Loading time expected for the release

[Ladro]

Hello guys :-)

 

First time posting here, so my hello to all and congratulation to all the super work done until now with TDM!

 

(I'm named "Mazzortock" on TTLG)

 

I have a question about loading time: i replayed recently with Saint Lucia (GREAT, I love it!), but i noticed that to load the level the fist time it takes very long time 8about 6/7 min, i'm with Linux Ubuntu 9.04).

 

I'd like to know, if possibile, if the 1.0 beta relese of the super cool mod will be so slow on loading level.

 

Thank you so much and good work for the release!

[SneaksieDave]

The first load always takes a long time (there's a ton of data to load), results varying of course with the horsepower of your system. I've ranged during development from a P4 1.4GHz to a core 2 duo 2.66GHz, and the difference is quite remarkable. The newer system loads maps probably 10 times faster than the older system, and that boost is of course also felt in map compiling time and running the editor too.

 

Regardless, that's only for the first load of a mission. Once it's loaded, re-loads of the same map take literally two or three seconds at most.

 

I don't believe we can have much control over how fast it loads, else id would have made Doom3 maps load faster out of the box.

[HappyCheeze]

Patience is key here. Like Sneaksie said, once its loaded, reloading the game will be a snap.

 

I've had someone complain on moddb saying he wouldn't play it at all, because it look too long to load on his comp.

[New Horizon]

I think we've also converted most of the textures to .dds since the release of Saint Lucia, so that could make a difference. It might also help to make sure usecompression is set to 0 in your doomconfig.cfg, and that useallformats is set to 1. We experimented with a lot of different settings back in the early days to solve a few problems and may have told people to have usecompression and usenormalcompression set to 1. That's not needed now since the textures are already compressed to dds, unless you have a really weak system and need them compressed further. If those two are set to 1, it will increase loading time since the textures are being recompressed.

[Ladro]

Thanks to all for reply :-)

 

I posed this question only because it was strange to me to see loading time so long, compared with Doom3 that's only mesured in seconds rather then minutes.

 

For me it's not a problem anyway: i'll play with pleasure TDM, also if it take 10 minutes to load the level

But i was curious if there was some serious change on the loading system timing on hte latest version on TDM that we *public* can't see.

 

The suggestion by New horizon get the point directly: maybe it's needed to tweak some compression settings for textures.

 

Anyway, on yours testing map, on the latest release, how much time it gets to load a level (i say average, of course it depends on HW and on the level itself) ?

[Springheel]

I found that adding an extra gig of RAM reduced my loading time by a significant amount. I timed it last night and it takes me 3 minutes and 30 seconds to load Chalice of Kings, probably the largest of the the 3 FMs. I'll have to time the Training Map. That would probably make a good addition to the Performance wiki page.

[New Horizon]

From the iddev site:

 

When you issue a "map" command, the following process happens:

 

* Mute Sound System

* Run Wipe

o Capture screen to "_scratch"

o Display "wipeMaterial" for "com_wipeSeconds" seconds.

* Unload Previous Map (Call idGame::MapShutdown)

* Show the loading gui for the next map (guis/map/____.gui)

* Initialize Render World

o Parse Map File

o Build lists of portals and models

o Populate areas with models (but don't load them yet)

* Clear user input buffers

* Set user info (idGame::SetUserInfo and idGame::SetPersistentPlayerInfo)

* Call idGame::InitFromSaveGame or idGame::InitFromNewMap

* Call idGame::SpawnPlayer

* Load all deferred data

o Load all models

o Load all images

o Load all sounds

o Load all decls

o Load all guis

* Call idGame::RunFrame 10 times to let things settle

* Create static light interactions

* Run Wipe

o Capture screen to "_scratch"

o Display "wipe2Material" for "com_wipeSeconds" seconds.

* Un-Mute Sound System

 

I'm sure our programmers are already aware of how all this works, but I just thought I would post it so players will see how the engine loads.

 

Also, I'm curious if we have any potential access to some of this? For example...this section

 

* Initialize Render World

o Parse Map File

o Build lists of portals and models

 

It seems like building this list is something that could be done once a map is finalized and shipped with the finished map to decrease the business at load time. We likely don't have access to this part of the engine though, so probably no way of doing it.

[New Horizon]

Looking into the source code, I see there is some map loading stuff there. Might there be hope we could optimize it somehow in the future?

