Friday, October 4, 2024

Asset Downloading in Pokémon Go

After thinking about it, even in light of what was said previously, I finally decided to go ahead and cover Pokémon Go as the theme of this month's "four fours". Even so, it won't be the subtopic I suggested at that time. Instead, I've decided to cover some obscure or less commonly considered facets of the game. One of those is the downloading of game assets, which as with many games, Pokémon Go has a lot of, especially in more recent times. Being an online game, it's a matter that naturally comes along with the game.

It is fairly easy to tell when game assets are being downloaded, in particular those related to Pokémon models. In this case, they'll appear as sparkling spots until the model asset is downloaded and completely present. Sometimes this happens quickly, and other times it doesn't happen as quickly; in particular, for a fresh install, there's always the possibility that the process might get stuck on a few of the remaining assets that just might be necessary for playing at that moment. Fortunately, the game does offer a solution.

The "Advanced Settings" section of the game has the "Download All Assets" option, which does do what it states it does: it downloads all game assets so that on further play, only device loading is necessary for them (but as expected, one still needs to be online to actually play). It carries the warnings of requiring sufficient space and a Wi-Fi connection to initiate the download, particularly as there's several gigabytes of data, but it should mean the peace of mind that playing will be made easier with the downloaded asset data. 

With that, besides the fresh install situation as an evidently described one above, an oft-cited scenario for initiating "Download All Assets" is before a major event, for example Community Day or even bigger ones like Pokémon Go Fest. This is certainly to mitigate possible network disruptions that can cause problems with asset downloads, which has happened in at least one major paid Pokémon Go event going back in time, but the peace-of-mind situation also described above still holds in any case, with or without a major event.

Pokémon Go has been proven to be a demanding game in terms of technology, and that would apply well with its magnitude of assets today, some of which can be downloaded at will and others that may need to be downloaded all at once to make future play less of a burden. In that respect, this is indeed a facet less commonly addressed even though it is quite obvious for those who play (and maybe even some that don't). As with the feature of relevance above, the hope is that easier play may be attained even just by discussing it.

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