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Patience, Grasshopper - On Long Load Times For Games
Thanks to GamerDad for its editorial discussing the thorny, still present problem of long videogame loading times. Although the author points out "It used to be worse than it is now. I do count some of my blessings", he still argues: "I know that optimizing load times is probably low on the list of priorities when developing a game... [but] if you load the game so quickly that no one knows it's happening, or keep it streaming in chunks to not interrupt the flow of play, the player will be far more immersed in what's happening in your game and less likely to ever put it down until forced to do so." In conclusion, it's even suggested that a return to game cartridges might be a good thing: "You just can't beat that instantaneous gratification of playing games you just plug in, turn on and play. When the capacity is there for today's games, a return to carts would make me one happy gamer."
Perhaps mini-games while loading (that could even affect the main game), or loading as much as possible in the background while on the mission selection screen, for games which feature that sort of thing, would be solutions.
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Why not provide something during the wait, like Solitair, or some sort of space invaders game (remembering that it took just a few K on the old Atari 2600...should be quick to load, or easy to embed in ROM).
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Well, why not move to an HDD-based system? Anyone ever used a modded XBOX? We switched out the HDD in ours for a new 80 gig drive, Installed XECUTOR2 on it, and a new dashboard to get some extra features.
Games load blazingly fast. It's actually frustrating sometimes, like with sports games where the controller config is shown during the "loading" screen. For us, the loading screen blinks on for about 5 seconds at a maximum.
HDD storage makes a bit more sense. I'd like to see a game do this:
On initial load, start displaying a movie that's X minutes long. Force me to watch it, and while it's doing this, copy key map data or whatever other "assets" to the HDD for quick retrieval.
That may elimininate, or, at worst, minimize your loading times.
I don't know about anyone else, but Halo for PC is absolutely stunning in the load-times department. It's a cutting edge game, yet it takes no longer then two or three seconds to load any level in the game, even on my 1.1Ghz/384MB Athlon. If you've ever played Halo for Xbox, it takes way longer then that - probably 15 to 20 seconds of boring load screen. There are brief "loading" messages during the game, but no longer then Half-Life's load times.
Speaking of Half-Life, it was probably one of the first games that I saw to handle loading in an intelligent manner - everything's broken up into small chunks, so as you wander around you only see the loading message faintly for three or four seconds on a really slow computer, and on anything relatively modern half the time the game barely hitches. I hope Half-Life 2 has a similar system, or perhaps a method of streaming data as you wander around so there are no load times (although there hasn't been an FPS game that I'm aware of sporting zero load times, so maybe that's just not feasible yet).
One last example here: Nintendo games are the epitome of zero-load. I can't think of a single first/second party title I own for my Gamecube that has noticeable load times. (I have a small exception here for Metroid Prime - while *really* not that bad, I do find the small hallways you run through to be slown down while the next room loads kind of annoying, especially once you get an ability to cross the room faster and you wind up sitting there waiting for the door to the next area to open). From my understanding this is due to the proprietary disc format that Nintendo has selected; one of the advantages to a smaller disc is that you can spin it faster before the forces at work tear the disc apart, which means you can load more faster. Many of the third-party titles I've played are obnoxious in loading, however, and really makes me think that too many people don't give enough thought to load times or how best to optimize a given title for the platform it runs on.
Lastly, I think we need to think about other aspects of the game that are annoying - for example, saving. Usually a manual thing, and in some games horribly obnoxious to do, requiring much digging through menus and confirming overwriting of our previous saved game. Hello?!? Most of the time, yes, I want to overwrite the previous saved game. Is the problem avoiding overwriting your kid brother's saved game? Fine, then let me create as many profiles/saved game files as I want and have three save files inside of that - easy. If the problem is you want people to think before they erase saved games they want to archive, then perhaps there should be two or three "archive" points and one quicksave point where it doesn't confirm (along with the ability to archive the quicksave point of course.) I think alternate styles of saving beyond the standard "checkpoint" would also be a good thing (the ability in PoP to rewind time, while not exactly saving, is a good example of this). What about the corporate logos at the beginning of the game that can't be skipped? While I realize that there's almost no chance that they'll go away, what ifthe game instantly loaded your previous saved game and showed you the logos when you enter the game? (This would also mean missing out on neato main menus and title music, so maybe this wouldn't go far).
