LOADING TIMES: if you have slow loads, read this - Page 3

Xytrix · 05-02-2002, 12:23 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by ph_ln
I have a voodoo 3 and noticed the performance problem straight away

You can actually get the games to load quicker by changing ANYTHING on the graphics option page. I usually change the texture quality between High and Very high. Click Apply, the screen refreshes and games load normally.

HTH
Phil

Yeah, i have that same problem. I'm using a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP under Win98 with 256megs of ram on a 1.3GHz Celeron. The game is on Normal settings almost always, but High Quality ain't bad either

If i die in the game, I can restart at the beginning of the level in under 10seconds... but if i try at anytime during gameplay to hit F9 (for a Quick Load) the game will get about 1/4 of the loading bar, then stop, the hard drive activity light stops blinking too.

Whenever this happens, I just go to the main menu (because the load would've ended the current game anyway) and I goto the video options.

From the video options i can change just about anything that requires me to click Apply to reset the video. I can go from Normal settings to High Quality or simply click the button til it goes from Normal back to Normal and hit Apply (it will apply faster that way).

Once I load the game then, it works just fine, load time isn't as fast as it would be if i started the level over, but it's under 20-30seconds.

Xytrix · 05-04-2002, 12:45 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Xytrix

Yeah, i have that same problem. I'm using a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP under Win98 with 256megs of ram on a 1.3GHz Celeron. The game is on Normal settings almost always, but High Quality ain't bad either

If i die in the game, I can restart at the beginning of the level in under 10seconds... but if i try at anytime during gameplay to hit F9 (for a Quick Load) the game will get about 1/4 of the loading bar, then stop, the hard drive activity light stops blinking too.

Whenever this happens, I just go to the main menu (because the load would've ended the current game anyway) and I goto the video options.

From the video options i can change just about anything that requires me to click Apply to reset the video. I can go from Normal settings to High Quality or simply click the button til it goes from Normal back to Normal and hit Apply (it will apply faster that way).

Once I load the game then, it works just fine, load time isn't as fast as it would be if i started the level over, but it's under 20-30seconds.

OK, my loading problems have been solved entirely. I was originally having not only loading problems, but problem reading the multiplayer menus in-game. Someone on the other board suggested a fix to the menus problem.

To fix the menu problem, I copied a Quake3 optimized WickedGL driver to my Jedi Knight II\GAMEDATA folder. It fixed the problem and I didn't have to overwrite any files, just simply added the opengl32.dll to the folder.

Later I began playing Single Player and I dont know why, but it began to use WickedGL's driver instead of the original OpenAL32.dll that came with Jedi Knight II. When I got in-game, I died to some sniper guys. I hit F9 forgetting that I recently had problems with Quickload.

TO MY SURPRISE THE QUICKLOAD WORKED!!!! I mean with the WickedGL driver, I know longer have any super long load times and it doesn't stop loading at 25% like before. I dont know if WickedGL works for those without Voodoo cards, but give it a shot, or just try other opengl32.dll files that might be for your card.

Shadow359 · 05-04-2002, 04:59 AM

Dell P IV 1.5GHZ 256 MB ram, 40 GB hard drive....

My save files got progressivley bigger and bigger. And it would take me 5 minutes to load up a level in the Asteroid Base.

Here was my process:

1) Uninstall JKII
2) DEFRAG the hard drive
3) Reinstall

~Helped marginally~

4) uninstalled AIM (YES I SAID AOL INSTANT MESSENGER)
5) Reinstalled AIM

Works like a charm...though now AIM sometimes crashes on me

Just how I fixed my problem...

Also...any reason why AIM and JK II would conflict to the point of freezing up my machine???

claudejulier · 05-04-2002, 12:01 PM

Playing the other SciFi Game, which name I don't want to put in a Star Wars forum I noticed the same problem. And changing the graphic details or installing it on different pc's didn't solve the problem.
My Mhz 1000 with "SCSI 10'000 RPM-HD" and 384 MB RAM on Win98 PC and this old "other" game had an awful loading/saving time and sometimes unstable manners like lockdown's and so on and on and on...

Now with all the people loving this game I wonder why Lucas Arts didn't cross-check with other work they delivered.

