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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Mp Memory Sizes?

Posted by: Nightshade- Apr 20 2006, 08:48 PM

How big is a Mp? As time passes on hard drives and files get bigger and bigger. An average MS Word file now (At least average for what I do) is 80kb. Thats larger than early hard drives.

Now in SR they use Mp for hard drives and I assume the size of even minute files are much larger as well. So, how big would a average Word file be in Mps? How big would the MS Word Program be in MP? How big would ALL of MS Office be? How many Gigs are in a MP?

I have a player with 12Mp in headware memory and a datajack and he wants to know how much he can download in terms of documents and programs etc etc.. But doesn't want to use a Deck, even though he is aware of the penalties & there is already a Decker in the party. He is also aware of the advantages of not using a deck. Black IC can crash him all it likes it still wont do physical damage. But like I said he is aware that his ability is EXTREMELY limited.

So how big is this stuff?

Posted by: bustedkarma Apr 20 2006, 08:52 PM

It hurts your eyes, but it answers your question

http://www.amurgsval.org/shadowrun/megapulses.html

No Clicky for you.

Posted by: hyzmarca Apr 20 2006, 09:11 PM

A megapulse is one million pulses, give or take. That's the consensus.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=11767&hl=megapulse

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=10915&hl=megapulse

Don't try to make sense of it in today's terms. It isn't designed to make since. Just make some number up.

Posted by: Austere Emancipator Apr 20 2006, 09:14 PM

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=3078
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=5546
Etc. etc.

[Edit]I am woefully slow.[/Edit]

Posted by: Dale Apr 20 2006, 09:15 PM

There must be a very simple answer to this question. i.e. 1 MP = 500 terrabytes.

Posted by: James McMurray Apr 20 2006, 09:20 PM

Nope, no simple answer. Megapulse has never been defined and probably never will be.

Posted by: Moon-Hawk Apr 20 2006, 09:25 PM

Watch any movie that is more than five years old and you'll realize why the pulse is left undefined.
I'm thinking of that scene in Hackers where they all get wet over a 28.8 modem and a screen capable of displaying a million colors.

Posted by: stevebugge Apr 20 2006, 09:31 PM

There is a good reason not to tie the MP to a real measurement, todays technology is advancing so quickly the measurement could look silly in a very short time. Suppose that back in the early days of SR while the Virtual Realities supplement was being written someone had taken Bill Gates at his word when he declared that no one would ever need more than 640KB of RAM.

Developer1: Ok lets call our top model the Fairlight Exacliber
Developer2: Great name, now lets make it kick hoop, it will have a 33Mhz Processer and 32MB of RAM!

Posted by: Kanada Ten Apr 21 2006, 12:19 AM

QUOTE (Nightshade-)

I have a player with 12Mp in headware memory and a datajack and he wants to know how much he can download in terms of documents and programs etc etc. But doesn't want to use a Deck, even though he is aware of the penalties & there is already a Decker in the party. He is also aware of the advantages of not using a deck. Black IC can crash him all it likes it still wont do physical damage. But like I said he is aware that his ability is EXTREMELY limited.

Does the character have a headware cyberphone or internal radio? When routed to the datajack (note that one can have up to ten devices routed to a datajack before incurring extra costs or essence loss), the PC could transfer data from a pocket secretary, palm or wrist computer, and so on - even dialing into an MSP (Matrix Service Provider) to store data and run programs.

12MP simply cannot store much more than text and perhaps a word processor or a text to speech program. Note also that the character needs a way to interface with the data, whether plugging the datajack into a computer, (or routing it to one, as above) using text to speech and then a transducer or internal speakers, converting the data to ASIST and running it through an ASIST enabled datajack or routing it to an image or display link. And so on. Just having data in headware memory doesn't grant more than file command access to it.

Posted by: eidolon Apr 21 2006, 04:54 AM

There is no RL size comparison. The Mp only exists w/in the SR system. Furthermore, it needes no RL comparison. For any program or data packet's size that isn't given in the book, make one up. Most in-game programs have a size listed in Mp, or you can use the various charts and multipliers to figure it out.

I suggest, also, that unless you want it to be an "issue" for the sake of story/roleplaying, you let him carry a reasonable amount of "regular" data, like text docs (there's an actual number of still images per Mp floating around somewhere, I don't recall OTOH) without worrying about it (within reason).

