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Forums - Gaming - Loading times...

Munkeh111 on 16 April 2011
twesterm said:
Pjams said:
Tizona said:

It is odd that it seems like we haven't made much headway against the scurge that is loading times in the last couple generations. Obviously for those of us that grew up on cartridges, it's a hard pill to swollow when loading starts to actually interfere with the flow of a game, especially a good game. A few games have done a  good job masking load times as other actions in game (Metroid Prime always come to mind), but even then I hope developers and the Big 3 are actually working on ways to reduce or eliminate load times in the coming generation. Knowing our luck, they'll be longer or you'll have to be the "short load time" DLC or something equally as backward.


Most of the PS3 exclusives have little to no load times. 

It has nothing to do with the PS3, I promise you, it has to do with how the game is setup.

Take Uncharted for example, the reason it appears it has no loading screens is because when you die and reload a checkpoint, they smartly just store off the positions of all the persistent things in the world (ammo, bodies, etc), depsawn all the enemies, and warp the player to checkpoint.  It takes seconds because they unload nothing.  They really don't have to worry about physics objects states because there really just aren't many.

When the game is actually doing a load, it is being hidden by movies (pretty common thing).

Now, if you start Uncharted and then load a random chapter that isn't preceded by a movie, you'll notice a load time as bad as some of the worst games.

Like I said, nothing to do with the PS3 at all, it had to do with how they set the game up.


With Uncharted, you need one initial load and that is it. I am 90% sure that it doesn't load behind cut scenes, as I have skipped them quite frequently without needing to load, after that initial load up



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Brutalyst on 16 April 2011
siphillis said:

the loading times in tekken 6 ruined the game for me.


I didnt find them too bad at all. Though they are always a bit more of an incvenience on fighting games due to a fight being over in a couple of minutes or less, then you would need to load up for the next fight. Did you have it on PS3 or XB? and did you install it?

 

The latest game I find the loading times to be quite long on is Crysis 2 (XBox, and installed).

 

EDIT: oh, actually the worst for me lately MASS EFFECT 2 (on PS3). God those ones were annoying. I hated having to go through the floors on the Normandy to talk to companions and stuff as it took ages to load and did it every time you went from one floor to the other >.< one time I can say it had a negative effect on the game experience



The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

Ernest Hemmingway

Xen on 16 April 2011
siphillis said:

the loading times in tekken 6 ruined the game for me.

You can say that again... the loading times define epic if not installed... they are the longest times I've seen my whole life.



pots555 on 16 April 2011

When I was a kid, I played games on the Commodore 64.  It took forever to load the game.  Me and my brother were always wondering if the game would actually appear on screen. 

In the case of Divinity II, I guess it gets to me because I want to explore everything but I now think about the loading time before going in the houses.  Once in there, I pick up a couple of carrots and tomatoes, look around (2 minutes max) and boom 45 seconds loading screen.  Too bad.



Proud owner and supporter of the YAKUZA games!


yo_john117 on 16 April 2011
ssj12 said:

we must defeat loading screens!

That made my day



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NotStan on 16 April 2011

Modnation Racers..

 

Wtf.



Disconnect and self destruct, one bullet a time.

siphillis on 16 April 2011
Brutalyst said:
siphillis said:

the loading times in tekken 6 ruined the game for me.


I didnt find them too bad at all. Though they are always a bit more of an incvenience on fighting games due to a fight being over in a couple of minutes or less, then you would need to load up for the next fight. Did you have it on PS3 or XB? and did you install it?

 

The latest game I find the loading times to be quite long on is Crysis 2 (XBox, and installed).

 

EDIT: oh, actually the worst for me lately MASS EFFECT 2 (on PS3). God those ones were annoying. I hated having to go through the floors on the Normandy to talk to companions and stuff as it took ages to load and did it every time you went from one floor to the other >.< one time I can say it had a negative effect on the game experience

it was ps3. didnt knew you could install it but the fight was almost as long as the loading screen




Pjams on 16 April 2011
Munkeh111 said:
twesterm said:
Pjams said:
Tizona said:

It is odd that it seems like we haven't made much headway against the scurge that is loading times in the last couple generations. Obviously for those of us that grew up on cartridges, it's a hard pill to swollow when loading starts to actually interfere with the flow of a game, especially a good game. A few games have done a  good job masking load times as other actions in game (Metroid Prime always come to mind), but even then I hope developers and the Big 3 are actually working on ways to reduce or eliminate load times in the coming generation. Knowing our luck, they'll be longer or you'll have to be the "short load time" DLC or something equally as backward.


Most of the PS3 exclusives have little to no load times. 

It has nothing to do with the PS3, I promise you, it has to do with how the game is setup.

Take Uncharted for example, the reason it appears it has no loading screens is because when you die and reload a checkpoint, they smartly just store off the positions of all the persistent things in the world (ammo, bodies, etc), depsawn all the enemies, and warp the player to checkpoint.  It takes seconds because they unload nothing.  They really don't have to worry about physics objects states because there really just aren't many.

When the game is actually doing a load, it is being hidden by movies (pretty common thing).

Now, if you start Uncharted and then load a random chapter that isn't preceded by a movie, you'll notice a load time as bad as some of the worst games.

Like I said, nothing to do with the PS3 at all, it had to do with how they set the game up.


With Uncharted, you need one initial load and that is it. I am 90% sure that it doesn't load behind cut scenes, as I have skipped them quite frequently without needing to load, after that initial load up

Actually it has everything to do with the PS3. It's just that most multiplat developers don't take advantage of the SPUs. This additional processing architecture allows devs to load upcoming events in the backgorund. Thats why most Sony exclusives have little to no load times. 

And while they do use cutscenes to smooth the transition from scene to scene, almost all of these can be skipped with little to no load screen behind it.

And by most I guess I mean Uncharted, Killzone and God of War. But these games show what the PS3 is actually capable of. 



 

phinch1 on 16 April 2011

the loading times on the commador 64/spectrum, spent so long watching that coloured screen load games



MrT-Tar on 16 April 2011

The loading times on the FFVI PSX port

*shudders*