Game loading times issue

[pdglock19]

Im new to the SH series and SH4 is awesome. I m wondering if I could do something to shorten the insane long loading times, especially when it says "Please wait". I have a P4 with 7800GS video and 1.5MB of RAM. I takes 10 minutes just to load a game!! All my other games, like HL2, load much faster. Thanks.:D

[maerean_m]

The "Please wait" message duration depends on how long the patrol is.

On an AMD 3200+, it stays for 45 seconds to load a 2 week, 40k tons, patrol.

How long is your patrol for the load to take 10 minutes?

[DocDarm]

I have the same issue. My loading time is near ten minutes. I started at PH with a Gato, went to the South China Sea, topped off my tanks and reloaded torps with the Aussies, and am now back enroute towards Japan to Midway. INSANE load time. I can't just boot the game up to check my patrol time...I have to schedule time to play this game since it'll take 10-15 minutes to get into it. Bad.

EDIT: AMD 64 3200+, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 7800 GS

DocDarm
Fort Lauderdale

[SteamWake]

You wouldent happen to have added the bearing tool mod would you ?

When I added that in my load times doubled.

[DocDarm]

I am running no mods at all. Did clean install with immediate patch to 1.2.

DocDarm
Fort Lauderdale

[d@rk51d3]

Any antivirus / antispyware running in the background? This can be a killer for me.

I believe some security software in particular can rob you of alot of resources.

[swash]

For me, each save game of a career patrol takes longer to load. Like maerean_m said, the longer the patrol the longer the load.

Traveling from Pearl to the East China Sea and then down to the Luzon Straits and back is the longest patrol I've gone on so far. I had 5 saves over 3 days worth of playing and the last loadup was over 5 minutes, almost close to 10 minutes but I didn't time it.

Traveling from Pearl down to Aussie land and back:huh:? That's going to take some time to load for sure.

[GnarPow]

:huh: Wowsers :huh: 10 minutes to load, jeez...

I play this game on a laptop with Dual 1.83ghz processors, 2GB of ram at 667mhz and a geforce go 7400 256mb and I dont think it takes longer than 1 minute.. maybe 2 max and I wouldnt even think it takes that long... I've never thought to time it b4 but now im gonna check and get back to you.

[swash]

Doh:doh:

Just had a thought. I didn't defrag before installing the game. Got caught up in the excitment when I bought it.

I wonder if the extended load times are caused by the game trying to pull fragmented files across the drive?

[Skipbo]

Swash - let us know what happens after defragging. Would have to believe that you're onto it now, that's a lot of bytes to pick up in many chunks. I'm running a couple of dozen mods including FTT and SHIV itself loads in 1:34 with another 1:18 to load the Midway Mission or under 3 minutes total with dual 3.0Ghz CPUs. Good luck.

[AVGWarhawk]

Doh:doh:

Just had a thought. I didn't defrag before installing the game. Got caught up in the excitment when I bought it.

I wonder if the extended load times are caused by the game trying to pull fragmented files across the drive?

This should help. It helps me when the loading drags. Also, like most have stated, depends were you saved. If I leave port and save a minute later, my next reload goes like lightning. If it has been a long patrol it take some time. Definitely not 10 minutes. Maybe a minute at most. I have not fast rig either. Off the shelf Emachine with better inards added.

[Church SUBSIM]

Check out this program ... WinPatrol Plus for the PC. This is a slick little utility that will allow you to govern almost all aspects of what gets turned on and off at system start. Resources, Hidden apps, the works. You can get a free version of it to run and after using it for some time I finally paid the guy for the Plus version because I think he deserved it.

Here is the link .... http://www.winpatrol.com/

Give it a look - you may find some things under the hood that may be effecting performance.

[yellbird]

I noticed that right before I quit playing I save the game in a new name then I would delete all the old saves and for whatever reason the new file always loads fast, if however I kept saving to the new name it would slow down so i just repeat the process when it started loading slow. Works for me.

[Grothesj2]

It always loads up pretty fast for me. Maybe more RAM or faster hard drive needed?

[DocDarm]

My patrol so far is about 6 weeks. Saved game wieghs in at 7.9 MB. Load time is 9 minutes. On a AMD64 3200+ with 1GB RAM, plenty of extra GB hard drive space, and a nVidia 7800 GS.

Guess I'll head back to dock and see what a new patrol load time will be...oh, and a defrag.

DocDarm

[Mudrik]

Can anyone explain this obsession with defragging? It's a process that puts a decent PC (I have 600 gig that'd need doing) out of action for hours to save a few milliseconds here and there.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has defragged and noticed a worthwhile performance improvement

[GnarPow]

Can anyone explain this obsession with defragging? It's a process that puts a decent PC (I have 600 gig that'd need doing) out of action for hours to save a few milliseconds here and there.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has defragged and noticed a worthwhile performance improvement

I use Power Defragmenter every now and then and it definately makes things a little quicker on my computer. Have your computer do it before you go to bed and you wake up with a nice defragmented HD so then there is no waiting for it.

[Yanaran]

I play on a c2d 6400, with 2gig ram. It takes me 2min to start sh4 to the main menu, then another 1-2min to load an ongoing patrol (from the replies I gather it depends on patrol length). The load times are definately way too long, but they're nowhere near 10 minutes for me.

[AVGWarhawk]

I play on a c2d 6400, with 2gig ram. It takes me 2min to start sh4 to the main menu, then another 1-2min to load an ongoing patrol (from the replies I gather it depends on patrol length). The load times are definately way too long, but they're nowhere near 10 minutes for me.

Your load times are simular to SH3. I would have to say that SH4 does load somewhat quicker than 3.

[swash]

I normally defrag before installing a game. But didn't with SH4.

I defragged last night. Started the defrag, turned off the monitor and went to bed.

I loaded up my patrol today and it was faster, but not totally groundbreaking.

[shad43]

You wouldent happen to have added the bearing tool mod would you ?

When I added that in my load times doubled.

I noticed this as well, seems any mod that changes graphics can slow loading times.

[-Pv-]

I concure the load times have something to do with the length of the patrol and/or how many save games per patrol. A new patrol loads instantly. Defrag/Malware/System issues are no more a factor than with any other part of the game. Watching the HD access is a clue.
During the long loads I see an occasional blink of the access light every 30 to 40 seconds. This is not a HD struggling to keep up with the processor/graphics.

My latest save directory is 10 megs and growing with "SaveFile.rep" being the largest file. Glad I'm not saving replays and I'm on the way home.
-Pv-

[maerean_m]

The save files will neved be bigger than a few megs (when not using SaveReplay), so defragmenting the HDD won't help (it reads that data in a second).

A save file in SH4 is actually a log of all the events that happened in the patrol. Loading a save file is like replaying the patrol with infinite time compression. That's why loading takes longer for longer patrols. It's the same method used in SH3.

[heartc]

Can anyone explain this obsession with defragging? It's a process that puts a decent PC (I have 600 gig that'd need doing) out of action for hours to save a few milliseconds here and there.

Amen. Thank you. :up: Imho it's one of those "voodoo" things people are doing with their PCs when desperate. Everyone knows those kind of things from own experience I bet ;) . Granted, when the HD is fragged 40-50%, you might want to think about it, but defragging every other day surely is unnecessary. In fact, one time when I defragged my HD, something went haywire and the PC wouldn't reboot anymore. Go figure... It was a classic "Never change a running system" moment for me. ;)