[Lynk Former]

PS3's Genji uses HDD to quarter load times
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/10/21/ps3s-g...oad-times/

I remember a time when there was no such thing as load times or load screens, our gaming experience was only delayed by a title screen or an intro or cutscene or bit of text you could easily skip to get to the gaming.

I remember the first time I saw a loading screen, my friend had called me over to his place to play his newly bought PlayStation, I was curious to see what this new gaming system could do since Sony was new to the industry, I can't remember what game it was exactly but when my friend switched on the system and we got to the first load screen I was frightened and confused. I thought the system had broken or something, I didn't know what this screen was or what exactly was being loaded and why it was taking so long to load it. I sat there stunned for a moment and then finally the game started...

Little did I know that load times and loading screens would become common place among certain games, but what's even worse is the fact that in this new generation of consoles the load times have gotten WORSE, not better. Aside from bad gameplay, load times in videogames is the biggest thing that pisses me off. I don't want to see them at all, and when I do see them, I want it to be short... VERY short *shakes fist*

Sony tries to make us believe the PS3 is all powerful, but if it really was then measures like this would not be necessary at all.

[Eva]

It's just loading time. It's not a huge deal unless it's taking minutes to load into the next scene, which I haven't experience with any game from PS2 or GC. The only time I was bother by loading time was when you had SNES port in Chrono Trigger having load time. That's stupid, but I expect load times in newer system since games are getting advance. As long as loading time not awful, like 2 to 5 minutes between scene, then I have no huge problem myself.

[Laughing Man]

worst load time ever: Midnight Club Dub City for the PSP. seriously its like almost 4min on avg regardless what you do (race, cruise, garage)

[Mr. Weasel]

Unfortunately the time of the videogame cartridge has expired.
A cartridge with 2 or 3 Gigabyte capacity would be too expensive (the N64 cartridges were already quite high-priced).
Gaming with the PC is even worse, I´m currently playing Gothic 3 (RPG, similar to The Elder Scrolls) and in that game loading a quicksave takes 1-2 minutes. Here we´ve come full circle, sometimes I just don´t know why I´ve abandoned my C64 with datasette cause the loading times are still the same but the comp does consume ten times the electric power of the c64

[Lynk Former]

The time of carts may be over but you still don't need to push a loading screen into peoples gaming experience. And not all games have noticable load times, there are games that load dynamically, games such as Metroid Prime and Resident Evil 4 (GCN version) which have a smarter way of loading.

Games aren't getting more advance, games are getting more inefficient. The hardware gets more advanced but for the most part the way the developers still use code, media and data placement on the discs to create games. The code and media have gotten larger and more complex over the years but the console hardware has gotten faster and more powerful over the years too. While most developers are going for the "bigger is better, make it as fast as you can to get in on the shelf and don't worry, you've got enough disc space to shove the shoddy coding in" way of thinking, there are other developers who are bloody good who say "let's make this game run as smoothly as possible, refine it to a point where the code and the media as well as data placement on the disc is thought out thoroughly enough where load times are, zip, 1-2 seconds and the game loads as you play."

But even worse is the fact that you have the PS3 and Xbox360, both systems have great new powerful hardware with huge amounts of ram, etc... and yet I see longer load times.

EvEN WORSE is the fact that load times get longer as your console ages... how? That laser that reads your discs doesn't last forever, especially in a home console that goes through a lot. The efficiency rate of that laser drops dramatically over the years of use and it does effect the games.

I don't like loading times AT ALL, if I see a loading screen and if it's more than 4 seconds, I get pretty pissed off. There is no excuse, the hardware has come a long way, the developers should be smart enough to avoid it and as a gamer who wants to play games, not wait for shit to load, this is what I demand from everyone in the industry... other than great gameplay, original ideas and smooth framerates lol.

[Chimasterwang]

The code thing you said thats a bit like my friend who makes this un-needed code declaring a type of movement and stuff in like 15 lines and i do it in 1 short line of code XD

I think you got annoyed by the loading times and then came up with a reason afterwords =P

PS: Coders get paid by each line they write sometimes. So the more code they write even if its not needed the more they get paid.

[The Author]

I'm pretty much used to loading times now...
Oblivion (360) and Half Life 2 (XBox) both had stupid loading times... Half Life 2s being the worse... After every major incident, and fire fight!

But some games were pretty good with the screens... Like Lynk said, Resi 4...
The last Tony Hawk game... Well that was supposidly not meant to have any loading screens at all... But if you were paying attention, at certain times between going to different areas, your character would stand there flipping his board... Thus proving there was a loading screen, but with no loading bar!

But as I said at the beggining... Loading bars don't bother me anymore... I've grown accustomed to them since the trangression from cartridge to the CD! Hell even my mobile phone games have loading screens!

[Lynk Former]

The irony is that putting in a loading bar actually adds more time to the load time than just a simple "loading" text flashing or just there displayed on the screen.

[Damatee]

Half Life 2 (XBox) both had stupid loading times... Half Life 2s being the worse... After every major incident, and fire fight!

