Improving Load Screen time

[Toxen]

Hello wonderful people! Sorry if this has been asked before, or if I am posting in wrong place.
I have a bit of a frustration playing this game, and it is the load screens.

Example yesterday when I was playing I had to go to Maltz shop. The load screen to his shop took over 90 seconds. For a shop.

FAI took almost 2 minutes to load.


But here is the thing that is weird:

When I load, my computer very quickly loads the 2 area phases or whatever. And music of the new area starts, like i would have changed area. BUT my screen is stuck at hte load screen still. I can even give my character commands, like I can sit and rest while I wait for the loadscreen to disapppear. I could be in combat in the new area (happens often when travelling south from FAI and waiting for areas to load)

So this is frustrating for me. The load screen "finishes loading, starts new music and lets me play" - just doesnt stop showing the load screen even though it was finished 90 seconds ago.


Any1 else have had this issue? if so got any tips?

I tried googling, and read that Nwn2 only uses 1 cpu core... But could not find a solution to force all 4 cores to work at once.

when it takes almost 2 minutes to load small areas such at Maltz, I hardly ever want to travel anywhere because of such long wait time... Exploring a cave or house is out of the question, as the 4 minutes loadscreen for an empty house is utter dissapointing.

I doubt it is a fault of the server, more like nwn2 engine and my settings maybe.



My computer is decent enough:
Core i5 3570k
8gb ram
geforce 1060 something


Cpu and ram are a bit low tier compared to the gpu, but on such an old game it should run smooth. (The game runs smooth, even on max settings, but hte load screens are extremely slow)
Currently running the game on around medium settings, but it didnt seem to improve the load screens.
And yes the problem is: I Load the area, then load screens hangs, music of new area plays, and I can rest and do other actions, but cant see anything cuz of load screens.
Can easily run new games like dark souls 3 fx.

Edit: I use the client extender if that has any influence on load screens.

Hope someone can help, thanks

[Tsidkenu]

I believe it has something to do with the size/content of the BGTSCC module. I play on Sigil regularly and there are no loading screen delays there (although Sigil has far more transition crashes than BG) despite the two modules being of similar area size (Sigil has about 320 zones, BG about 340).

It's not just you, so if you want to play this 10 year old game you're just gunna have to get used to alt-tabbing and reading a book/pdf/website/watching cat videos/ anime/ HuskyStarcraft or whatever while you load.

[Toxen]

Thanks for the info. Somehow a relief to know I am not the only one, but also a little dissapointing that you didn't have the golden solution to my problems

And yeah that is exactly what I have been doing, reading football news etc. (Glad we are in a transfer window, or I would run out of football content too soon lol)


So no1 got a secret: "Run the game on all 4 cores, hax?"

[Lockonnow]

I belive we have full server last night and there lag couse many peole do not pick up the loot bag that makes lag and many people is on the same area with wards make it lag and lots of dm on make it lag and the server has a firewall that make it slow to proection the server attack

[Toxen]

https://neverwintervault.org/project/nw ... y-shorcuts


Just tried this. Now I only have 2-3 seconds load time (after the music starts on new area)

But as you say, server was full last night, and currently only 28 online, so that might also just be what makes it faster now.

[Theodore01]

Yes, these annoying loading times happen a lot lately.

Especially the part, when you get in a fight while it is still loading, is very annoying.

Until some month ago that was never an issue

[Aspect of Sorrow]

A couple of things to note:

NWN2 has multiple thread support but is not SMP/multicore and has no design qualifiers for it. Moving the process to another core sets a fixed precedence instead of letting the OS's dynamic scheduler move it as needed. There is no gain from it.

NWN2 is a 32bit compiled application, it will only ever cap around ~3.5 GB of usage in memory. More memory will never be utilized by it.

Area transition / load has little bearing on area count. AT actions are handled under the main processing loop as global definitions of objects are moved in and out. The moment your character starts the AT action, your character object is represented in an await state while the on_exit event of the previous area is processed before being represented in the new area. The on_enter ready state happens at the time of the player load ready state, where the server awaits a packet from the player client once all resources are completely loaded. The wait time from the load transition happens right in that window, where the player client is sending out ready messages to the server, but the server will only respond in short windows of time to allow the screen to fade in the rendered scene (which is visible behind the load screen), and start the gameplay availability.

[BigJ]

https://neverwintervault.org/project/nw ... y-shorcuts


Just tried this. Now I only have 2-3 seconds load time (after the music starts on new area)

But as you say, server was full last night, and currently only 28 online, so that might also just be what makes it faster now.

Got curious so I jumped IG with 60/75 and tried setting affinity in task manager to see if any difference (didn't need the bat file/download just for testing).

Test Scernio: Exiting and then re-entering Gloura's in the UD.
Proc: I5-3210m (Two physical cores, 2 virtual)

I wasn't sure which cores are virtual, so tried not using 0, only using 1, only using 1-2, only using 1-3, only using 2.

Not much difference between load times, was always between 75-90 secs each time.

Heyho worth a go.

BigJ

[Toxen]

Yeah after Aspect of Sorrow brought the bad news I also tried playing using the client extender again (instead of the bat file). Didnt feel any difference in load screens. So my conclusion:

Loadscreens when about 30 players are online: 2-3sek after music starts.

Loadscreens with full server: 90-120seconds after music starts.



This is huuuuge. But its a price we will pay to play

I think the only way to fix that would be to split the server in 2 or something (underdark 1 place and surface another maybe), but that is something im totally clueless about and will leave to all the clever people