togi Posted June 25, 2013 Share Posted June 25, 2013 hello I think that I have a computer near to the high end standarts. my computer specifications are 8 gb ram vdeo card with 2gb ram Ati radeon 7870 xt fx 8320 processor why the game has so long load times for Pbem games? Why scenario battles loading times are so long? I can play all high end games flawless at ultra settings while making new modules please don't forget this area. because of this flaws my friends can't get in to this game regards 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 25, 2013 Share Posted June 25, 2013 Scenario loading times and playing high end games on ultra settings have very little to do with each other. They're entirely different kinds of processes - one is doing an enormous amount of HDD-bound loading work using most of the major system components, one is doing fairly light (mostly GPU/CPU) work after that loading work is already done. In addition, most of those games will be a) less intense than CM resource-wise and / or running on DirectX, which especially for texture loading could make a big difference. Also, you need to be more specific. How big are the scenarios you're loading? How long are the loading times? If your friends are playing and having troubles, perhaps have them post? Their hardware may be an issue. Also, and again, scenario and PBEM loading are extremely resource-intensive operations. No matter how much we optimize it (and we do) CM is still doing a ton of work - it's never going to be instantaneous. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted June 25, 2013 Share Posted June 25, 2013 togi: It would also be helpful to know how many seconds/minutes you consider "long". 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 25, 2013 Share Posted June 25, 2013 Yep. As I mentioned, it would be useful to tell us what scenarios you're loading, and how long the loading times actually are. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
togi Posted June 25, 2013 Author Share Posted June 25, 2013 for example i am playing a pbem file size aproximetely 20 mb it takes over 2,5 mins with all settings are best i hope it will be sometimes dropped 30 secs my friends have not the game. I try to market the but loading times are matter Im not a programer but I think that something can be done at this sector regards 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted June 25, 2013 Share Posted June 25, 2013 I have a perhaps related issue. In addition to the normally long loading times, which I can put up with (usually less than a minute or two), sometimes it will stall completely at some stage. It may take me five minutes of patient waiting before I realize that it isn't going anywhere. The trouble then is that there is no way to quit the game at that point. Even Force Quit does not work. The only way to bail out is to shut down the computer with the power button and then restart it. By the time things finally get rolling, I've usually wasted ten minutes, more or less. I've noticed that some maps are more prone to this than others. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted June 25, 2013 Share Posted June 25, 2013 Much of the delay in loading will be down to the read/write speed of your hard drive. If you get a Solid State disk drive, and install on that, things will go faster. Until then, probably not. Just for the sake of your future sanity: when an expert in a field tells you why something is so, and you are an admitted novice (at best), it is generally a good idea to listen to the expert, take on what they say and think about it, rather than just persisting with your preconceptions. Hint: Phil is an expert programmer. An expert Combat Mission programmer. He's the second authority on that particular subject after Charles, and the highest authority that ever posts on these boards. Even Steve (posts as Battlefront.com) isn't as expert at programming CMx2 as Phil is. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kat Johnston Posted June 25, 2013 Share Posted June 25, 2013 Did some messing around for illustrative kicks. I tried rezexploding FortressItalyv100A.brz (about 2Gb) in different places: about 60 seconds running from HDD. about 20 seconds running from SSD. about 10 seconds running from RAM disk. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Canadian Cat Posted June 25, 2013 Share Posted June 25, 2013 about 10 seconds running from RAM disk. Installing and running from a RAM disk now that would be fast. Oh except re installing the game each time you booted the computer. That would not be fast even with a RAM disk. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c3k Posted June 26, 2013 Share Posted June 26, 2013 Interesting that a RAM disk is twice as fast as an SSD. I wouldn't have expected that. What software are you using for your RAM disk? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Examiner2 Posted June 26, 2013 Share Posted June 26, 2013 I usually just bring up the task manager so I can alt-tab out while the game is loading, and check back in a few minutes, it doesn't usually take a few minutes to load (unless the scenario is large), but I prefer to be doing other tasks on my computer then watching the loading screen. