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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 14th Feb 2005 at 9:34 PM
Default Load times. Anyway to speed up?
My load time is 1:20 from clicking icon to getting into the Pleasents house.

Is there anyway to speed this up. While I have mine running in a window, and I can do other things while it is loading easily, I would prefer it to load in less than 10 seconds.

Any suggestions?

.
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Test Subject
#2 Old 14th Feb 2005 at 9:38 PM
Good luck. my game takes about 5 minutes just to get to the neighbor hood selection screen and anothe r2 minutes to get into the neighborhood,and i consider that fast.
Test Subject
#3 Old 14th Feb 2005 at 9:42 PM
Only way I've made mine faster about 20-60 seconds entering a town is to increase how much RAM my PC uses. I think it's called page filling or somthing on XP. anyways I made it use 1GB of disk space so I have around 2GB of RAM.

私がよい署名について考えることができればここにある。
Forum Resident
#4 Old 14th Feb 2005 at 9:44 PM
haha, good luck with that! mine takes about the same time as cid and i cant seem to make it faster.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#5 Old 14th Feb 2005 at 9:45 PM
What I would like is to strip down the package files to a bare minimum and have a special installation for modding. If thats even possible.

I'll try that crackpotgenius! Edit: oops, I already have my system set that way.
Guest
#6 Old 14th Feb 2005 at 9:46 PM
A few things to try:

1. Defrag your hard drive.
2. Clean all unwanted files from hard drive (temp internet files etc)
3. If you have 1Gb+ of ram, turn off your virtual memory.
4. If you have more than one disk installed, make sure virtual memory is NOT on same drive as windows installation.
One of those Maxoids
#7 Old 14th Feb 2005 at 9:46 PM
The more downloads you have, the slower the game will load. That's because the game has to look at every single one of those files and determine if it is a custom skin, object, etc. and opening all those files isn't particularly fast.

One thing that can be done is to request a modder tool that will bundle multiple package files into one file, which is done for some shipping Maxis files. That will reduce some file I/O overhead. I would be willing to help the modders do this, but if it is done, deleting one piece of custom content in the game will delete everything that is in the bundled file.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#8 Old 14th Feb 2005 at 10:04 PM
I just set my page file to off. Didn't change anything for me.

I answered a guy about how to turn off the startup movies in another thread. I had to hunt them down to tell him where they were. I decided to go ahead and X them myself while I was there. I also looked to see if it made a difference in time. Ummmm.... I'm down to 55 seconds... -25 seconds? I got to double check this!!!

.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#9 Old 14th Feb 2005 at 10:22 PM
OK, the movie startup files being X'd might have knocked off a couple secs where the kids says the slogan.

My game starts alot faster the 2nd time. I never noticed that.

.
Lab Assistant
#10 Old 14th Feb 2005 at 11:23 PM Last edited by AlbinoNoodle : 14th Feb 2005 at 11:27 PM.
yep, loading is a killer, I have cut out everything I can think of, but a big downloads folder definitely does slow things down. For testing mods I have removed my downloads as well as the neighbourhoods that I don't use..that helps a bit.
Lab Assistant
#11 Old 14th Feb 2005 at 11:55 PM
The computer is never fast enough for me! I figure it should operate as fast as I can type or click. But that doesn't happen. With sims 1 and all expansion packs plus about 1GB of downloads within the game, I could count on nearly 15 minutes of download time - that was with many houses and sims in an Unleashed neighborhood.
Field Researcher
#12 Old 15th Feb 2005 at 12:10 AM
Quote: Originally posted by fleabay
My load time is 1:20 from clicking icon to getting into the Pleasents house.

Is there anyway to speed this up. While I have mine running in a window, and I can do other things while it is loading easily, I would prefer it to load in less than 10 seconds.

Any suggestions?



Load times from neighborhood screen to being in the lot itself are goerned by many things. Although your downloads are all read into memory but the time the choose neighborhood screen is loaded now your game must sort through all that information and find all the things that your lot package says it must have for that family and lot. This means all the objects and where tehy are, all the sims on the lot and where they are, all their relationships and they must make sure those sims else where in the neighborhood are correct. If this is a multigenerational family with a bunch of stuff this is going to take some time, aditionally all the data that goes with all the ohone call relationships also has to be called up. One minute is not that long a load time, but I guess the other 20 secs does make it seem so.

At some point, even running the sims on the most super fast, high memory, fast I/O drives computer is going to hit a point where its still not going to read any faster then the game code can put it together. I have some houses that load in seconds but they have few objects and new unplayed sims in them - while it takes much longer to load a big house with a bunch of items and sims that have been played for a generation or two. My 25 generation legacy sims takes almost 3 minutes to load. And this is on a computer with ultra speed drives and a super fast CPU with a lot of RAm and a top end graphics care with additional RAM and a fast DVD drive.