On another note, pocket PCs and even Pocket Secretaries can hold a fairly decent amount of data for their size/price.

Apart from that, 12Mp can hold either 12 minutes of audio, 12 minutes of video, or 6 minutes of a video with audio. (Of course, to do so you'll need an opticam, a sound recorder, and all of it hooked together [through your datajack, or a router].)

In other words, he needs more.

Posted by: Arethusa Apr 21 2006, 05:37 AM

QUOTE (Dale)

There must be a very simple answer to this question. i.e. 1 MP = 500 terrabytes.

Please take careful note of what happened the last time a developer tried to bridge deliberately vague terminology with real world technology:

Mike Mulvihill decided essence had something to do with drain on bioelectricity and neural function. This was retarded, but because Mike Mulvihill is Mike Mulvihill, this never occurred to Mike Mulvihill.

Shadowrun is not a visionary game. Some developers wisely recognized this and left areas intentionally vague. Pulses != bytes. No comparison. Lots of the computing doesn't make sense, but you are not going to make that any better by trying to look at it in contemporary terms.

Posted by: Dranem Apr 21 2006, 06:16 AM

If I remember correctly, the books estimate 1 Mp as being approximately 1 minute of audio/video. So compare what 1 minute of audio/video is today, and that will give you an idea how how much capacity the memory module should have. I know by today's standards that's not a heck of a lot of space, as a 2 hour movie will net you a 650+ Mb avi compressed video file (4 gigs if you're making a DVD)...

If you want to be generous, you could allow that 1 Mp is equal to 1 hour of audio/video, which in my mind would make more sense....

Posted by: Kagetenshi Apr 21 2006, 06:18 AM

Please, please, please don't try to make that comparison…

A two-hour movie will net you a 21.6 gigabyte DV file. Even DV is insufficient quality-wise to provide the kind of resolution provided by Shadowrun recordings (10x blowup without quality loss). Resolution issues aside, the kind of compression that lets DivX/MP4/etc. get that kind of filesize is totally worthless for the kind of work that can be done on canon recordings.

~J

Posted by: Dranem Apr 21 2006, 06:23 AM

Kage, note that I stated a compressed video file.. not raw DV.
If you want a different example then, most of todays audio standards will give you 1 min/Mb MP3 CD quality audio. (note again, this is an encoded file, not raw wav)

Posted by: Kagetenshi Apr 21 2006, 06:27 AM

Yes, you did. Note that I pointed out why such a comparison is totally inappropriate given the stated modifiability of the files in Shadowrun.

~J

Posted by: The Jopp Apr 21 2006, 06:45 AM

You seem to forget something. First of all, as many have said already, DONT try to make it into todays memory size, it wont work.

Second: Video in SR is TRIDEO which mean that it is 1 minute of high definition TRIDEO, full 3D video that can be zoomed in X10-X30 times without any loss of quality.

So just assume that 1 MP is enough for what you want to do.

God, I love SR4 for removing MPs

Posted by: Dranem Apr 21 2006, 06:46 AM

Point taken. Though I've noticed (since Shadowrun is based on a few concepts) that sometimes it's not just the quality of the recording, but also of the equipment used to examin the file.
Like in Blade Runner. The Esper photo analyser took a simple polaroid shot and could extrapolate data from it.

Maybe not video, but I think that the 1 Mp = 1 min of audio could still be plausible - seeing as audio is not as complexe... I've never been one to get overly rules lawyerish about file sizes, as long as players use it in moderation.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Apr 21 2006, 06:51 AM

I assume you mean hour?

I've tried convincing my GM that I should be able to analyze sound recordings to pick up the heartbeats of people in nearby rooms, but it didn't go so well. Perhaps the fact that I don't allow it in my half of the shared-world game either might have something to do with it?

~J

Posted by: James McMurray Apr 21 2006, 04:11 PM

Just drop MPs altogether. Life becomes much easier.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Apr 21 2006, 05:00 PM

How about no.

Seriously, what do you gain? Plaintext is practically free, video and audio sizes are so simplified as to be ridiculously easy to keep track of (if perhaps nonsensical), and programs are a calculate-once use-anywhere deal. On the other hand, with infinite capacity you have to deal with… well, the problem of infinite capacity.

