Loading takes forever. How come?

Swingman · October 17, 2007, 05:25:46 AM

I am curious... :ffvstr: has become a real slow starter, loading the game takes forever and so does starting a rumble room scenario. It actually takes so long that it is beginning to ruin the game for me.
My computer may not be state of the art, but I should think it would be up to the task (I have 2GB ram).

So why is this exactly and can I solve or help this in some way?
Is it due to too many meshes/skins, fx, missions, hero files or perhaps something in my installation or ffx 3.2 installation?

I hope someone can help.

If this has been covered elsewhere I apologize, I couldn't seem to find anything...

catwhowalksbyhimself · October 17, 2007, 08:06:08 AM

I believe if you have a HUGE number of meshes and such it can have the effect.

It has to be in the hundreds, I think.

Swingman · October 17, 2007, 10:03:26 AM

Well, I definitely have meshes in the hundreds. Perhaps I should clean up a bit if, as you say, the amount of meshes usually is the big sinner.

I tried to remove a lot of my many hero files though, and it seemed to help some on the games loading time. The loading of rumble room games still remain a problem though, but I'm going to try cleaning up in my mesh collection and see what happends. Damn, I hoped to avoid that...

Am I the only one with this problem?

And a thanks to you catwhowalksbyhimself

GogglesPizanno · October 17, 2007, 10:25:12 AM

Cat is right. The more meshes you have the longer it takes to load.
This is pretty standard for people with lots of meshes I think.

There was also talk way back when that load times MIGHT also be affected *slightly* by where you have your meshes stored (custom folder vs. Documents and Settings folder)...

USAgent · October 17, 2007, 03:28:38 PM

Googgles is right about the folder locaton. I originally had my meshes in the "documents and settings" directory and the load time was out of this world (I have 1,000 some meshes), once I removed the meshes from that directory and put them here: "C:\Program Files\Irrational Games\Freedom Force vs The 3rd Reich\Custom\Art\library\characters" , my game now takes about 15 to 20 seconds to load. Hope that helps!

Swingman · October 18, 2007, 06:13:25 AM

I'm sad to say I already have the meshes placed in "C:\Program Files\Irrational Games\Freedom Force vs The 3rd Reich\Custom\Art\library\characters", but thanks for the suggestion.

I'm starting to think there may be something altogether wrong with my game/installation. Some of my meshes take several minutes just to show up when I choose them in the game. Not all, but a few.

I tried to remove a lot of my meshes, I think about a hundred, but it didn't do a noteworthy difference.

I really love this game, but it kind of gets old fast when you feel like you spend more than half the time just waiting...

I'm at a loss here...

stumpy · October 18, 2007, 10:50:31 AM

You might want to confirm that the new meshes are the issue by removing all of them (just rename the folder). You might also check that the base game (with no FFX or other mods) is also slowed down. Tracking down this sort of thing is largely a process of elimination. It may well be that a relatively small fraction of your meshes are responsible for 90% of the lag you are seeing. Doing a binary search for those meshes could get you up to speed without too much of a hit on your character creation ability.

USAgent · October 18, 2007, 02:02:42 PM

I just remembered something......what was really slowing my game down when loading up was the 1,000 hero files I had in the hero folder, the more I added the slower it got, so now I just put in the hero files I want to play with. Maybe that may help...hopefully.

Swingman · October 19, 2007, 02:27:22 AM

Thanks for all your advice, everyone, and by the way, removing the herofiles had a huge impact on the start-up time of the game. A special thanks to USAGENT for that suggestion.

The rest of the games loading times are still very long on many occasions (rumble room games and some meshes), but I still have some things to try out. Some of it may just be my computers way of telling me is ready for retirement, though my financial situation says it's probably not gonna be in the nearest future.

Hey, the start-up is no longer a big problem and I'm not ready to give up on this game just yet. Of course if you have ideas for me to try out they will be more than welcome...

stumpy · October 19, 2007, 03:49:14 AM

It really may be worth your while to try and find if some of your meshes are causing the slowdown. I don't have nearly so many meshes, so it would take you a while to do (there is likely more than one culprit), but it may be helpful. It seems to me that there was a post back in the Silver Age of FR (before we got hacked) where people noted that certain meshes increased load times. I have no idea what they were (I just know I didn't have them) and we can't look them up now. Maybe somebody else would know...

Also, moving your meshes from one folder to another should not take very long, as long as both are on the same drive (the PC doesn't physically move the files' contents around the drive, it just changes the entries in the drive table).

Anyway, glad it's not taking forever to load anymore. (Of course, you'd have to cut about 100% of that load time to really notice a difference. :P)

Jakew · October 20, 2007, 03:38:13 AM

I used to have the exact same problem ... it was the amount of custom hero files I had set up in the hero folder for the game.

Which meshes seem to be slowing the game down?

tommyboy · October 20, 2007, 03:50:26 AM

Basically the file size of a mesh (and/or skins) will determine how long it takes to load.
So my _tv meshes will take longer than my _tvlite, because typically the _tvs are four times the filesize of tvlite.
So lots of big (filesize) meshes (and/or skins) will make for slower loading times.
Add a lot of herofiles into the mix and it'll further slow things down.