While you can do things like defrag your disks - that woudl help more when the game is initially reading from the drives. Increasing RAM, etc will help, as will increasing virtual memory space, but you ahve to remember that the more you have in a lot the more the game has to do to prep for you to enter - and some of that just takes some time to do it.
Scholar
#13 Old 15th Feb 2005 at 12:42 AM
Quote: Originally posted by MaxoidTom
One thing that can be done is to request a modder tool that will bundle multiple package files into one file, which is done for some shipping Maxis files. That will reduce some file I/O overhead. I would be willing to help the modders do this, but if it is done, deleting one piece of custom content in the game will delete everything that is in the bundled file.


That would be a great idea, Tom. I understand what you are saying about deleting the user-created content, but wouldn't it also be possible to somehow remove the "user-created" flag from the files that were put in these bundles, so the game would not allow them to be deleted?
One of those Maxoids
#14 Old 15th Feb 2005 at 12:58 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Dr Pixel
That would be a great idea, Tom. I understand what you are saying about deleting the user-created content, but wouldn't it also be possible to somehow remove the "user-created" flag from the files that were put in these bundles, so the game would not allow them to be deleted?


There is a way, though the modders will have to add to the ContentRegistry file in the user's data directory. That file basically tells the game what segments/files are custom content or shipping (in the base game, ep1, etc.). I'm not sure if I'm allowed to just give out the format of the file, but enterprising modders are free to dive in.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#15 Old 15th Feb 2005 at 2:27 AM
MaxoidTom,

What would help me would be a way to load and maybe unload packages while the Sims program is running. Is this possible? Please check into this, it would help alot of people.

Thanks

.
One of those Maxoids
#16 Old 15th Feb 2005 at 3:42 AM
Quote: Originally posted by fleabay
MaxoidTom,

What would help me would be a way to load and maybe unload packages while the Sims program is running. Is this possible? Please check into this, it would help alot of people.

Thanks


We do not have a way for the community to do this currently, my apologies.
Field Researcher
#17 Old 15th Feb 2005 at 3:55 AM
Quote: Originally posted by fleabay
My load time is 1:20 from clicking icon to getting into the Pleasents house.

Is there anyway to speed this up. While I have mine running in a window, and I can do other things while it is loading easily, I would prefer it to load in less than 10 seconds.

Any suggestions?


I removed all the neighborhoods except Pleasantville......that speeded it up a bunch............I tried to remove the Tutorial neighborhood but the game keeps putting it back........if anyone knows how to stop this please tell us.....

tug
Alchemist
#18 Old 15th Feb 2005 at 5:55 PM
My activities lead me to do a lot of loading of the game to test, then exit and try again.
I created a new neighborhood, and stripped out all the vegetation, effects, NPC's and other stuff, have only two lots (one residential, one commercial), with no structures on them. When I need a wall or a floor, I build one. I make my tests, then exit without saving.
This neighborhood loads faster than the others. While it's not speedy alka-seltzer, it takes perhaps 1/2 the time that it does to load the other neighborhoods, which I use to test stuff when I want some Sims to see and use it.
<* Wes *>

If you like to say what you think, be sure you know which to do first.
Lab Assistant
#19 Old 23rd Feb 2005 at 6:09 AM
Yeah, I did the same thing wes.

MaxoidTom: I am currently looking into the ContentRegistry file. Let me know if you ever find out whether or not you can say anything.
Scholar
#20 Old 23rd Feb 2005 at 6:38 AM
My game now takes less than a minute to load up and get me to my neighborhood, because its saves time if you delete the intro movie files in Program Files/EA GAMES/Sims2. :smash:
Lab Assistant
#21 Old 23rd Feb 2005 at 9:19 AM
MaxoidTom: any insight into the first 16 bytes of any entry in Group 2 of the Contentregistry file? I managed to make an object file show up as "non-custom." I put 0's in for those bytes, but I'm figuring that those bytes are a HASH or GUID of some sort. It worked with the 0's but it's only one object.
One of those Maxoids
#22 Old 23rd Feb 2005 at 6:04 PM
The first 32 bits are the version.
The next 32 bits are the number of entries.
After that, it contains the file info, which is a CRC and a normalized file path. Each CRC consists of 4 32 bit numbers.

While you may be able to modify this for your own use, if you distribute it, it may muck up other people's games. Just a word of warning. Good luck.
Lab Assistant
#23 Old 24th Feb 2005 at 3:08 AM Last edited by DigitalReality : 24th Feb 2005 at 3:22 AM.
I figured that. But, this file contains the list of "Registered" object downloads, but even the maxis objects, when added to this list, appear as custom content.

Also, are you CRCing the file, and if so, how? As far as I can see, you are doing something special with the CRC algorithms.

I think I might have missed a memo or something.
Lab Assistant
#24 Old 24th Feb 2005 at 3:57 AM
Ok, so the second group in the package, that contains 12 bytes of unknown data, is probably the CRC "Key" or initial value used to seed the CRC generation.....

The first 4 bytes is version info, again. The next four is the initial value, and the last four are.....something.

I'm probably wrong.
One of those Maxoids
#25 Old 24th Feb 2005 at 10:07 AM
What I posted earlier should be the exact format of the record, but I'll double-check. The file basically tells the game what data is custom content, from the shipping game, etc. There is a ContentRegistry file in the directory where you installed the game as well. I believe the one in My Documents is read later, so it probably takes precedence.
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