It's sad because I don't like playing Jedi Knight II anymore. It's boring (every level looks somehow the same with the same baddies and with all these slow and unstable situations I should send it right back to George Lucas to give me my money back!
I will never buy a Lucas Arts so fast again (at least before getting experience from people who bought a future L-A-Product).

with your episode II you managed to get me to like the movies again, but with the games like the marketing-release of the latest monkey island you simply pushed me away...

asx · 05-05-2002, 02:20 PM

it has occured to me that almost everyone has an AMD and several have radeons and <GF3ti500

the rest probably have a shoddy hdd

P41.6A@2.24
256mb SAMSUNG DDR333
Geforce 4 ti 4600 (of the VT flavour)
a year old 40GB IBM (not sure of model)

cold load: 22.48
warm load: 1.12

have a nice day

ZakTheEvil · 05-05-2002, 09:47 PM

I have a dedicated gaming machine that has nothing but games on it. No antivirus, no startup items, etc. It's an Athlon XP 1800 box with 512MB of DDR RAM, GF4 Ti 440 (128MB) and a nicely fast WD 7200 ATA100 drive and the OS is WinXP Pro. Well, the first time I load a game it takes like very, very long. Next loads/reloads are faster but still longer that the worst offender so far: UT and most other games I had played so far. I mean I can live with that, I'm not really complaining but I bet the slow load times have little to do with machine configuration.

Zak

disenter · 05-05-2002, 10:51 PM

hi guys, i also have a voodoo 3 3000 agp, on xp pro, the game runs ok, load times are ok.. BUT...
i have this problem that once i am playing the game, if i go to save it, it gets very jumpy, DOES allow me to save. BUT, if i die, an either 'click to restart', or attempt to load a savegame from the menu, it dies.. crashes back to windows, and the gamma in windows is then about 10x higher than it should be... going to the 3dfx color settings manages to clear that back to normal, but it seems that the only way i can load a previously saved game, is to completely exit the game, and then reload it, an then load the savegame, else it either dies, or becomes stuck, at which point im forced to escape back to the main menu and quit the game....

Any idea's on how to fix this ?

I should mention also, that i am using the 3dfx Underground 1.06 alpha drivers from voodoofiles.com in XP also, as the 'real' drivers do not allow for opengl / glide in XP properly.

I read about the wickedgl fix, but the thing is, wickedgl dont support WinXP last i looked... will try getting hold of that version of opengl32.dll an sticking it in the directory though.... anythings worth a shot at this point... it pisses me off!! i hate having to reload the entire game just to load a level.. thats bull**** *shakes head*
let ya's know if it improves... and yeah any other idea's for voodoo 3 3000's on this game would be appreciated (apart from the rubbish dump!)

sys specs are:-

Athlon Thunderbird 800mhz
Asus A7V Via Apollo KT133 M/B
512meg SD-Ram
Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
Soundblaster Live!
C-Net 10/100 NIC
Flyvideo 2000 Tv Capture Card
Ricoh 32x12x10 Burner
Sony 40x/52x CD
2 x Western Digital 20gig 7200 rpm drives.

warlock7890 · 05-06-2002, 04:12 AM

My Probs are all Multi Player, the single game runs awesome. MP gives me endless crashes ( or they are very long load times and i cant tell the difference Oo)

I disabled virus stuff, shut down my ram manager, and everything else but mouse proggie and Zone alarm. I cant get out of the score screen usually, total freeze. I have 81% resourses when i start JK2.

1 gig athlon
192 RAM
sb live value
GF2 MX 400

Im gonna try disableing some options........... This blows.

Nocturn · 05-07-2002, 05:47 AM

p4 1.5
512mb ram
gf3

On anything above medium detail accross the board i get really nasty jitters. Only this and MOHAA do this to me. All other games I have, I can crank the detail. A 'No-CD' patch would probably help a lot. Who do we have to bug the hell out of for that?

Ishmael00 · 05-10-2002, 01:05 AM

I just started suffering very long load times on saves as well.
You guys might wanna confrim the following is the same for you:

All saved games were about 1-2M a piece. After I ran the 1.3 patch my saved games jumped right up to 11-16M a piece! That's insane because it takes several minutes before the blue loading line even shows up! Plus there seems to be cursor stalling in the load/save menus as well.

