About loading times...
Ghosthree3
Join Date: 2010-02-13 Member: 70557Members, Reinforced - Supporter
Join Date: 2010-02-13 Member: 70557Members, Reinforced - Supporter
So I got fed up with taking 5-10 minutes to load each map, so I redirected the following folders to a ramdrive: "appdata\natural selection 2" "ns2\shaders" "ns2\cinematics" "ns2\materials".
It made...no (or almost no) difference to load times, for real, in the console when I load it says "Compiling 'cinematics\bla'" or what ever file it happens to be precaching, the only ones that are listed that aren't already moved are models (which is like 7gb so no way I'm putting it on ram).
WHY, WHY YOU DO THIS GAME!?
Is it designed to load slow on purpose?
It made...no (or almost no) difference to load times, for real, in the console when I load it says "Compiling 'cinematics\bla'" or what ever file it happens to be precaching, the only ones that are listed that aren't already moved are models (which is like 7gb so no way I'm putting it on ram).
WHY, WHY YOU DO THIS GAME!?
Is it designed to load slow on purpose?
Comments
i already posted about this but got no response :<
apparently everyone has to compile the shaders when they join a server or change the map
THIS MUST BE FIXED!
NAOW
Also it appears to be Compiling more stuff mid game.
I don't care If I need to compile every shaders all the time when loading map but why in the game.. This is my biggest problem atm + nonfullscreen mode
There is about near 2000 post on Steam Discussion and this forums >> all about crash and FPS
As a small development team , they need to gather up and fix those error and answer too many question
And in this video , as you seen in 1:26 >>> a Dead UWE Developer ( or he just passed-out
GUIBASIC is not compiling everytime.
It is however being loaded when needed, as GUI items are intentionally not precached. This shouldn't cause any hitching at all.
Now.. if you can show me a screenshot or log.txt of the game "compiling" any shaders while playing a game (people are dying etc) then there's something to be concerned about.
Until then.. this is typical behavior?
Not speaking about long loading times, BTW, thats a separate matter and should be in a different thread, with a link to a pastebin of your log with enabled while loading a map
It would be interesting to hear if your results where the same as it might provide some insight to the Dev's on this problem.
I have tried this but it did nothing but lag me out of the server. Something about incompatible files when I tried. When I just waited the few mins it loaded fine... I guess it though I was trying to run a hack or something similar. It might have been the server as well since it was a green server and could have been modded. This is just my try on this, someone else might get a better result on an Official Server.(The server I joined at the time was the one with the most players with the lowest ping for me so it is slightly biased)
I'm getting this spam all the time, and my hitching is occurring when this happens. Every. Single. Time.
BUT!!! I changed my resolution, and the hitching and compiling of GUIBasic disappeared!
... for about two maps, then it returned. Can anyone test this?
First the problems:
- Fairly long initial load time (first load always between 3-5 minutes)
- Subsequent loads from map changes or server changes (between 2-3 minutes)
- Performance drop for the first 2-5 minutes after any map change (lag spikes (0.5-1 second) when encountering enemies (multiple times within one encounter), spawning, and building structures)
- Some textures not loading for first few minutes (noticed most the alien evolution tree (press
- Long delay getting into the Ready Room after a map loads (Black screen showing nothing except the build number in the top left corner and the amount of players on each team, computer essentially freezes during this time, cannot minimize, click anything, open or close console, etc. Duration between 20 seconds to 1 minute, after which I see everything and can move and join teams regularly, tab shows my ping at 999 which gradually decreases to the regular 35-40 within 10-15 seconds)
- Player kills/deaths, chat, draw damage, microphone icon when players speak not appearing for first few minutes after map change, then gets spammed all at once (Doesn't always happen but it's fairly frequent, I'd guess around 25% of the time)
Second, the system specs (If I missed anything or something else is required just let me know and I'll add it to the list):
- AMD Phenom II X4 965 Processor, 3400 Mhz, Quad Core
- ATI Radeon HD 5830
- 4 GB RAM DDR3 (2x G.Skill 2 GB PC3-10700 (667 Mhz))
- Western Digital WD Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
- Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit
Third, any additional information:
- All options are Off and set to Minimal except Draw Damage is On and Texture Quality is set to Medium, Resolution is 1280x720, Device D3D9
- Reflections are Off (I read that it might be the culprit for the Black Screen after loading into the Ready Room)
