Loading Time [message #453673] |
Fri, 09 September 2011 00:04 |
mrhero101
Messages: 9 Registered: March 2007
Karma: 0
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Recruit |
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Whenever I try to join a server, my loading bar gets stuck at half for about 2 minutes then finishes. But as soon as I hear all the sounds or even get in the game, I crash or lags me out the server.
Before I had 4.0 installed, I never had a problem with the loading screen, usually took me 2 seconds and I'm in the game.
Any ideas?
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Re: Loading Time [message #453678 is a reply to message #453673] |
Fri, 09 September 2011 00:58 |
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Goztow
Messages: 9738 Registered: March 2005 Location: Belgium
Karma: 13
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General (5 Stars) Goztoe |
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Could you also post your system specs? Can you check if there's a crashdump in the renegade folder after this happens and if yes, post it? Thanks.
You can find me in The KOSs2 (TK2) discord while I'm playing. Feel free to come and say hi! TK2 discord
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Re: Loading Time [message #453694 is a reply to message #453680] |
Fri, 09 September 2011 05:17 |
Sean
Messages: 822 Registered: February 2009
Karma: 0
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Colonel |
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The loading screen does get stuck half way but it's only for a couple of seconds, yeah it's annoying but meh. It works!
Head admin at TmX (The Matrix Sniper server)
irc.thematrixserver.com
The Matrix Sniper: 188.138.84.134:4576
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Re: Loading Time [message #453721 is a reply to message #453673] |
Fri, 09 September 2011 07:24 |
iRANian
Messages: 4308 Registered: April 2011
Karma: 0
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General (4 Stars) |
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The loading behavior is the same as on 1.037 without custom scripts.dll for me. The first time loading after starting Windows it takes around 20 seconds to load a map. Afterwards, even after exiting the game and opening it again it takes only 3-5 seconds to load. I honestly have no idea why it would take so long the first time loading a map after starting Windows but not after. :/ This also happens on 1.037 without custom scripts.dll. Could the game erroneously be calculating something whenever it detects you restarted Windows? I have 4GB of DDR3 RAM and that initial loading time is around the same as for my cheap-end 2004 specs PC the first time loading.
I've taken a look at a variety of things to see if it caches something in memory the first time loading after starting Windows, but even after clearing some (memory) caches the loading time is 3-5 seconds, while a variety of programs that are cached because I use them a lot took longer to start after clearing it.
Long time and well respected Renegade community member, programmer, modder and tester.
Scripts 4.0 private beta tester since May 2011.
My Renegade server plugins releases
[Updated on: Fri, 09 September 2011 07:27] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Loading Time [message #453914 is a reply to message #453673] |
Sat, 10 September 2011 03:40 |
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The thu files contain texture thumbnails.
Jonathan Wilson aka Jonwil
Creator and Lead Coder of the Custom scripts.dll
Renegade Engine Guru
Creator and Lead Coder of TT.DLL
Official member of Tiberian Technologies
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Re: Loading Time [message #453931 is a reply to message #453913] |
Sat, 10 September 2011 06:38 |
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reborn
Messages: 3231 Registered: September 2004 Location: uk - london
Karma: 0
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General (3 Stars) |
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iRANian wrote on Sat, 10 September 2011 06:31 | Why would it need to calculate the .thu files every time after starting Windows? What do the .thu files contain, by the way? I've always wondered that.
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Texture Height Units
vloktboky wrote on Sat, 02 September 2006 22:18 |
The THU file is a propriatary file format used by Westwood in Renegade. They contain collected data of texture content that is contained within the MIX file of a map. This data includes the image resolution, DDS DXT compression format, etc.
I speculate that the reason why Westwood did this was to save time during the loading/rendering portion of the engine when you need to get these textures for drawing the different portions of the maps. For example, pretty much all of the Westwood maps contain the textures used on the terrain pieces (like the rock walls on Canyon, etc) inside the MIX files. Rather than having to open up the MIX file, extract the data, and load it up everytime you are exposed to a mesh object that uses that terrain file, they stored it in these external files. This would speed up the process a bit which I'm sure gave them a performance boost back then.
The problem is, the engine does not recreate these files once they have been created. So if you update the textures stored in the MIX files (or if you put a different image file with the same name in your Data folder) and it uses a different resolution, the game will not know that and will attempt to draw the texture using the resolution it stored in the THU file.
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[Updated on: Sat, 10 September 2011 06:38] Report message to a moderator
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