. Main issue is wear on the drive and loading assets could take a bit of time (maybe cause temporary frame drops) depending on the game, just try one out and if it works, expand the collection from there imo.

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, codyvamp said:

Damn your not wrong. I think I'm just a little nostalgic about plugin/putting a hard copy of a game into my PC/console and seeing it boot up 

or seeing an old game case on under the living room chair and getting exegeted to play a game I complete forgot about... 

 

I really believe that games not being physical anymore really took something special out of gaming  OFC non-physical gaming brought in a lot of great things too (not having to replace CD's cause of use and abuse or not having to rebuy games every time a new console comes out etc etc)  

i made a thing for my media pc that's basicly just a card reader, that reads a command stored on a chip card, and executes that on the computer.

 

the original goal was what you described, but i quickly realised that made no sense.

[codyvamp]

Just now, scrumptious starfruit said:

The Samsung SSD I mentioned is pretty small, bigger than flash drive but smaller than a phone. But if you like the feeling of a physical copy for each game that's respectable. Main issue is wear on the drive and loading assets could take a bit of time (maybe cause temporary frame drops) depending on the game, just try one out and if it works, expand the collection from there imo.

Yeah I think after looking into it a bit more. gaming off a USB seems like a bad idea but having games saved on there and just transferring the data to a deciated M.2 SSD seems a bit more reasonable. I see a lot of 3.0 USB flash drives can transfer 100-150mb/s, I just downloaded a game to test the speeds im getting right now and it peaks at 40mb/s but avg 4-9mb/s.... does this make more sense ? hahaha 

[codyvamp]

1 minute ago, manikyath said:

i made a thing for my media pc that's basicly just a card reader, that reads a command stored on a chip card, and executes that on the computer.

 

the original goal was what you described, but i quickly realised that made no sense.

Can you explain what you mean by media PC and how a card reader helped ? sounds interesting haha 

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, codyvamp said:

Can you explain what you mean by media PC and how a card reader helped ? sounds interesting haha 

pc next to my TV, that besides playing movies i occasionally use for some retro gaming. and opening an emulator and then loading the rom was a bit too cumbersome for the 5 games i might care about playing..

 

so, essentially the setup is this:

- chip card that contains a command

- an arduino wired to the suitable 'connector' for the card.

- when the card gets pushed in, it triggers a switch that gives the arduino the signal to read

- arduino reads the command, and sends it to the computer (windows + r, then keyboard input the command, and press enter.)

[NadiaMayer]

For simple small games less then a few gbs like many 2d indie games may be find on usb.

Do you still have 5.25/3.25 drive bays in your case? if so get one them 2.5 HD docks to get that feeling of slapping in a game cartridge maybe even print stickers on them.
 

I can tell it going cost a ton to do but you could buddle a few games to make the duck hunt/mario like cartridges

if you can code maybe make program to auto load based on file plug into your system.

Also  best get your games from GOG if your planning on doing this.

[thevictor390]

For most older games USB 3.0 speeds will work well enough. It's just a waste of both time and money compared to external SSDs or HDDs. The whole wall of USBs could be one hard drive with all of those games on it at once.

[LogicalDrm]

If I get your idea right, you want us to return to time where we had to change disc, cartridge etc. everytime we wanted to switch game? But do it with bit smaller device? Loading speed things would still be there. As person who might come from that era, you don't seem to remember them. USB3 as connection might be fast, but cheap drives aren't. Like SSD external drive blasts any cheap USB3 in speeds.

 

If you mean using USB as multi-game storage, then there could be something. But I don't think thats what you are saying since you are trying to solve problem of downloading games (method of acquiring) and local storage (which has in past been possible to increase on consoles for example).

[cooky560]

We need to keep games on hdds. I would accept USB as a means to install a game as an option in addition to downloading, if the game ran without the USB being inserted.