The problem is Halflife 2's levels are so massive that they have to be loaded like that, Unfortunatly Valve never got round that problem, although some developers came up with the cleaver idea of hiding it behind a cut scene, eg Timesplitters 3... why do you think there are cut scenes at regular intervals

[The Author]

The problem is Halflife 2's levels are so massive that they have to be loaded like that, Unfortunatly Valve never got round that problem, although some developers came up with the cleaver idea of hiding it behind a cut scene, eg Timesplitters 3... why do you think there are cut scenes at regular intervals

I gotta gets me the last Timesplitters again... That was a good game!

Hopefully Valve will sort out the loading times on the new Half Life 2 they are releasing for the 360...
I hope...
The only reason I'd be getting it is for the new episodes they're putting on it!

[Maverick]

I really don't mind, is the price you pay if you want smooth framerates and no frezzes while playing, of course they can't be too long nor too frecuent, but you can't just get ride of them without losing something, there's a balance. The "there's no excuse for loading times" sounds unreasonable to me.

No matter how fast the hardware is, you can bring it to its knees with just some indented "do while" loops. My point is that hardware isn't the issue, but how game companies make its games. Nowdays is more about graphics and reusing old ideas than making new ones or efficient coding (since hardware is always getting faster code efficiency "isn't" important), that pisses me off, thanks to that making games is horribly expensive, you need armies of artists and animators for just the game content, if your game isn't a huge success then your company goes bankrup, is too risky that there isn't place for originality.
I heard that Clover Studios is going to close just after releasing a good game, how does that make any sense?

an almost two years old article I just read

The irony is that putting in a loading bar actually adds more time to the load time than just a simple "loading" text flashing or just there displayed on the screen.

you won't notice the difference

EvEN WORSE is the fact that load times get longer as your console ages... how? That laser that reads your discs doesn't last forever, especially in a home console that goes through a lot. The efficiency rate of that laser drops dramatically over the years of use and it does effect the games.

aw come on, you aren't going to blame "the laser failing too soon" to loading times, are you?

Half Life 2 (XBox) both had stupid loading times... Half Life 2s being the worse... After every major incident, and fire fight!

is better than getting load times *while* you are in a fire fight XP
I played the demo (PC) like eight times, and the load times aren't short, but I never got bothered by them, are they shorter on PC?

[Lynk Former]

We're talking console games here though Mav... works differently. There are quite a few games that load during gameplay and in the middle of heated action scenes where the framerate stays perfect and the console doesn't freeze. Since quite a few of these games exist... there is no excuse for developers to produce games that have such freakish load times anymore.

And to clarify, I'm not blaming the hardware, this is about those developers who should know better by now. And yes, I'm in total agreement about developers not coming up with more efficient code, etc. This is exactly what I'm bitching about.

Additionally, I'm not complaining about lasers failing, they "degrade" over time. My friends Xbox, another friends PS2 and my GameCube are all showing their age now... it's clear that they're coming to the end of their optimum lifespan... ironically the old generation is about to come to a close and the new is here and just around the corner.

[GabeXorn]

Additionally, I'm not complaining about lasers failing, they "degrade" over time. My friends Xbox, another friends PS2 and my GameCube are all showing their age now... it's clear that they're coming to the end of their optimum lifespan... ironically the old generation is about to come to a close and the new is here and just around the corner.

Sometimes they're designed like that

[Lynk Former]

Yeah they are designed like that, it's to keep costs down and to force people to switch to the new generation at some point.

[Maverick]

We're talking console games here though Mav...

yeah, i guess you have a point since consoles are gaming platforms and all that, but I keep my position, because I don't think that loading times are right for PCs and unforgetteable on consoles, I'm just thinking as a gamer playing in a whatever_hardware_box.

Additionally, I'm not complaining about lasers failing, they "degrade" over time.

i don't get it XD you don't complain about lasers failing but about the degrading? if you can't play a game because laser is degraded, then it's failing.

[Lynk Former]

Yeah, well I was never talking about PCs in this case since I don't play PC games. I wasn't trying to imply that I was complaining about PC games too.

And I never said about not being able to play games, I was talking about the fact that when lasers degrade it takes longer for the system to read the discs, only slightly longer, the game is still playable and runs smoothly, I just notice the system doing a few more corrections than it used to and because of that the load times are that little bit longer. Of course only by a second, maybe two... but every second counts IMHO.

[kyubichan]

Pokemon RPGs don't have load times XD

[Chimasterwang]

They are cartridge though =P

[kyubichan]

They are cartridge though =P

yeah, I guess... *goes back to playing Leaf Green*

[Rebel]

PS3's Genji uses HDD to quarter load times
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/10/21/ps3s-g...oad-times/
Sony tries to make us believe the PS3 is all powerful, but if it really was then measures like this would not be necessary at all.

but that is like saying: "We know load times will get worse as games get bigger and consoles more powerful, but I hold Sony to the unrealistic expectation that ANY game on their console will have short to nill load times."

