Pack up the game resources to reduce loading time
Van_Tuz
Join Date: 2014-11-04 Member: 199412Members
Join Date: 2014-11-04 Member: 199412Members
Developers, with all due respect, i'm going to say this loud:
No other game has raped my HDD so hard as NS2. Ever.
Seriously, with every map change it makes such horrible noises like it's going to disintegrate into shrapnel any second.
The reason why other games aren't putting so much pressure to HDD is that their assets are packed into bigger files.
Loading over nine thousand small files scattered around the disk could even be worse than reading a huge file fragmented in small chunks. (because the OS need to check access rights, write down time of last access etc)
As the solution to this i suggest you to bundle assets into big files (packs). This way they can be loaded without constant HDD's heads jerking back and forth. It could improve load times and more importantly won't chew off HDD lifetime so much.
Modded files could be loaded after (or even instead of) the core packs. Or a list of modded files could be built to make the loading script skip chunks of a big file that will not be needed.
P.S. If you're going to make me choose between my HDD and NS2 i'll probably choose HDD.
P.P.S. "Buy SSD" is not a valid solution. Like i said, other games aren't doing such things.
No other game has raped my HDD so hard as NS2. Ever.
Seriously, with every map change it makes such horrible noises like it's going to disintegrate into shrapnel any second.
The reason why other games aren't putting so much pressure to HDD is that their assets are packed into bigger files.
Loading over nine thousand small files scattered around the disk could even be worse than reading a huge file fragmented in small chunks. (because the OS need to check access rights, write down time of last access etc)
As the solution to this i suggest you to bundle assets into big files (packs). This way they can be loaded without constant HDD's heads jerking back and forth. It could improve load times and more importantly won't chew off HDD lifetime so much.
Modded files could be loaded after (or even instead of) the core packs. Or a list of modded files could be built to make the loading script skip chunks of a big file that will not be needed.
P.S. If you're going to make me choose between my HDD and NS2 i'll probably choose HDD.
P.P.S. "Buy SSD" is not a valid solution. Like i said, other games aren't doing such things.
Comments
You probably need to replace your HDD.
People complaining about 2 minutes loading times of BF4 with 5400RPM HDD. It's nothing compared to 5+ minutes of motorboat sounds that NS2 makes every map change with my HDD as a speaker.
So i'd like to see archives thing implemented soon.
4Gb DDR3 RAM
AMD HD5770 1024mb GDDR5
Seagate ST3500630AS 7200 rpm 16 Mb cache SATA 3Gb/s
Unloadng everything RAM-consuming and running NS2 on low settings in hopes to reduce loading load (ha-ha)
So don't use crappy OSes.
(and buy SSD anyways, it is great)
Just saying.
Meh. 4 is plenty for ns2.
https://www.piriform.com/defraggler is the best and fastest I've found. Built-in windows one is slow.
Why a game needs to load thousands of tiny files when it can load a few big file packs faster and easier? This
is not an OS' fault.
I've ran HDtune error scan. No bad sectors. Reallocated sector count is 72. Far from critical i think.
More importantly, during the scan the HDD was completely quiet except for a few minor seeking noises when other things asked for HDD time.
Defraggler shows that no NS2 file is fragmented.
I think that should be enough to show that my HDD is fine. I don't want to prove that any further.
If someone interested, i've put the microphone on top of HDD and recorded the loading process.
Caution: Extreme violence. Your HDD/SSD should be at least 1 year old to proceed.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/99x1sezs32fpy4h/NS2 loading.mp3?dl=0
It gets good at 2:10 mark when "pre-caching" kicked in.
The files are just scattered around the disc so HDD needs to reposition the heads to read every single one. Don't forget that extensive seeking not just increases loading times and power consumption but also eats HDD mechanics' lifetime.
BTW, despite the 7 min loading when i first time saw a skulk, the game decided to hang for a second to load the pretty textures. The skulk surely liked the taste of fresh marine legs.
Just saying that he could write to Microsoft instead of Unknown Worlds Entertainment.
Because, I quote,
Well, if you don't understand the cause of the problem, you have a right to write the game developer something like this: "game load is slow; my HDD is bleeding".
But if you know about that situation with thousands of files and that you have to defragment them, then you can now leave game developer alone and deal with another problem: reading thousands of abstract files from the disc.
However, you still choose to write to the game developer. Probably, because it is smaller.
Yes, bigger companies are too big to bother. So, they can follow "bad development practices" safely, because smaller ones will workaround these bugs under users' pressure.
P.S. Do what you do (cos u aint getting ... done other way for now). But keep in mind a deeper background, it's a step forward already.
First, Do Linux users have <30 seconds loading times from a HDD? If not then it's not a OS' fault and no need to make an OS holywar here.
Second:
Do you know the difference between file fragmentation and file scattering?
I have none of NS2 files fragmented. But they're scattered. That way a lot of time is wasted seeking back and forth. Defragmentation tools are not as effective at descattering as at defragmentation.
Third:
Note that i'm not spewing hate here. I'm suggesting a possible solution: Compose the small files into big ones. Reading one continuous file is faster than reading a hundred of small ones.
I'm explaining why you are suggesting this or that solution.
People also really need to stop fanboy'ing when it comes to these kinds of complaints, it isn't helping anyone when you're defending the software issues by telling people they should throw hardware at a software problem. Otherwise we should just up the system requirements to have the minimal systems requirements include a GTX 780 Ti, a SSD, and 8-16Gb of ram because some of us can barely get the minimum enjoyment of the game with specs greater than the current recommended.
@GhoulofGSG9 just said they were working on something like this. No need to extend it further.