This also started happening on the 'Doomgiver' level.

Anyone else have the same symptoms?

(PS-my system's been running this game great up until the patch was installed)

NASA Tiger · 05-12-2002, 01:05 PM

Just throwing my times out. I returned JK2 a week after I bought it due to the absolutely abysmal load times. I decided to give it another try.

My system:

AMD 800
448 megs RAM
Voodoo5 64 megs
3 7200 rpm HDs
1 gig swap file
Windows 2000 Pro
+ latest drivers, patches, etc.

My load times when I first got it were 5+ minutes. At the time I had 192 megs RAM. I bought another 256 megs the other day and gave it another try. Load times now run about 4 minutes. Still absolutely unacceptable. Every other game I have (UT, RTCW, etc) doesn't take nearly as long to load, 20 seconds max. I've just been running thru the early levels on God mode so I won't die and have to sit around waiting for the game to reload.

The only times I've gotten somewhat quick loads (about a minute) were times when I died or reloaded at the beginning of a level. I'm not sure what my graphics settings are, but I'll take a look. I know I'm not running it any higher than 800x600, and I'd wager I'm not running it at very high texture detail.

Chris

Claatu · 05-13-2002, 03:34 PM

No load problems here; "Cold" load 20-25 seconds, "Warm" load 5 seconds. All details maxed on 1024*768 resolution.

Athlon XP1800+, WD 60GB 7200 rpm hard drive (ATA100), ASUS A7V266-E mobo, 512 MB DDR Crucial memory. 52 speed cd player, Win 98 SE.

TheDesertFox07 · 05-18-2002, 01:32 PM

I have 512 RDRAM. My loads are very fast. Firt loads are prolly 5-7 seconds, reloads are practically instantaneous.

OneDrop · 05-21-2002, 03:32 PM

lol.....this thread is just about who has a better putter.....and almost none of you have supplied information about ur hdd which just shows how low your computer knowledge is...
I have:
WindowsME(lol)
celeronA 533 (1st gen, non coppermine), 128 mb PC133 sdram, geforce 2mx 32mb, and IBM 7200 UDMA100 40GB HDD....
my loading times are....intiial load is about 50 sec, every warm load is in about 25-30 sec.....so what *&#^(*&$# is wrong with some of you... i wish my game ran as nice as my loading times are (relatively)....cause whenever i get in one of those open levels with tons of opponents...my fps drops to like......5fps

maybe even less...had some troubles finishing this game (without cheats too). So as someone told you....as for loading times....hard disk is the most important issue..doesn't that actually make sense to you guys???

Go brag about your bull**** computers somewhere else...this post was why the loading time sux.....not....what kind of computer do you have!!!!!!!!

Darth Caedes · 05-21-2002, 05:07 PM

I have a 16mb Voodoo3 and 250mb ram.. I run JK2 CRANKED up.. And it runs really ,really well! Surprisingly. Sure, it stumbles with FPS.. But ffs, I don't even beat the min requirements.

No other game has looked so good on my old crappy computer. Ravensoft are Gods.

-Darth Caedes-

zweistein · 05-21-2002, 07:05 PM

You guys are crazy.

I have an 1.2 Ghz Athlon (C), 256 Mb PC133 RAM, and, yes believe it or not, a good ole' Voodoo 3 Card (16 Mb). The game runs just fine with all settings on high and a 1024x768 resolution. My loading times are around 25s (timed) and subjectively this does not seem too long.

Maybe, the secret's in my 2x40 MB (5400 rpm) RAID system (stripe).

Enjoy the game!

-=BoJ=- TYsON · 05-22-2002, 04:53 AM

some of you guys have better systems then me, but I get better load times, usually around 20-30 seconds!

