Load times

[Philogogus]

Hey guys,

I love SH3. I LOVE IT. Its like... Aces of the Deep reborn.

But I have an issue. It takes about 10 minutes to load a saved game. 10 MINUTES. I have a very nice computer (especially for a game a couple years old)

Athlon 64 X2 4800+
2GB DDR2 800
250GB SATA
GeForce 7950GS

So what gives?

[ReallyDedPoet]

Hey guys,

I love SH3. I LOVE IT. Its like... Aces of the Deep reborn.

But I have an issue. It takes about 10 minutes to load a saved game. 10 MINUTES. I have a very nice computer (especially for a game a couple years old)

Athlon 64 X2 4800+
2GB DDR2 800
250GB SATA
GeForce 7950GS

So what gives?
Sounds like your using GWX, if so see this thread :yep:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=135712&highlight=Load+times

From that link:

Stock 1.4b:
Air Units = 13
Sea Units = 49
U-Boats+Subs = 8
SCR Campaign = 19249 lines
RND Campaign = 402082 lines
LND Campaign = 11968 lines
Total = 433299

GWX 2.0: (not 2.1)
Air Units = 40
Sea Units = 182
U-Boats+Subs = 24
SCR Campaign = 486859 lines
RND Campaign = 629050 lines
LND Campaign = 53925 lines
Total = 1169834 :o

Thats a 169.98% increase in campaign scripting alone. Don't forget, when you click START, all the items above are loaded each & every time into your PC's memory.


RDP

[Madox58]

Instant gratification.
We all want it.
We rarely get it.
Yes,
Load times are longer but look at what your getting in return.
Would you rather stand in line at the Drivers License place?
And what difference does 10 minutes make?
Your going to play for HOURS anyway.
Take the load time, get your cigs, coffee, beer, whatever ready
while the game loads.
Heck!
Kiss the wife/girl friend good bye!!
Cause THEY know you ain't comeing back for awhile!!
:rotfl:

[Frank0001]

Instant gratification.
Kiss the wife/girl friend good bye!!
Cause THEY know you ain't comeing back for awhile!!
:rotfl:

Except when you die some 10 minutes after loading a new game! :down:

[Madox58]

Ah, yes.
:nope:
That hurts.
BUT!!
Reload and spend the next 10 minutes
Kissing on the wife/girlfriend!!
:up:
That works wonders for me!
:yep:
(Sometimes she even feels bad for me!)

[Frank0001]

I've always been of opinion there should be a quick-save/load in SHIII or GWX...
Either that, or an option to actually load a save-game while in-game! (currently, you have to save and exit, then load an other game)

EDIT: Then again, I assume it's hard to do with a large game like this, it's probably already been thought of, but maybe it's just not possible!

[Madox58]

One thing about SH3 many miss.
It does retain things in memory, page file space for a time.
So a quick reload happens faster.
SH3 has a habit of not purgeing everything after it shuts down.
I have modded things after a test mission that do not change!
I do a reboot and make the changes again?
Then they worked!!!

[Frank0001]

That's interesting, didn't know that!
But you might be right, when I started out, I used to reload the game after I missed a salvo of torpedoes (but hey, I was still new!) and reloading it actually went faster than starting the original game.

[GoDeep]

But I have an issue. It takes about 10 minutes to load a saved game. 10 MINUTES. I have a very nice computer (especially for a game a couple years old)


Pah...10 minutes? You're lucky. On my ancient Athlon XP 1600 with 512 MB or RAM it takes 20 minutes to load up the game and start the save... ;)

But she runs pretty smoothly when all is loaded, amazing! GWX 2.1 and all!

[predavolk]

It takes my 2100 with 1GB of Ram 20 minutes to load too. It's really unfortunate, because that eats up a good chunk of the time I have to play the game. As far as I can tell though, there's nothing that can be done to change that other than not loading big mods like GWX. Oh well.

[GoDeep]

It takes my 2100 with 1GB of Ram 20 minutes to load too. It's really unfortunate, because that eats up a good chunk of the time I have to play the game. As far as I can tell though, there's nothing that can be done to change that other than not loading big mods like GWX. Oh well.

Seems like my clunky old rig is not doing so bad then... :hmm:
Not loading mods like GWX? Go wash your mouth... ;)

But seriously, yes those load times eat a lot of my game time as well. It really sucks, because that means I can't sit down and play a quick half hour when I have the time. I really need to plan when to play. Now, what I usually do is fire up SHIII, go and do something else, come back about 5 minutes later when it's running, load my career and then come back another 15 minutes or so later when I can take my post on the conning tower...

[buglepong]

the worst is when you wait minutes for a load and then the game crashes just as it finishes

[OneToughHerring]

the worst is when you wait minutes for a load and then the game crashes just as it finishes

True, true. My ETA from game startup to actually playing is minimum 20 mins.

[danlisa]

Having followed this discussion it prompted me to actually time my campaign load.

I was surprised.

Rig Tested:
P4 3.4Ghz
1GB Ram

Using the Merged Campaign, my save game/career loaded in 3min 47sec.:o

You could have knocked me down with a feather as it feels a lot longer than that when I'm sat waiting.

Anyway, there's probably only one major difference to my setup than most.

I locate my pagefile/swapfile on a HDD that is not used to run SH3/GWX. This means, that when SH3 uses up the physical memory/RAM while loading the campaign/game data, it starts to use a dedicated area of your HDD as virtual memory space. Now if this virtual memory is located on a different volume than SH3, is means that the data is only being read/written in one direction, i.e Read from SH3 & written to 2nd HDD only.