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poesel Posted June 26, 2013 Share Posted June 26, 2013 I usually just bring up the task manager so I can alt-tab out while the game is loading, and check back in a few minutes, it doesn't usually take a few minutes to load (unless the scenario is large), but I prefer to be doing other tasks on my computer then watching the loading screen. Me too - but when I come back to the login screen after a while I sometimes have a hard time remembering which game I loaded and which password to use. Age... Maybe BFC could add the name of the game to the login screen for people like me? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baneman Posted June 26, 2013 Share Posted June 26, 2013 ... Maybe BFC could add the name of the game to the login screen for people like me? And while they're at it - the name of the map you've loaded in the Scenario Editor ... ? Of course, I may just be being unusually thick, but I can't see it. And so sometimes when I'm searching for a map, I end up loading the same one 2 or 3 times as I go through the lists 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kat Johnston Posted June 26, 2013 Share Posted June 26, 2013 Interesting that a RAM disk is twice as fast as an SSD. I wouldn't have expected that. What software are you using for your RAM disk? I was using the freeware version of Dataram's RAMdisk. There's a 4Gb cap on the freeware version. Bit drastic but might be that with a full CM install onto it it'd be handy for map editing or trying different QB combinations. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhmorneau Posted June 26, 2013 Share Posted June 26, 2013 I'm curious about this RAMdisk thingy. Does installing CM on it count as one activation ? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kat Johnston Posted June 26, 2013 Share Posted June 26, 2013 I haven't tried as the disk space on the freeware RAM disk I used isn't big enough to hold CM - I just copied across one of the .brz files and one of the mod tools to access it. I think that if you have CM already installed and activated on a machine and you then make a complete copy of the program folder to a RAM disk, you would be able to run it. In the spirit of experimentation I tried making a copy of my CM:FI folder to another location on the HDD and running CM from it - that worked fine (it ran, showed the GL module as installed, and launched a QB). I think therefore that the activation is per machine, not per 'complete installed path on the machine' (that would be kinda overkill anyway!) and that there's nothing in the registry that compels CM to run from the location it was first installed to, which is good. Watch this space. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kat Johnston Posted June 26, 2013 Share Posted June 26, 2013 ...yeah, trying the full thing now, seems to be running very nicely from RAM disk. Starting a QB wasn't instantaneous but it was much quicker than when running from HDD. (though ofc I did have to copy the game to the RAM disk first!) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfhand Posted June 27, 2013 Share Posted June 27, 2013 ... I think that if you have CM already installed and activated on a machine and you then make a complete copy of the program folder to a RAM disk, you would be able to run it. ... The concern for me is setting off the DRM, I haven't had very good luck with it and I am completely out of activations. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Canadian Cat Posted June 27, 2013 Share Posted June 27, 2013 ...yeah, trying the full thing now, seems to be running very nicely from RAM disk. Starting a QB wasn't instantaneous but it was much quicker than when running from HDD. (though ofc I did have to copy the game to the RAM disk first!) Interesting. Now if that RAM disk software you are using would allow you to start up the image from a file - thus allowing a RAM disk to boot up that already had the game on it that would be something. Or I suppose you could script it - start the RAM disk and copy the game. Still copying the whole game install must take a while. I suppose if you leave your machine up and running "all the time" it would be an advantage. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kat Johnston Posted June 27, 2013 Share Posted June 27, 2013 Interesting. Now if that RAM disk software you are using would allow you to start up the image from a file - thus allowing a RAM disk to boot up that already had the game on it that would be something. It does, but it takes such a long time to load it that any performance gain for a single run is lost - it makes loading Windows look like loading a CM map - I had to use a 12Gb file for it. For my next trick I'll try a USB 3 stick - but like sfhand I'm worried about upsetting the DRM, even though it doesn't seem to have taken notice so far. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfhand Posted June 27, 2013 Share Posted June 27, 2013 I am very interested in how much a ramdisk install speeds up load times of pbem files compared to an ssd... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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