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
I realize that many here a loathe to give a nod to a Microsoft published product that only runs on DirectX, but Dungeon Siege by Gas Powered Games is remarkable for its constant streaming of a huge 3D RPG environment from starting the game with a hoe to the final boss showdown with no loading screens. They used some tricks as described in this whitepaper to achieve the effect. Although they had to linearize the content to a large degree, the idea of traversing a tree structure of content, constantly streaming in upcoming nodes is one that more developers could adhere to in creating continuous worlds.
Here is the thing, games are often made in a huge rush. Now you can either add quick loading, or actually get enough gameplay into you game to not get horrid reviews. I can quote a manager at the game company I work for: "Nobody ever based their choice to buy a game on its load times." Is this true? From a marketing point of view he may be right. Of course the industry is evolving, and with the larger amounts of money being tossed around, things are looking up for load times.
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"Too bad Nintendo spend 5 seconds to display their logo on their cartridge-using GBA, when they could have made it instant-on."
There really aren't any systems that don't do that these days. I read somewhere that they throw the logo up there as a way of 'proving' that the game was licensed to be manufactured by Nintendo (or Sega, or Sony, you get the idea...) legitimately. If you made a knock-off unlicensed cartridge, and that logo appeared, you were commiting a copyright violation and could be nailed.
I might have the particulars a little messed up, clarification would be appreciated. I guess the point I'm getting at is that the logo is there for a specific reason, it's not a Nintendo/Sony/Sega/Microsoft commercial.
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The game I was most impressed with was Eternal Darkness. It may have poor graphics compared to the GC's potential, but there were no discernable load times at all. They were probably covered up by the sometimes annoyingly long cutscenes, but it's better than a loading screen. Come to think of it, that would have made a good insanity effect.
Wind Waker and Metroid Prime also did well - they load each area individually (in MP when you shoot a door, in WW when you go through one), but in most cases the load times are practically nonexistant (especially in Prime) and the lack of a loading screen covers up for the ones that are there - if you shoot a door leading to a big room in Prime, it can take a few seconds before the room loads and the door opens, but if it had told me to wait I'd have been much more annoyed than I was. Same for WW, where if you go through a door you get a black screen, which is used to load the next area, but the lack of a screen makes the time seem less than it is. I didn't even notice the half second or so it usually takes until my brother pointed it out.
However, the 'Cube does have its share of long load times. The most notable ones are on the Zelda Collectors Edition and Ocarina of Time/Master Quest disks, where it just loads the entire game before you play, but also Spider-man, Jedi Outcast and (I've heard) Resident Evil 0, even if the latter were just lengthened to 'make it more tense' or something. Stupid descision, IMO, but I've never played it, so I shouldn't pass judgement.
Careful about that. I'm sure that we all have "fond" memories of hard to load carts from the 2600, and most notably, from the NES. I recently ressurected my old ColecoVision with VCS adapter, and though carts seem to be fairly durable, oxidation does happen on the contacts, and some games won't load at all. Carts are durable, sure, but don't believe for a minute they are indestructible.
Also, I think a lot of people have forgotten how genuninely bad load times used to be. I can remember playing the same game for hours on end on the C-64 not because I loved it, but because to boot up a new game would simply take too long. I remember having a fast load cartridge to help with the loading times was viewed as a nessesscity. I think the damn EA cube, pyramid, sphere logo is forever burned into my brain. Even on cart based systems (ColecoVision), you still often had to wait 10-15 seconds just to play the game.
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True. The Dreamcast won't load a cartridge unless a bit-for-bit copy of the logo screen stored in ROM is the first thing on the CD. Some of the indie DC games/emulators have a screen after the first screen saying that the first screen was lying.
I have always wondered why there isnt some sort of a dual format, Cart & Mini CD.
Most of the system cartridges we have seen are more than large enough to house a minidisc. Why take the best of both worlds, critical game data could be held on the cartridge (or even like, the first bit of every level), with the remainder on the disc.
paul reinheimer
When programming a Gameboy, the first thing you have to make it load is the data for the Nintendo logo. If it doesn't match the checksum stored in the ROM, it'll refuse to boot, giving the Black Box O' Doom or the Scrambled Logo O' Doom.
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