If the pagefile is located on the same volume as SH3, your HDD will need to read data, stop, write data, stop, read, stop, write etc..... This is over simplified but is the basics of what happens.

If you can/have a second HDD, I would suggest this method to aid in your loading times.

[GoDeep]

Hi Danlisa,

That's a very good tip, that helps with the overall performance of Windows, not just the load times of SHIII. :yep:
However, I already have that setup (actually 3 HD's inside this system) where Windows resides on one disk, programs and games on another and the swapfile (among other variable data) resides on the third disk. Doesn't work for my load times...but then again, my rig is ancient (+6 years) and still uses regular IDE disks, not even SATA or SAS.

My next system however will....(begins long monologue about incredible RAM size, quad core processor, etc, etc...). That is, if this system breaks beyond repair. I promised my SO that I wouldn't buy a new rig until this one is beyond repair. I should never have bought A-grade hardware. This...machine...will...not...die!!! :damn:

[SmokinTep]

I did a test last night to see how long it took to load. From the time I put the disc in till the time I was sailing took almost 5 minutes.

[Jimbuna]

Hi Danlisa,

That's a very good tip, that helps with the overall performance of Windows, not just the load times of SHIII. :yep:
However, I already have that setup (actually 3 HD's inside this system) where Windows resides on one disk, programs and games on another and the swapfile (among other variable data) resides on the third disk. Doesn't work for my load times...but then again, my rig is ancient (+6 years) and still uses regular IDE disks, not even SATA or SAS.

My next system however will....(begins long monologue about incredible RAM size, quad core processor, etc, etc...). That is, if this system breaks beyond repair. I promised my SO that I wouldn't buy a new rig until this one is beyond repair. I should never have bought A-grade hardware. This...machine...will...not...die!!! :damn:

"+ 6 years".....still newish when compared with mine ;)

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/9168/brokencomputerwn3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[GoDeep]

"+ 6 years".....still newish when compared with mine ;)

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/9168/brokencomputerwn3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Good Lord! :huh:
What on Earth do you do to your PC? It looks like it survived a depthcharging...barely :rotfl:

[Jimbuna]

Precisely...I take it into the shower with me when I'm on patrol for that added immersion :lol:

[GoDeep]

Precisely...I take it into the shower with me when I'm on patrol for that added immersion :lol:

Nice pun...immersion :lol:

As to load times, I decided to time my load time, from doubleclicking the icon to beginning play. It takes me exactly 13 minutes and 12 seconds. That's when it's not in the shower. ;)
Guess my previous estimate of 20 minutes was too much. Waiting for something always feels longer, I guess.

[Brag]

Jimbuna's computer been depth charged a few times :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

[Tessa]

the worst is when you wait minutes for a load and then the game crashes just as it finishes

That's happened a few times after several exceptional patrols where my last save point was well before the action. Timed it and takes 22 seconds to load the game, and 2:12 to load the patrol. When you're irate about loosing a game where you've already sunk a BB and still have eels left and it just decides to take a dump on you makes me wanna throw the laptop across the room, feels like eternity reloading the last save point and hoping to find the same task force again. Hours of hard work purely wasted :down:

[predavolk]

But seriously, yes those load times eat a lot of my game time as well. It really sucks, because that means I can't sit down and play a quick half hour when I have the time. I really need to plan when to play. Now, what I usually do is fire up SHIII, go and do something else, come back about 5 minutes later when it's running, load my career and then come back another 15 minutes or so later when I can take my post on the conning tower...

That's exactly what I do! And I too end up having to plan my SHIII time carefully too. Make sure there's no family or chores interruptions. :x

[Murr44]

After reading about the length of load times others experience with GWX I don't feel so bad. I'm usually up & running in about 2-3 minutes. I think the longest that I've had to wait was 5 minutes. Vista Home Premium with 4GB Ram. It still p*sses me off when the game decides to go south & CTD but those happen much less frequently (knock on wood) since I started being much more careful about which mods that I use & in what order I enable them.

[Jimbuna]

Pretty impressive loading times http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/thumbsup.gif

[bigboywooly]

Campaign files are one of the things which increase load times

Time a start up using the Merged campaign files then do the same using the Black Sea files only
You will see what I mean

This why I guess I dont use the merged files
Why add all that traffic in the Black Sea and Indian Ocean when I am not going to be leaving the Altantic

My times with normal campaign files worked out at 6 mins 45 seconds
With Black Sea files 2 mins 25 seconds

lol

Plus the more ships you have in the Sea folder also contributes to slower times

Mine currently has 233 ( not inc Icebergs and Bouys ) = 1.56 Gb

[STEED]

I'm about 2 or 3 minutes giving me time to make a cup of coffee. :lol:

[predavolk]

OK, I was SHOCKED. For other reasons, Winblows XP crashed on me and I installed a fresh copy. My load time for the game went from 5 to 1 minute, and my load time for a save game when from 20 to 7 minutes! :up: :o :D :huh: :sunny: :yep: :know:

Absolutely crazy. The whole computer runs much faster now. I know enough about computers to not be surprised, so please don't feel free to chime in with told-you-so comments. It was a lot of work to reload everything, but at least the final product was very rewarding! Taking this game down to 8 minutes from 20+ is a major change in playability. Beauty!

[danurve]

I like the swap file on the 2nd drive idea. :up:
If your system has one I'm thinking it should be of equal quality as the main.
Regularly keeping your system defraged couldn't hurt either. Windows defrag is ok but there are better apps for that out there. Diskkeeper, O&O, Perfectdisk.

[Laufen zum Ziel]

jimbuna,

Did you mean immersion and submersion?

[Jimbuna]

jimbuna,

Did you mean immersion and submersion?

Yeah, something like that :lol: