Any tricks for fast loading game?

[tc237]

Dear Ageod Modders,
What are some tricks or game settings that you use to make the game load faster?

Because my modding and graphics skills are not very good, I have to constantly load the game to check my work.
Waiting for the game to load takes up most my time (45sec to 1 minute each time).
Is there a way to have map changes appear without exiting completely back to the desktop?

Thanks for your valuable time in advance.

[Nikel]

Hi

The only way I know is to set the paging file size to 0 MB

RAM memory is faster than the HD so you should notice some speed up the second time and the followings you run an application.


Note that you need enough RAM to set the paging file size to 0, and this is not recommended by microsoft though I have used it for years in XP and Vista and never noticed a problem, again with enough RAM

[Pocus]

Uncheck load region bitmaps in the Options menu, so that regions are not preloaded all in advance. That's what I do as a developer and I can reduce AACW load time to 20s at most.

[tc237]

26 seconds is how long it takes for my system to load the game.
Tested it about 10 times, defragged the hard drives, changed the pagefile.
No matter what I do it takes 26 seconds......oh the agony......

[Nikel]

Well, 26 seconds is not a lot of time

I remember somebody posted here that he could went down to the village to buy bread and when he came back the game was still loading

Probably you cannot reduce it more. In my system with pagefile set to 0, the second time I load NCP it takes 15 seconds less than the first time (in the same session), from nearly 60 seconds to 45 seconds. I will test AACW when I get home, should be similar

[arsan]

Geez, what you guys have, NASA computers??
Mi PC needs up to 3 minutes to load AACW

[oldspec4]

Geez, what you guys have, NASA computers??
Mi PC needs up to 3 minutes to load AACW

Yeah..same for me.

[Nikel]

Here is a little test in my laptop.

Windows 7 beta. Pagefile size 0. 4Gb RAM

T9300 2,5 GHz. Seagate 7200 rpm (nearly empty) 320 Gb. Nvidia 8600M GT 256 MB

Games with default options, time in seconds from double click to menu. First and second time in the same session


AACW

68

33


NCP

60

43


As you can see the second times are faster. AACW loading time is reduced a lot above all in textures loading.


Later will test the desktop

[Nikel]

Desktop


Windows Vista. Pagefile size determined by Windows (2500 Mb) because only 2 Gb RAM

Intel e6600 2,4 GHz. WD Raptor 10000 rpm 140 Gb, 30 free desfragmented according to windows. Nvidia 8800GTS 640 MB

Games with default options, time in seconds from double click to menu. First and second time in the same session


AACW

93

69


NCP

84

58


To my surprise there is a nice reduction here for the second loading time.

But this HD is faster and the loading times are worse, I guess this is because of the paging file.


tc237, you talked about 45-60 seconds the first post and later 26, so from where does this huge reduction come?

[tc237]

tc237, you talked about 45-60 seconds the first post and later 26, so from where does this huge reduction come?

Sorry about that Nikel, it was just my impression that the loading time took almost 1 minute.
After writing that I knew it was probably wrong so I timed it and got the 26 sec.
I have an old AMD 2ghz with 2GB of RAM.
My page file (2gb-4gb) is on a small dedicated partition (10gb) on another HD.
Don't know the HD speeds, either 5400 or 7200.
I use that same small partition for things like the Photoshop scratch disk, don't know if it really helps or not, but I use it.

26 sec is with the options Pocus suggested and Music and Sound disabled.

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