It's just dumb. Load times depend on two main things: the amount of information being loaded and the ability of the machine to load data. Games are going to continue to get bigger, and consequently, their load times are going to get longer. And games will likly always be somewhat bigger than the machines they're going to be run on.

The game in question, Genji, has apparently 15 second wait times. I can't even blow my nose in 15 seconds, is this really a big issue? Furthermore, the logic behind this is very sound, it's easier and faster to access the same data from a hard-drive than it is from a disc. And what, exactly, is wrong with this? Playstation did not install the harddirve in their console so that we can sotre music on it, download jpgs or mods, it's for storage for games. The system and the game are making best use of the technology given to them, they are utilizing the harddrive provided with the console to make gameplay faster.

And to echo Mav, consoles are just computers designed for playing games and nothing else.

I'm gonna sum it up and be blunt. Your being unrealistic. Load times exist EVERYWHERE save a very select few games. From Kotor to Oblivion, Generals to Rise of Legends. Most load times are positioned to not affect the plot, the battle, or the dialogue, so in short, dont worry about it. Unless load times start appearing during "Critical Moment 43634" where you find out the background of a character and the macigal weapon needed to defeat the boss, there's no REAL problem with them now is there?

Oblivion loads small packets of the "world" every few miniutes when I play on my PC, a little text says "loading" my game slows a little and then 5 seconds later it's done and everything's back to normal plus a new area. But whenever I go to "new realm A" or "castle c" it loads with a loading screen.

In the end, arent there better things developers should be worrying about than load time? Wouldnt you rather have a good story, with good graphics, and good gameplay than not have to wait FIFTEEN SECONDS?

[Lynk Former]

Load times can effect gameplay. Gameplay = most critical element of a videogame.

Yes, I hold Sony to the expectation that their new console will have short load times, same with Microsoft and to be honest, I hold Nintendo to it more than anyone else.

And it makes you wonder what developers are doing when you have two beasts of a console (PS3+360) that have all of this power, all of this RAM and yet at E3 PS3 and Xbox360 games loaded slower than Wii games. And after masses of people are laughing at Wii's lack of hardware power. Even more is that people claim that HD graphics don't make a dent in how much power is used in these next generation consoles, what a crock.

We have larger jpgs, mpgs and other similar files on the net these days, but most of us aren't running on 56k anymore, we've got our ADSL and cable and the loadtimes are short or non existant. And I can't believe that it's hardware that's slowing these games down. It's not, the hardware is fine, it's the developers who go for all graphics, a little gameplay and no efficiency that is the problem.

And again, I'm talking console games here, I don't mind it for PC games because there are just too many factors to consider with the differences of everyone's individual PC and the developers of PC games have to take that into account. They have a perfectly valid reason and I cannot comment about them.

However, I'm not being unrealistic because there are games, CONSOLE games, that exist that have load times, but load in the background where I there is no noticable pause in the gameplay.

Again, I repeat, THESE GAMES DO EXIST.

And to clarify, these games have superb graphics, are quite large and very well made. VERY well made.

[Rebel]

However, I'm not being unrealistic because there are games, CONSOLE games, that exist that have load times, but load in the background where I there is no noticable pause in the gameplay.

Again, I repeat, THESE GAMES DO EXIST.

And to clarify, these games have superb graphics, are quite large and very well made. VERY well made.

okay, what games are they? *serious curiosity*

[Lynk Former]

To be honest, the majority of games I see as having fast load times are on GameCube. In fact the console to have the fastest load times out of PS2/GCN/Xbox was the GameCube... I thought about it and there are games that have been released for both GameCube and PS2... the GameCube versions of these games load extremely quickly, but the PS2 games take three times as long to load, so I found myself not being able to list games like Resident Evil 4 because there is a version of it that loads very slowly.

Okay then, I withdraw my statements and resubmit them as "I expect short and unnoticable loadtimes for anything made on a Nintendo console (note: not just Nintendo games for a Nintendo console, I mean every game for a Nintendo console). For Sony and Microsoft on the other hand, I expect long and boring loadtimes gnawing away at valuable gameplay time." Though thankfully I've only ever played the games that are really worth playing for the PS2 and Xbox so I don't have to deal with it as much.

For Wii, I expect short loadtimes similar to that of the GameCube. You're right though, it is unrealistic to expect that of Sony and Microsoft . And yeah, I do realise that sounds very fanboyish, but then again they don't care about load times in the first place now do they.

Sorry about all this, I really am too used to load times without assistance to be around 4 seconds at the most and for games to be loaded on the fly like the many games that are released on the GCN are.

I totally forgot about all of the PS2 and Xbox games and didn't take them into account. My mistake.

[Moelman]

yeah, xbox games took a while to load for the most part. Since xbox is the only console I have I just never noticed how long the loads were games like madden take a while.

[Chimasterwang]

I agree with Lynk GCN by far has the fastest set of load times out of GCN/PS2/XBox. Also you could have a perfectly good rpg game with loads of different stats and quests and stuff and just use 16x16 256 colour gfx. Even further you could use just coloured squares. There is anouther thing from gameplay though AI. AI can use lots of power especially when there are more than one enemy on the screen.