Can you doubly ensure that no other programs are running on a fresh restart of your PC? I.e. no AV, no browser, nothing that could remotely take up memory...
I didnt exempt the "%APPDATA%/Natural Selection 2" folder with purpose yet. Modders basically could place any file they want in their mod right?
Yes but a good av should block malcious mods from downlaoding. BTW Could you do me a favor and download http://www.piriform.com/defraggler/download and see how fragmentated your hdd is.
What a nice programm, fragmentation was analyzed to be 17% (even after having defragemented already a couple times this weekend). I'll report back on any loading improvements tomorrow after defrag.
I have the same Problems like "IeptBarakat". Avira Antivir was installed.Exempt the dir and exe changed nothing.Also uninstalling the AV dosent work.
Allready tested it with another HDD.Defrag also done.
Other games loading with normal time.Only NS2 is creating huge response time, when loading from the HDD.
Problem first started with 268
To be honest, I didn't want to start this again, because I'm starting to get sick and tired of NS2. 7 min loadtimes are back even with exempting or deinstalling Avira. I thought Avira was the only culprit but my hopes been destroyed the next day. Is there a way to get the old loading mechanism back? Like a mod or something? Because it makes no sense to keep searching a (hardware) problem on my end when nothing but the new patch has changed and pre 268 it was just fine.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
I thought I was clear about the cause...
2 reason!
* avira is ADDING to the load and stress.
* ns2 is asking much much much more from your disk to speedup loadtimes in this patch. Unfortunately it passed your disks maximum so a queue / waiting line forms. (SSDs, raids and other systems with a higher maximum in fact benefit).
Fixing are in the work and have been tested.. I do not know if they can be in the next patch. I hope @GhoulofGSG9 can tell you. Last I understood that should at least get loadtimes back to 267.
I'm getting huge load times here too and same menu issue as IEPTBARAKAT.
I moved ns2 from my SSD on to my HDD so expect it to be a bit slower...
I haven't played since about 2-3 patches ago.... Not sure when it broke exactly.
What info might be of use?
MephillesGermanyJoin Date: 2013-08-07Member: 186634Members, NS2 Map Tester, NS2 Community Developer
a little workaround if you wanna load on a specific server. If your prefered pub server is full load a sandbox map and get into the waiting queue while you are in your sandbox map. loading will be way faster once you have loaded a map
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
We had our 2 PTs who experience this same issue report today that it is now fixed in our internal build... it will be released in the next patch which should be out very soon. (it's a small patch addressing some crashes and this)
To be honest, I didn't want to start this again, because I'm starting to get sick and tired of NS2. 7 min loadtimes are back even with exempting or deinstalling Avira. I thought Avira was the only culprit but my hopes been destroyed the next day. Is there a way to get the old loading mechanism back? Like a mod or something? Because it makes no sense to keep searching a (hardware) problem on my end when nothing but the new patch has changed and pre 268 it was just fine.
I thought I was clear about the cause...
2 reason!
* avira is ADDING to the load and stress.
* ns2 is asking much much much more from your disk to speedup load-times in this patch. Unfortunately it passed your disks maximum so a queue / waiting line forms. (SSDs, raids and other systems with a higher maximum in fact benefit).
This is pretty much correct.
There are 3 reasons why Long load times happen for a small % of people in 268 (which it should be speedy fast)
1) Due to the number of threads loading at multiple times (6 loading threads as opposed to 1) Some Antivirus Software such as Avira and others think NS2 is attacking the system, or suspect it's up to no good. It interrogates ALL 6 threads, using up 99% CPU causing slow load times.
2) Small % of systems cannot handle the multi-threaded load workers at that level. For most people it's better, and there is no obvious reason WHY these people cannot handle this workload as they also have powerful PCs with NS2 on SSDs and HDDs.
3) NS2.exe does not have a digital signature from a publisher, so AntiVirus programs are generally suspicious.
Therefore in our 269 patch we're reducing it back to 1 loading worker thread only. This doesn't raise suspicion from those affected AVs but still manages to keep a lot of the speed increases from other parts. We're also hoping to get NS2 digitally signed, though we're not sure on the time-scale. As long as the workers are reduced our tests seem to show the affected people have their long load times fixed.