~J

Posted by: James McMurray Apr 21 2006, 06:02 PM

You gain the ability to buy a program without a calculator. Infinite capacity would be problematic, but that's not what I'm suggesting. If something is too big to be held on your storage the GM will tell you. But other than that you can ignore the accounting aspects of decking and focus on the rest of it.

Just my personal preference of course. Some folks prefer the opposite.

Posted by: Rajaat99 Apr 25 2006, 04:39 PM

I agree with not trying to make MP's into anything of today.
I don't agree with infinite capacity and it's too easy to abuse and players like to argue. I know, "I'm the GM, what I say goes." and all that drek, but I don't want the problem in the first place.
I've had no problem keeping track of Mp's.

Posted by: James McMurray Apr 25 2006, 07:06 PM

As soon as you decide that storing a lot of stuff isn't abusive, most of the ways to abuse it disappear.

Posted by: Thanee Apr 25 2006, 07:12 PM

It's not infinite. It's only effectively infinite for most purposes. Just like todays harddrives are as well.

Bye
Thanee

Posted by: hyzmarca Apr 25 2006, 08:02 PM

What techno-utpoia are you living in? I can easily fill up a 200GB hard drive in a week with a decent internet connection.

Posted by: Kanada Ten Apr 25 2006, 08:07 PM

QUOTE (James McMurray @ Apr 25 2006, 02:06 PM)

As soon as you decide that storing a lot of stuff isn't abusive, most of the ways to abuse it disappear.

In SR3 it was used to balance deckers on both sides, forcing them to use smart tactics and careful program use. It actually gave security deckers quiet an edge, so that they could have more logical skill levels (3 or 4) and still be a threat. But this is just part of what made decking in third edition so much of a time killer.

Hackers in fourth edition are much more powerful than they were, even able to rival technomancers most of the time, where a good decker versus a good otaku would probably lose (beginning otaku kinda sucked, however). But this doesn't really imbalance anything because of their prevalence and quantity of systems to require hacking just to survive.

There are simple ways to eliminate this possible imbalance in SR3; if you eliminate MP, simply limit the number of running programs to the MPCP * 2 and the total rating of programs to MPCP squared. Cost using MP is convertible to Program Rating squared times the multiplier times 200.

The MP limits for audio and video, and even simsense, weren't really bad because one could use optical memory chips (really cheap with the errata) to store thousands of minutes.

QUOTE

What techno-utpoia are you living in? I can easily fill up a 200GB hard drive in a week with a decent internet connection.

But streaming technology and rising bandwidths are making that less of a necessity, neh?

Posted by: John Campbell Apr 25 2006, 09:22 PM

If there's one thing that 25 years of working with computers has taught me, it's that no computer ever has enough processing power, enough memory, enough storage, or enough bandwidth.

My hard drives have been 90% full most of the time since the first machine I owned that had a hard drive. (It was an 8Mhz 286 with a 20MB MFM drive.) These days, "90% full" means "a thousand times more space available than there was, total, on my first hard drive", but my drives are still running 90% full.

When I was at IBM, I had responsibility for a couple dozen servers with terabyte disk arrays, and those ran 90% full most of the time.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Apr 25 2006, 09:33 PM

QUOTE (Kanada Ten @ Apr 25 2006, 03:07 PM)

But streaming technology and rising bandwidths are making that less of a necessity, neh?

Absolutely not. Only major corporate sites have the bandwidth and stability to guarantee that something there today will be there five months from now, or two years from now. Even those that are able to rarely do.

~J

Posted by: hyzmarca Apr 25 2006, 09:52 PM

Higher bandwith actually makes it worse because it makes larger files sizes more and more comon.

Posted by: Kanada Ten Apr 25 2006, 09:56 PM

Meh, we're talking about molecular storage (with nanites common enough to paste on people's heads in place of trode nets), so I might agree about processing power, but not memory.

I have more than enough bandwidth already, in most cases for things like moives, songs, and so on. These days I don't bother to do more than put files on CD/Flash if I want it with me beyond the reach of my house. Otherwise I just stream as needed. Why would I want something five months from now? It'll all be dusty by then, ya laggers.

Posted by: eralston May 4 2006, 04:50 PM

Yeah, in my younger days of downloading (and I was perhaps not the most hardcore, but probably above average) I could accumulate 40 CDs a month of materials from the net.