*AMD ATHLON 1800XP

*WESTERN DIGITAL 120 GB HD @ 7200rpm

*512 MB DDR RAM

*nVidiA GeForce 3 64MB Ti500

MadCowRunner · 05-25-2002, 10:02 PM

My load times are fine on my PIII 800/ 256meg RAM/ 64meg GeForce 2/ 7200rpm 60gig HD. The problem I have is that mainly MP and occasionally in SP, occasionally (read as: way too damned often) the framerate will drop from ~50fps to ~2fps; the music and sound stutters, and the game hangs for about 2 seconds.

Anyone else have a similar problem? I wonder if my soundcard has anything to do with it (it's a POS soundblaster ripoff...). Q3:A, UT, and RTCW all work fine, but JK2 and MOHAA both do this crap to me (MOHAA does it mainly in singleplayer).

x^n · 05-27-2002, 03:20 AM

I was having some dog @$$ slow loading times for a while until I reinstalled windows and defragged my drive after EVERY software installation. It took a while but now my system is ready for disk imaging and load times for JKII are lickety split!

King_Baboobab · 05-28-2002, 06:21 PM

I run a p3 500
128MB ram
16MB graphics card

and the entire game runs appallingly, even set on the very lowest graphics setting

I pity anyone who thought that they could run it on the minimum spec, because I have enough trouble running it with an extra 150MHz over the minimum.

there just seems to be so much hard drive activity, its almost constant. If anyone knows how to fix this, could they please reply

x^n · 05-28-2002, 10:23 PM

If your hard disk is thrashing like a shark in a feeding frenzy then you really need to visit crucial.com. And a 16MB video card just isn't gonna cut it these days. Sorry dude.

illimiter · 06-01-2002, 03:45 PM

Turning of Anisotropic Filtering and Detailed Shaders significantly reduced load times on my machine. I keep them on though since even with them on I get an initial load of about 30sec and subsequent loads of about 10sec (subjectively guessing the times).

Sinister_Evil · 06-02-2002, 08:50 PM

My pc is crap compared to some listed in the thread but i get a nice 40 sec cold load and an even better warm....the only prob is that quik save takes more time that it would to access the menu and save from there...and just to give credit to some in the thread i have a 7200 western digital HD

Jed Dye · 06-05-2002, 07:44 PM

System:

Tandy 1000TX
768KB Ram
Tandy 16 color EGA card
20Mb HDD

my loading times are 52 hours. In fact, I haven't played the first level yet.

Protuber · 06-06-2002, 03:48 AM

My system:

AMD XP1800+
Samsung DDR2700 512Mb
Leadtek 250 Ultra (Ti4600) o/c 315/702
IBM 60Gb AVVA07
SB Audigy
WinXP

Load time about 5 min. Quickload time is fine. Game perfomance very slow about 20 fps (on my system

). Where is the patch???
May be try to re-install WinXp

BTW Soldier of Fortune 2 has same problems on my system.

bookgrub · 06-16-2002, 11:46 PM

So many people are recommending large swap files as a way to boost performance.

Well, depending on the system, maybe - but check your UNUSED PHSYICAL MEMORY and SWAPFILE IN USE counters first.

my system:

duron 1ghz
256 ddr pc2100
8gb dma33 ide
epox 8kha mobo
84mb swap file (yes, that's right, not 384)

After 3 days solid of lan gaming on ghost recon, cs and ut (didn't have jk2 then) with NO RESTARTS on win98 orig, I had used only 47.4mb of my swap file. A large swap file is no good unless you know you'll need it - otherwise it's just taking up space. For win98 use sysmon.exe to monitor these usage stats - not sure what the 2k or xp equiv. is.

The "need large swap file" fix is _mostly_ a hold over from the bad old days of Unreal or quake 1/2 with 32mb ram etc. When you're talking _at least_ 8 times that much ram nowadays, it doesn't often apply.

Bookgrub

hiawathaboy · 06-18-2002, 12:49 AM

My load times were multiple minutes when running in XP Pro. I dual booted to Win98 and the load times are always fast (20-40 seconds for long loads).

