Sector loading gets very slow as game progresses (as of 2.6 or 2.7.x)

Post by **Nanook** » Thu, 23. Sep 10, 00:25

Sorry, but it's patch 2.5 that made boarding harder. So you'll have to start earlier than that. Har har.

Shootist · Post by **Shootist** » Thu, 23. Sep 10, 00:59

Nanook wrote:Sorry, but it's patch 2.5 that made boarding harder. So you'll have to start earlier than that. Har har.

You took way too much pleasure in that.

aquatica · Post by **aquatica** » Mon, 27. Sep 10, 05:48

After reading this thread, I'm getting scared. Not only am I about to finish the first part of the Hub plot, ever, and I am experiencing mild problems like that with loading. Loading the save take anywhere between 30 seconds to 3 minutes (which I consider quite normal), but sector loading is anything between 15 seconds to a minute... Hopefully it wont blast away

Post by **CBJ** » Mon, 27. Sep 10, 10:54

Is your game modified? If so then either a rogue script or script-logging that has accidentally been left switched on could explain the increasing time. This problem is usually accompanied by savegames that steadily increase in size, so that's a quick way to check whether this might indeed be the problem in your case.

aquatica · Post by **aquatica** » Mon, 27. Sep 10, 11:22

No mods and only bonus pack scripts, savegame is about 13MB's in size, so it doesn't look like to be anything odd. It is, after all, ingame day 7 or 8 I'm going through now.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Mon, 27. Sep 10, 20:11

@ aquatica: 13 Mb size saves are normal in earlyish game but the loading times you state for sectors and those saves are a bit excessive. Firstly is your drive nearly full and is it recently defragged (as bad fragmentation of files will slow things)? Are other application/game types of saves/loads as you or others might expect?

Otherwise consider trying your TC saves on another drive if you can and see if that changes things. Let's hope that your harddrive is not on the way to failing. I hope you do a regular safety backup of your important files if it is down to that drive.

You might consider posting a new Tech Sp thread with your DxDiag and game info.

aquatica · Post by **aquatica** » Mon, 27. Sep 10, 20:15

@Alan

Well I'm still looking into it, it hasn't gotten any worse now at least. But if it gets, I'll just do a new ticked as per instructions, I was just wondering if anyone happened to have some sort of idea as to this.
Oh, I did remove few codecs, just in case, and I think that if nothing changed performance wise, that I might have actually gotten few more (wonder why, or how?) sound channels as everything seems more... well, EAX'ish, mind you the codecs had absolutely nothing to do with audio.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Tue, 28. Sep 10, 12:01

@ aquatica: No, codecs etc might affect in-game play but not disk loading/access times. The quality/correctness of your disk drivers might though. See if your OS does the Windows Experience Index Base Score on your system as it will benchmark your harddrive amongst your other system components. Does your cpu max out while loading? By the way, I hope you aren't running other applications (such as on-line chat, virus scans, etc) in the background or during these long loading times.

Your issue, on the basis of most others' game experience and your descriptions, is that you are already having excessively long and variable loading times and that may indicate problems that rather than just getting worse may possibly next become terminal if they are hardware-based. Asking if anyone has any idea about such a problem is not going to be helpful to you if no-one knows your current system and its state, nor the state of your game. Hence why I was asking about how full your drive was and whether your OS can do certain things, etc.

PQTaggart · Post by **PQTaggart** » Thu, 3. Feb 11, 10:01

It's unlikely to be a hardware problem. As stated earlier in this post, I experienced the same problems with one save-game. When I started a new game, game- and sector-loading times were back to normal. I also tested my older save-games where I completed all missions - no problem occured. My PC was a brand new Lenovo T400 - no hw problems until now.
It must be a software related problem.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Thu, 3. Feb 11, 14:38

This is the bit of aquatica's post that indicates that there may be a system/hardware/driver issue: "Loading the save [a normal 13 Mb] take anywhere between 30 seconds to 3 minutes (which I consider quite normal)"

I am sure that after reading the rest of your thread he will have already eliminated or reported the issue completely disappearing on a fresh start or earlier save. Anyway, I'm sure he has moved on since the last time he posted here in Sep last year.

aquatica · Post by **aquatica** » Thu, 3. Feb 11, 16:32

@Alan

I never went away

I just stood up in here lurking. I actually thought I had responded to this thread last September... Anyway, the savegame loading time IS anything between 30 to 3 minutes, and as far as I am aware these are the things that affect the most, but are not the only factors to consider:

- Current sector and the amount of objects within that sector
- Percentage of the universe explored
- Amount of satellites around the universe
- Size of complexes within the same sector

So, the same 13MB'ish save can load in 30 seconds - or so - if I'm in an empty sector and have practically no wealth or anything, at all even if I had explored the whole of universe.

Trying the same deal on high-traffic sector will obviously increase loading times, I guess it has something to do with calculating the exact location for vessels (rather making sure they aren't inside stations or asteroids - collision detection) and the amount of textures they need to load for those vessels/stations/objects in general. The case is, however, similar to that of some others: CPU usage drops very low for some time before anything happens, first I thought it might be some texture loading / memory thing, but loading textures from HDD supposedly creates HDD load, which doesn't happen. None at all.

I have had similar issue in Dragon Age Origins few times; reason was some odd incompatibility with DirectX and the fix was to use the newest release from MS's download side (hidden there somewhere. Think it was Sept 2010 (or so) release I had to use to fix the issue that probably 1 out of million players have). So yes, I'm definite its a software, not hardware, issue

I haven't played in a while and I upgraded from XP to Windows 7 (the issue I had was on 32bit XP and iirc, on W7 back then too). Should get the time to play to see if anything has changed

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Thu, 3. Feb 11, 19:43

Hi again aquatica. Yes it was your statement about considering even 3 minute loads normal that threw me - that is far from normal even in high complexity sectors given your progress and gamesave size. As you never did give the system and game info, we couldn't really investigate any further. Good luck with any further attempts you might have at the game using your new setup.

PS: I meant 'moved on' as in having progressed further in the game, not as in having 'moved away'.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Sector loading gets very slow as game progresses (as of 2.6 or 2.7.x)