We're hoping to release once we've had a bit more testing.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
I have not confirmed if people who experience the issue have their disks correctly set to AHCI/RAID instead of IDE. (just realised)
Also certain motherboards have controllers for disks which are..... questionable at best. Including the drivers.
This may be a additional reason why certain disks perform less then viable for ns2.
Comparing dxdiags would at least show the driver being used which can give a hint at the controller, but it does not allow for a precise look due to controller families, last I checked,
As @METROID said, I'd prefer it to be adjustable. Since I'm running Linux, I'm not affected by this "bug" (no AV, not needed at all). More than that, I have SSD and Steam resides there with all the games so I/O becomes insignificant to say at least and CPU would just idle with 1 core fully loaded and 3 being unused. I'd like to leave 6 threads as they are now.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
This change does not effect the rest of the users' timings, oddly enough.
Meaning if you have fast loading in 268, it should not be negatively effected in 269.
I may be late to the party but something I noticed about these long loading hangs, if I load a game and just instantly console quit - the next time is back to blazingly fast. Something with NS2 loading RAM properly.
Comments
You know.. I did say :
I'm experiencing a dramatic loadtime increase of all game assets, I tried to join a server and I gave up after 10 minutes.
P.s. No antivirus is conflicting with the game.
To give an example when I launch the game, all the assets in the main menu appear black and slowly load in for about a minute.
Yes but a good av should block malcious mods from downlaoding. BTW Could you do me a favor and download http://www.piriform.com/defraggler/download and see how fragmentated your hdd is.
Why you should defrag explained here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/214678/defrag_questions.html
Allready tested it with another HDD.Defrag also done.
Other games loading with normal time.Only NS2 is creating huge response time, when loading from the HDD.
Problem first started with 268
However if your disk was already running close to its maximum you may need notice.
2 reason!
* avira is ADDING to the load and stress.
* ns2 is asking much much much more from your disk to speedup loadtimes in this patch. Unfortunately it passed your disks maximum so a queue / waiting line forms. (SSDs, raids and other systems with a higher maximum in fact benefit).
Fixing are in the work and have been tested.. I do not know if they can be in the next patch. I hope @GhoulofGSG9 can tell you. Last I understood that should at least get loadtimes back to 267.
I moved ns2 from my SSD on to my HDD so expect it to be a bit slower...
I haven't played since about 2-3 patches ago.... Not sure when it broke exactly.
What info might be of use?
This is pretty much correct.
There are 3 reasons why Long load times happen for a small % of people in 268 (which it should be speedy fast)
1) Due to the number of threads loading at multiple times (6 loading threads as opposed to 1) Some Antivirus Software such as Avira and others think NS2 is attacking the system, or suspect it's up to no good. It interrogates ALL 6 threads, using up 99% CPU causing slow load times.
2) Small % of systems cannot handle the multi-threaded load workers at that level. For most people it's better, and there is no obvious reason WHY these people cannot handle this workload as they also have powerful PCs with NS2 on SSDs and HDDs.
3) NS2.exe does not have a digital signature from a publisher, so AntiVirus programs are generally suspicious.
Therefore in our 269 patch we're reducing it back to 1 loading worker thread only. This doesn't raise suspicion from those affected AVs but still manages to keep a lot of the speed increases from other parts. We're also hoping to get NS2 digitally signed, though we're not sure on the time-scale. As long as the workers are reduced our tests seem to show the affected people have their long load times fixed.
We're hoping to release once we've had a bit more testing.
Also certain motherboards have controllers for disks which are..... questionable at best. Including the drivers.
This may be a additional reason why certain disks perform less then viable for ns2.
Comparing dxdiags would at least show the driver being used which can give a hint at the controller, but it does not allow for a precise look due to controller families, last I checked,
Meaning if you have fast loading in 268, it should not be negatively effected in 269.
I can't wait for getting back to SSD speeds again
We're in the final testing stages now. Watch our trello here: https://trello.com/b/91ApENY6/ns2-cdt-development-tracker
Once 'Fixes to be tested' is empty, it'll be releasing within a day or so.
Great, thanks!