Before dual boot:
1X100 GB partition (NTFS) running WinXP

After dual boot:
2X20GB partitions (FAT32) running Win98 and WinXP
1X60 GB partition (FAT32)

AthlonXP 1600+
Shuttle AK31 rev3
WD 100GB 7200 rpm
256MB pc2100 DDR
Geforce 2 MX (32 MB)
SB Live! 5.1

chopp3r · 06-18-2002, 05:43 AM

win 98 se
p4 1.7 512 ddr333 ram
Gigabyte mb Sis 645 chipset (latest agp patch applied)
IBM Deskstar 60GXP 40GB hard drive
Geforce4 ti 4200 128 mb ddr (new dets 4.13.01.2942)

fresh defrag, 1 gig swap file, have experimented with agp aperture size, texture detail, com_hunkmegs, reinstallation nothing helps...same approx load times no matter the graphics setting
PLEASE wtf is the deal? Also I have nothing else running besides JKII!
My load times are 5 minutes approx!!! I just got this game and only played a few times before applying the 1.03 patch....seems like the load times started getting bad around that time...but I am also just about 1/4 through the game...I die so much that most of my time is wasted waiting for the game to load...like the snapshot will be there and the saber progress meter takes forever(5 minutes or so) to come up...when it does it loads fast if that means anything?
Also when I die then ESC and load again the sound stutters for a while...sound also stutters when I quit the program.
please help I am goin inSANE
thanks

****UPDATE
Well 1 thing noone has been mentioning- at what point in the game is this long load time hell happening?

I experienced the worst of my load time woes on the level..Nar Shaddaa Streets....It has cleared up for the time being and I am back to very reasonable load times...30 secs maybe cold..5 secs warm-
hopefully it is just a problem with ns_streets??????

cya

Chiles4 · 06-21-2002, 04:57 AM

I haven't read thru this whole thread and it's been a long while since I last posted in it but here's some food for thought...

I just upgraded my motherboard from an older KT266-based board with FSB at 133 to a KT266A board with FSB set to 150. Also upgraded from a Kyro 2 with 64MB to a highly overclocked GF3 Ti 200 with 64MB.

Result? Level load times were exactly as they were before!
Cold: ~45 seconds
Warm: ~10 seconds.

I'm using Win98SE. First system had a large fixed swap file and second system had no fixed swap file. And still no difference in load times.

This led me to the conclusion that (at least for me) load times were completely dependent on hard drive speed. My IBM 60GXP 7200rpm drive benchmarks identically on the old and new systems with HDTach (free download - see google). This makes sense considering it is the slowest component on my PC.

With HDTach my IBM 60GXP comes in at an average read speed of ~39MB/sec. You might want to try this utility and compare your avg. read speed as well as your load times to mine. When I upgraded from a 2yr-old 7200rpm drive to a 1yr-old IBM 7200rpm drive, the speed of my machine increased dramatically.

No offence intended but if you're getting several minute load times, make sure that DMA is enabled on that drive. HDTach is a good way to confirm this as well as tell you how fast your drive is. If don't have DMA enabled on a hard drive, HDTach will come back with pitiful 5MB/s average read speeds.

One note about HDTach: you have to turn off auto-insert on all CD-type drives before running it or it will puke.

FalloutGod · 07-22-2002, 04:48 AM

USELESSS...............

Simmy241 · 07-23-2002, 10:01 AM

I have an Athlon 1.6
512 Mb Ram (non-DDR

)
Windows XP Pro
Created a second partition for running games ONLY on with a fixed swap file (2 1/2 x your total RAM is the size you want) created on both partitions.

GeForce 2 MX 64Mb DDR

Sound Blaster LIVE! 5.1 Sound card

Running 1024x768 32bit

Load times are awesome even for saves.

Not choppy at all.

I did notice a difference at one point though. I tried running in Window mode and had my shadows to max and it was HORRIBLE!!

I changed back to FULL screen and I got my performance back WITH shadows set to max.

SamuelDravis · 08-07-2002, 09:03 AM

i have a 866mhz system with a 40gb 7200rpm HD, radeon 7200 and the game runs fine maxed out exept for the volumetric shadows.
the load times for me are about 1-2 mins.
the increase performance for me might be because i am using VirtualDrive. it is a utility that copies the cd onto your HD, so that it acts like a regular CD-ROM drive in windows explorer. so it runs the cd at about 200x.
you can order it here

mich2112 · 08-18-2002, 02:31 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by murkish
As I said earlier my save files were bloated(around 10 MB). I took the advice of someone's prior post and made a few changes to my graphics and then changed them back. This did not fix it immediately, but when it saved at the next checkpoint, I was back to 7 second loads. Also, the save file was back to about 1MB.