[Fidcal]

I recall posting significant changes in loading times some time ago but I can't find my post. Might have been at ttlg actually. That was my old machine. My new machine loads Chalice of Kings in 90 seconds and surprisingly the same for Saint Lucia, both from first launch of Dark Mod.

[Ladro]

My new machine loads Chalice of Kings in 90 seconds and surprisingly the same for Saint Lucia, both from first launch of Dark Mod.

 

It sounds good to me :-)

 

90 seconds it's great. But maybe i can use a super fast LVM from 4 disk in stripe 0... It can load faster, i presume :-)

 

Thanks to all

Edited October 1, 2009 by Ladro

[Neb]

Tears of Saint Lucia took almost 20 minutes to load on this laptop I'm using, while Doom 3 usually takes a matter of seconds. I can't remember if I mentioned it before.

 

It doesn't matter though. In a few weeks I'll have a spangley new desktop PC.

 

 

[Crispy]

Buy a solid-state drive and put TDM on it. That'll speed your loading times right up. (I'm assuming that the loading time is IO-bound. I haven't actually tested that assumption, but it seems like a reasonable one.)

 

I'm fairly sure that most of the portalising process is done at compile-time. That line may simply be referring to the need to read the portal information out of the file and turn it into a data structure. Can't be sure without seeing the engine source though. *shrug*

[Fidcal]

Tears of Saint Lucia took almost 20 minutes to load on this laptop I'm using, while Doom 3 usually takes a matter of seconds. I can't remember if I mentioned it before.

 

It doesn't matter though. In a few weeks I'll have a spangley new desktop PC.

That sounds like a swap file issue? How much RAM on that machine? If Saint Lucia won't fit then the excess goes in the swap file. Ha! I recall my first experience of the internet. It took many minutes to load some web pages and I could see the hard drive thrashing away. I thought that was normal. I probably had 64MB RAM or less then. Dramatic change when I added more RAM.

[Neb]

That sounds like a swap file issue? How much RAM on that machine?

This lappy has 1 GB. I will probably aim for at least 3 for my new PC.

 

 

 

[Tels]

This lappy has 1 GB. I will probably aim for at least 3 for my new PC.

 

1Gbyte is the absolute minimum - however, it can be not enough if you don't have compressed textures enabled - doom then uncompresses everything, and takes way over 1Gbyte memory itself, leaving nothing for your OS and other programs running.

[Springheel]

1Gbyte is the absolute minimum -

 

I had 1G of RAM for the last four years and had no problems with the mod other than 6 or 7 minutes of load time for FMs. If it's taking you 20 minutes, then it is something other than only having 1G of RAM.

[LeatherMan]

I had 1G of RAM for the last four years and had no problems with the mod other than 6 or 7 minutes of load time for FMs. If it's taking you 20 minutes, then it is something other than only having 1G of RAM.

 

Was that 1GB RAM with *onboard* video, or with a dedicated graphics card? Onboard video is just one reason for the slow loading times on laptops. Slower hard drive (4200/5400 rpm vs 7200 rpm) is another reason. Factor in the mobile cpu and (usually) slower RAM and you've got yourself one hell of a slow loading machine.

 

 

FWIW, my comp loaded Chalice with the latest beta in 45 seconds, and it's far from the fastest machine available.

[Springheel]

Yes, onboard video would be far more significant in slowing things down. I'm actually impressed that it's even *playable* on onboard video.

[Tels]

Yes, onboard video would be far more significant in slowing things down. I'm actually impressed that it's even *playable* on onboard video.

 

Yeah, onboard video also shares its video ram with the main memory, making it A: even slower and B: eating 128..256 Mbytes of main memory right there, so a 1Gbyte memory with oneboard video is probably not fitting into the main memory.

[Fidcal]

Also what else is running. Most Windows users have wasteful stuff running they don't even know. 1GB of RAM doesn't mean much if three quarters is in use before you start.

[Ladro]

Yes, onboard video would be far more significant in slowing things down. I'm actually impressed that it's even *playable* on onboard video.

 

Some recent IGPs (Integrated Graphic Processor) now are not bad to play with Doom3 Engine (not so good to play super DX10/11 recents engines and games). Ie some new AsRock boards (chipset AMD 785G) have an ATI HD4200 onboard with *dedicated* 128 MB DDR3 (so it's not shared with the ram).

 

Also what else is running. Most Windows users have wasteful stuff running they don't even know. 1GB of RAM doesn't mean much if three quarters is in use before you start.

 

I agree, but because I use Linux

Edited October 5, 2009 by Ladro