Curious as to load times

[Bonetopick]

As everyone knows the load times in PR are pretty ridiculous, I was just wondering though what exactly is going on behind the scenes?

what is it doing (so inefficiently) that causes this?

[Rudd]

We're asking a game that's over a decade old to load alot of things. Lots of effects, sounds, new meshes etc.

We've constantly been asked for better effects, sounds etc; but no one gets something for free - loading times are the price we pay.

[DesmoLocke]

Rudd makes an excellent point.

My best tip is to invest in a SSD. I went to one for my operating system and the rest is dedicated to games. Solely games with nothing else stored on it. PR still loads fairly quickly and I open up the spawn screen a few seconds after the timer countdown starts.

[Souls Of Mischief]

Well, it takes me roughly ~2 minutes to load maps now, was like 45sec -1 minute (0.98 ). Any ideas as to why?

[Unhealed]

Well, it takes me roughly ~2 minutes to load maps now, was like 45sec -1 minute (0.98 ). Any ideas as to why?

Same for me. But I'm fine with it since 1.0 is way more better optimized. I don't have that shit when you look somewhere and your FPS drastically drops to 24 from 60. Well it's still happening on 100p servers(which will be fixed I believe), but not on 64p anymore like in 0.98
And let's not forget that visuals are way better, grass, small rocks and trash on the streets now draw not only when you are 3 meters away from them.

[Mineral]

Well, it takes me roughly ~2 minutes to load maps now, was like 45sec -1 minute (0.98 ). Any ideas as to why?

Like Rudd said, and what you have probably experienced yourself in-game is that the amount of effects is much higher, and quite often also in bigger detail. Same for the sound effects. There is also a higher increase of different vehicles. This all adds up that more files of bigger size need to be loaded into the memory which takes longer.

[Rhino]

The actual problem is 1, the way BF2 loads things and 2, the amount of sheer content we have in PR.

To put it simply, all of the extra factions, weapons and vehicles which are not present in the map, is shifted though to decide if it needs to fully load it or not for the map before it begins loading things like meshes, textures etc. So even if your playing on a US vs MEC map, it is still shifting though all the CF, GB, GER, INS etc etc stuff to decide, do I need to load this or not, before it actually loads it.

We have talked about ways of somehow splitting our content up so that we only shift though what it needs for that map but its really not straight forward because even things like weapons and vehicles are used by multiple factions and maps and for the most part, can't be easily split off to just one or the other... And that's before you begin to talk about things like staticobjects, vegetation etc.

At the end of the day, the problem is the way the engine handles loading and there isn't much we can easily do about that.

My best tip is to invest in a SSD. I went to one for my operating system and the rest is dedicated to games. Solely games with nothing else stored on it. PR still loads fairly quickly and I open up the spawn screen a few seconds after the timer countdown starts.

Indeed, having PR installed on an SSD really helps. I would especially advise it for anyone mapping for PR too since having the editor on an SSD massively helps.

[Souls Of Mischief]

Like Rudd said, and what you have probably experienced yourself in-game is that the amount of effects is much higher, and quite often also in bigger detail. Same for the sound effects. There is also a higher increase of different vehicles. This all adds up that more files of bigger size need to be loaded into the memory which takes longer.

I meant, both times are for 0.98. Haven't slept for 24 hours, hence the poorly worded comment. It also stays on 14% for a long time.

[saamohod]

... is shifted though... is still shifting though ... we only shift though ...

I'm not trying to be an *** here, but what does "shift though" mean?

[Pmosis]

I'm not trying to be an *** here, but what does "shift though" mean?

I believe Rhino meant "sift" as in "to sift through" something. It means to carefully examine. From Google, "An act of sifting something, so as to isolate that which is most important or useful."

[waldov]

I think load times is a fair compromise for 1.0, theres no point debating that.

[saamohod]

I believe Rhino meant "sift" as in "to sift through" something. It means to carefully examine. From Google, "An act of sifting something, so as to isolate that which is most important or useful."

Yep, thanx.

[PLODDITHANLEY]

Mine sits on 15 per cent (objects) for ages.