I have the exact same problem as you. The files got large and the quick loads have become 75-80 seconds. I have a p4-1.7 GHZ with 256 MB RAM and a Geforce 2, 256 MB card. I'm running at 800x600 resolution.

My started at the Cairn_assembly area as well.

oodbnar · 09-02-2002, 08:33 PM

my loading times are very fast
i have 512DRR and a GeForce 4 Ti4600 and its fine 4 me

darrenhudson · 09-09-2002, 09:34 AM

again i am experiencing the same delays in loading and saving games. again i have a windows 2000, voodoo 3000 card, 256 ram fairly ok pc, the game plays fine once loaded regardless of the resolution, graphics details etc.

Yes tweaking the settings from medium, to high or very high, does speed up the loading times, but eventually affects the color settings of the pc once I have exited from the game. My fix has involves restarting the game if i want to load a saved game. plenty of saves etc.

there is mention that windows maybe better suited to the game which i will try shortly.

darrenhudson · 09-09-2002, 09:36 AM

again i am experiencing the same delays in loading and saving games. again i have a windows 2000, voodoo 3000 card, 256 ram fairly ok pc, the game plays fine once loaded regardless of the resolution, graphics details etc.

Yes tweaking the settings from medium, to high or very high, does speed up the loading times, but eventually affects the color settings of the pc once I have exited from the game. My fix has involves restarting the game if i want to load a saved game. plenty of saves etc.

there is mention that windows 98 maybe better suited to the game with the voodoo card which i will try shortly.

.Templar. · 12-09-2002, 04:30 AM

Well I dont understand why you all are loading so slow on such fast computers, i havent tried single player with this athlon 1.1ghz, but when i played sp my comp was an Intel Celeron 800mhz, windows ME, 512mb SDR RAM gf2 mx400 on 800x600 res with all settings turned up and the longest load time was probably 30 seconds, and thats from when i first boot the game up, and yes, ALL SETTINGS UP, i rarely had any fps issues, the lowest it got was probably 15-20 which is very easy to deal with

NuclearDoDo · 12-20-2002, 11:31 PM

I have gone all over this forum looking for the answer to my problems and all i find is ppl having mass problems of their own which are at least in some way a variance of mine.

I'm beginning to think its the stupid line of sound cards that Creative put out years ago, the Soundblaster live series. Nearly Everyone who has a somesort of lag/load problem has a Soundblaster card. I think its about time that someone at either Microsoft or Creative or Lucasarts or even Raven Software put their fu**ing heads together and put out a patch. A program that has this many complaints around the world definitely should not have been released without an optional patch yet. To all the pansy-a$$ corporations I am officially giving you the finger to shove up your capitalistic a$$holes.
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Alesh · 01-08-2003, 11:43 AM

I have and Athlon XP 2000+ (1666 Mhz) Geforce 4 mx 440 sound blaster 5.1 and 256 Mb of ram (ddr 333 mhz), and it loads slowly, comparing this pc with the one i had the time i bought JO (Athlon 900, 256 Mb of ram (133 mhz), geforce 2 mx 400 and sound blaster live! value), the loading times are almost the same, and i think i had the settings at max with that one too.

One thing i notices is setting "com_hunkmegs" to a little les than your ram mbs might help a little (don't expect much).

AAstaroth0 · 06-03-2003, 06:43 PM

I actually have the opposite problem, at least opposite to what everyone else is stating. My initial loads are fine, but on certain levels (IE First Cloud City level) the Reloads lock up. The initial load takes maybe 15 seconds, but I've left it reloading for over half and hour (just to see if it would load) and it never gets beyond about 1/4 of the way across. I have a VooDoo 3000 (Yes, I know its old, but I don't play alot of games, so it works for me) with 512 MB of PC 133 RAM, with an AMD 1ghz processor on Win 2k Pro. Just thought I'd throw that out there if anyone knew of anything that could cause that.