Speculation on loading time

[Safe-Keeper]

OK, so one of the things you're bound to notice when watching the in-game footage is that the loading time for the single-player mission is so incredibly short. First I thought this had to do with the computer being high-end, the loading sequence recording being fast-forwarded and/or the game being incomplete (thus without lots of time-consuming features to load), and undoubtedly it greatly has to do with that, but then I got to thinking: Are there memory-saving features in Silent Hunter 4 that reduces loading time? My speculations are listed as such:
We've read that the ocean is "split up into 15 maps". Obviously each would have to be relatively big since the entire globe would have to be covered, but still, only loading one single small portion of the game Earth would be greatly superior loading time-wise than to load up the whole thing. It might work as the world in an MMORPG, where you load up one little portion of the universe at a time, for then to load new "segments" only when the player enters them.
If mission editors had the option to not spawn every single ship in the entire world for single-player missions (what's the point of modelling traffic near the US Coast for a single-player mission taking place near the Phillipines), loading times would be greatly reduced. Options to not spawn the ships in a certain area or even the entire world would be great in either case - who haven't experienced making a mission and having it negatively affected by entities from the Campaign Layers?What do the rest of you think?

[LZ_Baker]

That would bve interesting. Over even if they do the "load on the go", only have the computer generate shipping in something like a 500 mile radius instead of the entire world. That would save alot in the load time and in cpu calculations.

[Frateloder]

If loading time is too short, then I won't have enough time to go mix my cocktail!

:up:

[Safe-Keeper]

Hmm, there's a point. Who wants me to make a "Longer Loading Time Mini-Mod" that'll increase it to SHIII standards?

[bookworm_020]

It would be the most unused mod ever for a game!:hmm:

[_Seth_]

Agree, maybe the loading time is short because this is WIP, and also the fact that ubisoft is using high-end rigs.. There could also be some mem-saving ding-dongs developed specificly for SHIV.

[Safe-Keeper]

Well, I'd be very surprised if the loading time really is five seconds as shown in the movie:D. I'm not saying otherwise. But I still wonder if it is shorter or longer than the one in Silent Hunter III.

Memories go back to the fantastic Ground Control, where missions only took about five seconds to load...

[bookworm_020]

I think it will be shorter. They said in the interview that it is a lot faster in loading and processing as they have tweaked the software.

We just have to wait and see, don't we!

[fire-fox]

well how long did it take to load up in the early SHIV video (thats on the index of this site) :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSrzv6RbJo0

[AVGWarhawk]

What do you mean load time. Hell, I don't shut down careers in SH3. Just minimize after I hit pause. This REALLY cuts down on load time:smug:

[Sailor Steve]

Several things in that video look like they've been sped up. I'll bet it takes a lot longer than it does in the video.

[AJ!]

Hey fire-fox thanks for that vid. didnt realise there was one out that actualy showed the game being played. They did say it was a early vid though so i assume loads of changes have happened since then (hopefuly the music)

The load times in that video did seem alot shorter then SH3

[AVGWarhawk]

The only problem with the video, the computer they are playing the game on also launchs, tracks and brings down the space shuttle at NASA. So, yeah, it might run a bit faster then what we have off the shelf from Wal-Mart.

[Ship Hunter]

We've read that the ocean is "split up into 15 maps".

This is wrong! There will be a special Campaign which is splitted in 15 Missions for non-hardcore players.

In the real and dynamic Campaign you have the WHOLE World!!!

[AJ!]

Yeah the 15 maps are probably just 15 missions which have nothing to do with the main campaign, Just like SH3 had.

its been confirmed that the whole world will be the map in SH4. :D

[GlobalExplorer]

I am programming applications that use huge geospatial data myself, and splitting / organizing data is an absolute must with this kind of data. From that point of view, the 15 maps make more sense. Maybe SHIII was loading the whole campaign data for every mission instead of clipping objects along a simple rectangle which describes the "active world".

Some other observations which might explain the better loading times:

Did you ever wonder why SHIII took 2-3 minutes loading data just to show the main menu, ot to switch to the museum? SHIII would "boot" the whole engine for the main menu, museum and then do it again for the mission, which is of course not efficient. Discarding all data and the starting over with sth like Application.Inititialize() is a common solution you can fall back to when you run out of time during development, because it is very easy to implement.

Reading/parsing the mostly text based data files ate up loads of times, so maybe they have a binary format now.

In general, loading / engine initialization seemed badly implemented in SHIII. So they probably had lots of opportunities for improving load times.

Just look at the strange savegame system and the 80's style organization of the crew management file for some other examples where they had room for improvement.

I am glad it's loading faster now, but hopefully this doesn't mean the data is now all binary - this would suck for modifications!

GE