save and load times

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:37 am

Why cant all games do this fast or faster? Today I finished up Republic Commandos then I went back to Vampire...ugh man the load and save times were apalling. Before I play RC I did'nt really mind the load and save times but after RC it really annoyed me. In RC I could hit F9 to quicksave and it looked as though nothing happened. No pause AT ALL yet it did save each time. Vampire has a pretty normal save/load time...way too much though...yet still pretty normal. But after RC its just a bitch to wait through it.

So why cant all games be like RC? Insta saves and very fast loads?

nalchesky · Post by **nalchesky** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:31 am

My theory is it would just be related to the amount of info stored in each save game, and also how efficient the code was written. Of course, this is all just a theory and I really have no idea what I'm talking about.

JayG · Post by **JayG** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:23 am

That's one of my biggest bugbears with my XBox. KOTOR 2 takes forever to load, and the style of game means that there's an awful lot of it. Hopefully Jade Empire will be a bit better in that regard.

As for Vampire, it loads very fast on my machine, yet Thief seems to take quite a while. And HL2 does a lot of loading as well. Yet EQ2 only takes seconds. Strange.

Peacedog · Post by **Peacedog** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 10:53 am

My theory is it would just be related to the amount of info stored in each save game, and also how efficient the code was written. Of course, this is all just a theory and I really have no idea what I'm talking about.

The amount of info stored and the "quality" of the code can affect these things.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 11:02 am

In my (non technical) experience, it also has to do with how much needs to be restored. In a regular shooter, a reload might involve resetting a couple of doors, a few enemies, your location, and your health/ammo. In an RPG like, say, Morrowind (one of the longest loads I can think of), it might involve resetting doors, enemies, locations, health/ammo, thirteen stats, several skills, a few dozen random objects, AI, corpses, weather, and re-determining a dozen random factors.

It also has to do with scope - a shooter might only have to restore a single level, or a couple of levels within a mission, whereas a larger game like Morrowind might have to reset data for a huge portion of the world - dozens of 'levels'.

Some games require that the old data be removed prior to the new being added - before you can show a certain door as being closed again, you have to actually remove the reference to the door being open. That means that the load time is 1/2 removing all of the current data, and 1/2 loading the saved data.

kathode · Post by **kathode** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:56 pm

As games become more and more complex, you've got more and more data to throw around. More data takes more time to manipulate. Just the way it is if you want more complicated games. Memory bandwidth and storage media access and transfer speeds have not really kept pace with advances in things like processor and video speed.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:07 pm

But that wouldseem to rule out Vampire . Its levels are tiny. its justa bunch of very small zones..some no larger than a single room.

shaggydoug · Post by **shaggydoug** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:19 pm

Curious. I seem to be hitting long load times in HL2. Anyone know what that game is doing during a reload/new level load? I'm trying to investigate possible causes that I could improve on my rig.

My biggest suspicion is texture loading. The hard drive light just seems to go and go and go during the load. Note I have a pretty fast non-mirrored SATA drive.

- shaggy

<edit for typo>

kathode · Post by **kathode** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:55 pm

Daehawk wrote:But that wouldseem to rule out Vampire . Its levels are tiny. its justa bunch of very small zones..some no larger than a single room.

Well, perhaps it is just inefficient coding, but it is impossible for any one of us to say exactly what is going on under the hood. I have no idea what they have to save or why. For you and me to judge their code, at least on a specific level, is like trying to suggest optimizations for a factory after putting your ear against the outer wall and listening.

gwartok · Post by **gwartok** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:55 pm

Since we're on the topic I'd lke to give some praise to Irrational for save/load times in Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich. It never took me more than a few seconds to save and probably 10 seconds or so for a load.

I had time to go make a sandwich and eat half of it during saves/loads on the same box with Vampire. It got to the point where I dreaded returning to quest contacts that required zoning.