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Hacks to improve load times?


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Does anyone have any recommendations about tweaks I can do with my system?? Some kind of third-party software or some-such?

 

My specs are Core i7-3770k, 16GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660

I really don't see how I could be spending more time on the loading screen in this game than in a game like saying Dragon Age or Mass Effect.

 

The load times are really, really killing this game for me.

 

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Are you using a mechanical slow hard disk or an SSD? On my i7 (Haswell) with an SSD and 8 GB RAM loading times are about 10-15s (I have now reached ACT 3).

 

My old fashion hard disk times seem similar. Has anyone actually done a proper comparison for how much an SSD affects load times in this game?

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I used a good SSD for my playthrough and I didn't use a chanter so my saves weren't "corrupted" either, still they were too intrusive and I started basing in-game decisions on how many loading screens I would have to sit through.

 

The maps are fairly small content-wise which means you will often have to run through loading screen after loading screen to get from map A to map D. On top of that there's another loading screen to enter buildings. It all adds up to be quite the nuisance and if its an engine limitation, it's a pretty severe one. 

- How can I live my life if I can't even tell good from evil?

- Eh, they're both fine choices. Whatever floats your boat. 

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My load times near the end of the game (> 90% completion) are around 3 seconds, on a Core I7 920 (bout 5 years old), Ubuntu Linux 14.10, from hard disk (not an SSD), game version 1.04.

 

Before the latest patch there was some delay on entering the game before I could click the continue button, but they seem to have fixed that, and it's there immediately now.  So it's only a few seconds from launching the game to playing, including time to click past the initial logo.

 

Weird that they're so long for some folks and not others.

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Are you using a mechanical slow hard disk or an SSD? On my i7 (Haswell) with an SSD and 8 GB RAM loading times are about 10-15s (I have now reached ACT 3).

 

I don't have an SSD but my load times are in the same ballpark. 15-20 seconds.

 

What REALLY sucks is when you're in the Stronghold/doing Caed Nua or in any of the cities. 

 

I don't understand why the game can't at least load ALL of a house at once so that the transition up and downstairs is seamless.

 

The only theory I got is that somehow because the environments are fully rendered rather than made up of building blocks the game has to load what amounts to a fully detailed bitmap every time rather than generate environments. I have no fking clue really but if we have to pay with these load times then I'd rather just take a graphical hit and have less pretty environments.

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I love the 10 second loading times every time I go upstairs in a building followed by another 10 seconds after I realize nothing is up there. It's like the Sega CD all over again. They should have a floppy drive access sound play during these screens.

 

I'm using a SSD, quad core 2.5GHz AMD, GTX 560Ti, 8GB RAM.

Edited by Junker
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I have made some measurements.

 

Running on SSD (i7 5960x - 8GB DDR4 - Haswell chipset) Windows 8.1 x64. Windows Superfetch disabled.

 

Od Nua level 15 -> 14: 9,38s

Od Nua level 14 -> 13: 11,94s

Od Nua level 13 -> 12: 11,03s

Od Nua level 12 -> 11: 10,23s

Od Nua level 11 Master staircase -> Caed Nua: 13,72s

 

So... it seems that my middle ground is around 12s. A bit slower for a SSD no?

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I got the same problem. It's boring to have to wait at EVERY map's change when you have good SSD and good RAM...

 

I think it's not the same problem, but... I got a lot of saves, and the worst was when I launched the game. I had to wait REALLY long time before I could "continue" or "load" a game. However, I made back up of save files in another directory, and then it was ok.

 

I noticed too that when you start a new game, you can save instantly. At the end, it's... longer.

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I ended the game with a save file of about 5MB I think...load screen times and save times were 10-12 seconds avg.(7200rpm HDD).

 

It's odd how the load times increase for many over time, but vary from really excessive (30+ seconds each screen) to fairly minimal for others (where it's mostly annoying because of multiple load screens in brief spans of time).

 

The patches did make the start-screen list ("loading save games"...) wait time disappear for me but in-game area loads/save increase remains. Every new chr. I make the save/loads are near instantaneous for a while then it slows down.

“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.” – Alan Watts
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My load times near the end of the game (> 90% completion) are around 3 seconds, on a Core I7 920 (bout 5 years old), Ubuntu Linux 14.10, from hard disk (not an SSD), game version 1.04.

 

Before the latest patch there was some delay on entering the game before I could click the continue button, but they seem to have fixed that, and it's there immediately now.  So it's only a few seconds from launching the game to playing, including time to click past the initial logo.

 

Weird that they're so long for some folks and not others.

 

Mine ending game save sits at 6mb, so I'm guessing i'd have just as bad times on my end. The thing is that saves are packed, and you won't see the real save size untill you open them up with unpacking software. Mine jumps to 92mb, and by my limited knowlage into file packing, I know that there is a lot of repetition in content saved for it to be able to pack the information to that extent.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Auto saving is affecting the area transition load times as far as I am aware. You can disable autosave or set the frequency with IE Mod. I disabled autosave and it takes about 5s to load between areas

 

My problem is when I click on Load Game to get to my saves, it takes between 40-60s (it takes about the same time when I try to save a game)

From there it takes less than 10s to load the save 

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I don't understand why the game can't at least load ALL of a house at once so that the transition up and downstairs is seamless.

 

This has been brought up many times with feedback to Obsidian during the beta. Every location including going in and out of a house is a different map. Going into a house is similar to going to a new wilderness map or new city map (eg, travelling from Copperlane to Brackenbury). It's not like the IE games where you can have half your party outside and half inside a house because you can't split your party over two maps. And it's why you get exploration xp because you've now entered a new map. I find the design quite odd and they should have done the same as the IE games.

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OK my load/save time delay fixed :)

 

Reduced my save games from 383 to 30

 

From clicking on Load Game it now opens my saves instantaneously (same with clicking on Save Game)

From there it takes less than 10s load the save

With auto save disabled/reduced with IE Mod, area transitions less than 10s

 

My question is why is the amount of saves causing the delay? Could it be that the game is also trying to access/synchronize your saves through Steam Cloud while it is accessing your saves on your HDD?

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I don't understand why the game can't at least load ALL of a house at once so that the transition up and downstairs is seamless.

 

This has been brought up many times with feedback to Obsidian during the beta. Every location including going in and out of a house is a different map. Going into a house is similar to going to a new wilderness map or new city map (eg, travelling from Copperlane to Brackenbury). It's not like the IE games where you can have half your party outside and half inside a house because you can't split your party over two maps. And it's why you get exploration xp because you've now entered a new map. I find the design quite odd and they should have done the same as the IE games.

 

 

This is probably a stupid question or idea, and I've heard this explanation before, but I can't help but to think.. well.. can't they just make it one map? With the stairs essentially being a "teleport" from point A to B?

 

Why is it a cardinal sin to keep two floors or two areas of the same building on the same map? Do they absolutely need to be separate?

 

Same thought occurred to me for the areas of the keep itself, like the Library. I'm playing my next playthrough with commentary on, and the Library was apparently conceived as a place where you could go and place your books, but no way no how will I ever go there for something like that. It's bad enough that I ahve to go to the main keep to pick up stuff from the chest. :lol:

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I suspect the new save format of 1.05 is there to improve loading times. If 1.05 shows no improvement in that area, it's possible that the new format is groundwork for optimizations aimed at patch 1.06... Or not :)

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