- Texture Streaming is Off (Would be a good reason why some things are not loaded when I get into the game, and also the performance drop due to some shaders compiling on the spot)
- Compiles Shaders for every map load, doesn't seem to save the cache so it recompiles it every map change (Precaching every map load, Idles at 0% for a while (20-30 seconds), then crawls to 10%, gradually increases to 54% then instantly jumps to 88% and speeds to 100%)
- V-Sync is Off
- I use a TV as a second monitor but it's usually off and I only use my main monitor to play
- AVG detects NS2.exe as a threat and every patch I have to re-add it to the exceptions list
- FPS is generally between 60-120 (140-150 in Ready Room)
- Sometimes if I minimize during the map load the game will crash
- Recently I've seen "GameOverlayUI" stop responding when loading NS2 from Steam but that's only been 2-3 times
- I don't have any mods installed and I usually play on the Official UWE servers, sometimes loads are longer on other non-official servers
- When I played NS2 in December (if I remember correctly) there wasn't any Precaching and I would usually be the first or second person to load into a map, or the precaching would go from 0-100% instantly
- I've reinstalled the game about a week or two ago which helped the loading a bit (used to get a good 5+ minutes load), also deleted the %appdata% caches folder and all other folders when uninstalling (read a post on the forums somewhere on How-To)
- Tried the minimize for 5 seconds trick during load to see if the game was loaded after maximizing, didn't change anything (except the game would crash occasionally)
- I know using an SSD would improve load times but that's not an option for me at the moment
- I know Texture Streaming would help load times a bit but when I've had it on I wasn't very pleased with the micro-lags during gameplay when it would compile textures on the spot (seemed it was doing it for just about every texture... crosshairs, HUD, any weapon changes, bite animation, parasites, armory menu, evolution menu, etc.)
That's all I can think of at the moment, if I see or remember anything else I'll update the list.
Any information or helpful tips or suggestion are always welcome. Thanks in advance!
The black stream getting into the RR after loading is because of buggy DX11, switch to DX9 and it should go away/become much shorter.
Also seen an issue where the little part showing marine comm's drops don't show the icons for a while either.
Happens in Dx9 too.
"Texture Streaming is Off (Would be a good reason why some things are not loaded when I get into the game, and also the performance drop due to some shaders compiling on the spot)"
Exactly
I recommend turning Texture streaming on.. your symptoms all sound like they come from memory issues. (except for the black screen which *shouldn't* occur with DX9 Fullscreen)
I'd also drop AVG on the side of the road, its been reporting that exe for many months now despite so many reporting a false positive.
Can you type r_loading and loadtimes true in the console (~ key) when you are at the menu, just before loading a map? (just type map ns2_summit)
Join a team, and then after 30 seconds quit the game and promptly uploading your log.txt or techsupport.exe results.
Also i'd love to see your techsupport zip anyways due to your weird issues when using texture streaming.. sounds like a general VRAM issue/bad card/ drivers.
Thanks
@radforchrist
Do me a favor and follow these instructions..
Its difficult to play an actual game this way, but if its as frequent as it sounds for you, you can reproduce a notable hitch/spike in the profiler when this GUIBASIC occurs.
Be sure to select the tallest bar, and expand the widest purple bars when taking the shot.
Thanks!
_____________________________________________________________
To everyone: The game has always had a high chance of crashing during a map load if you alt-tabbed.. and it probably always will. This really isn't strange behavior for most resource intensive PC games though, imo.
If it crashes any other time alt tabbing, then we want to know
Log.txt: http://pastebin.com/kbtQkk4F
Can someone help me with this? It's really frustrating.
Loading 'models/props/biodome/biodome_bamboo_crown_01_05.model' took 55.10ms
wow..
Thats.. just you loading the model going into the main menu.
What kind of hard drive do you have?
@sykin wow.. same with you.. 6 minute load times?? 0.0
Should be 1-2 min tops.
How fast does BF3 load for you guys?
Thanks to both of you for providing these logs.. looking into it now.
edit: sykin .. i assume you are using the C drive for NS2 and not the others?
The others are using this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148143 and that would not be optimal as ATA is slower than SATA.
Yes I am using the C drive. To my knowledge, everything is using the C drive, I don't think I stored anything on any other drive.
Thanks IronHorse for your continued support. Let me know if I can help or provide any useful information.