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greendingbat

Snapmap loading times seem unreasonable?

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Greetings Doomworld!

I've been a long-time lurker and fan of the site, but this is my debut to the forums. So hello!

I've been working in Snapmap lately. A constant source of frustration is the lengthy loading process between the editor and playing the level. This caused me to wonder what exactly is happening during that load. If level loading works the way I think it does, there should be no need for it. All the assets are loaded into the editor already (for object mode viewing), am I correct?

The only answer I could come up with for why the load takes so long is that it's just reusing code that loads non-editor levels, and is just naively loading in a bunch of stuff it already had.

I know very little about this whole area of technology, though, and would love if someone could explain a bit more about it.

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I don't have any solutions to the problem but I just want to mention that this is like the #1 reason that I never actually look at / play any Snapmaps. The time process to load the main game, reload in Snapmap mode, look up a snapcode or whatever it's called, and load the Snapmap, is just infuriatingly long, especially when you compare it to a classic Doom WAD, which (discounting download time) takes, like, a second to get going.

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It's a serious design frustration as well. John Romero talked about E1 of Doom being built through a constant design/play iteration which is just impossible with Snapmap.

I had a logic bug in one of my rooms which took about 1 minute to diagnose and fix...and 15 minutes of loading screens.

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Linguica said:

I don't have any solutions to the problem but I just want to mention that this is like the #1 reason that I never actually look at / play any Snapmaps. The time process to load the main game, reload in Snapmap mode, look up a snapcode or whatever it's called, and load the Snapmap, is just infuriatingly long, especially when you compare it to a classic Doom WAD, which (discounting download time) takes, like, a second to get going.


Not sure it's really fair to have the same expectation for a 2016 title on new technology, compared to its 1993 incarnation.

If you are using steam, you can set launch properties to take you directly into snapmap mode, bypassing the need to launch campaign, then snapmap which cuts down time.

For snapmap itself, the mode does take some time to launch initially, because of all the additions they have made. The INITIAL loading times (snapmap hub, NOT maps themselves) are a byproduct of patching in an extra 10-15 gb worth of content for snapmap alone.

Also on the OP's comments regarding that it "is not possible to play, iterate, and repeat" - ala john romero, your comments are completely off base. You can play the map instantly during edit mode with a short load time between editor and play test. Maybe 30 seconds if your map is huge, less if its small. I know this as fact because I have multiple maps with 99% in multiple categories released and I test most of my maps multiple times over several days to get them right before I release/advertise them for others to play.

Snapmap has so much hate but it all comes from people who don't even use the damn thing.

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It's perfectly fair to compare loading a custom level in one game with loading a custom level in another game. For comparison, we all expect web pages to load near-instantly, and studies show that users get fed up after, like two seconds of load time or whatever. But we've also been Stockholm syndromed into thinking it's fine to sit around for a minute or longer for a game to load up, when it is not and never should have been fine.

I'm also aware of the Steam properties thing. I am not janitoring my game installs to force it to load into a non-default mode, especially when I might want to play Arcade mode and then wait EVEN LONGER to get back into SP mode. Or god forbid I want multiplayer??

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Linguica said:

It's perfectly fair to compare loading a custom level in one game with loading a custom level in another game. For comparison, we all expect web pages to load near-instantly, and studies show that users get fed up after, like two seconds of load time or whatever. But we've also been Stockholm syndromed into thinking it's fine to sit around for a minute or longer for a game to load up, when it is not and never should have been fine.



Not when the technology is 23+ years apart, and you're using disproportionately powerful systems to load the old technology, and using underpowered tech (consoles or low end gaming PC's) to load new technology.

Also there is no "gold standard" for load times. You're old enough to remember the days of dial up, and so am I. We did use to wait 60 seconds for a page to load, especially if it contained anything besides plain text.

If your game isn't loading fast enough, improve the hardware. You can upgrade hard drives in both consoles and PCs to an SSD if it's that much of an issue.

Linguica said:

I'm also aware of the Steam properties thing. I am not janitoring my game installs to force it to load into a non-default mode, especially when I might want to play Arcade mode and then wait EVEN LONGER to get back into SP mode. Or god forbid I want multiplayer??


You can create multiple shortcuts for each game mode, that takes less key presses than what it took to type out that you refuse to do so.

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Moon Marin said:

Also on the OP's comments regarding that it "is not possible to play, iterate, and repeat" - ala john romero, your comments are completely off base. You can play the map instantly during edit mode with a short load time between editor and play test. Maybe 30 seconds if your map is huge, less if its small. I know this as fact because I have multiple maps with 99% in multiple categories released and I test most of my maps multiple times over several days to get them right before I release/advertise them for others to play.

Snapmap has so much hate but it all comes from people who don't even use the damn thing.



My initial comments are not "off base." I know this for a fact because I've spent hours in Snapmap. Maybe I should have mentioned in the original post, but I'm talking about the XB1 version of the game. The loading time between the editor and playing the map (the specific load I mentioned) is far from instant. Even 30 seconds adds up when you're trying to switch back and forth between modes, and the actual times are longer.

All of this is completely besides the point because, if you read my original question, you'll see that I'm asking what it is that Snapmap is loading during that time. It's a technical question, not a bash.

But I guess it's good that Snapmap has keyboard warriors like yourself to defend it by being shitty at the drop of a hat.

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greendingbat said:

My initial comments are not "off base." I know this for a fact because I've spent hours in Snapmap. Maybe I should have mentioned in the original post, but I'm talking about the XB1 version of the game. The loading time between the editor and playing the map (the specific load I mentioned) is far from instant. Even 30 seconds adds up when you're trying to switch back and forth between modes, and the actual times are longer.

All of this is completely besides the point because, if you read my original question, you'll see that I'm asking what it is that Snapmap is loading during that time. It's a technical question, not a bash.

But I guess it's good that Snapmap has keyboard warriors like yourself to defend it by being shitty at the drop of a hat.


Snapmap is obviously loading you into the map you built from wherever your initial player spawn point is, then it's building the level in front of you (although not visible) with the configurations you have set. If you want to know exactly what assets are being loaded there is probably a debug command you can run in the console.

It's cute that you call me "keyboard warrior" when all i've pointed out is that you CAN iterate on a map which you claim isn't possible. Which is bullshit, look at all the maps that have been released that are well made. Lots of these came from consoles too, people who have managed to build and iterate their own creations. I've seen the editor on all platforms. It might be smoothest on PC, but it still operates cleanly on consoles. If its not up to your standards then play something rleased 10 years ago, your load times will be instant.

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Moon Marin said:

Snapmap is obviously loading you into the map you built from wherever your initial player spawn point is, then it's building the level in front of you (although not visible) with the configurations you have set. If you want to know exactly what assets are being loaded there is probably a debug command you can run in the console.


I am indeed curious about the specifics, just because most of that information seems like it's already in memory in the editor. Like I said, I am running a console version of the game so most of the behind-the-scenes details are unavailable to me. If anyone here does know exactly what is happening during that load, I'd be interested in learning about it.

Moon Marin said:

It's cute that you call me "keyboard warrior" when all i've pointed out is that you CAN iterate on a map which you claim isn't possible. Which is bullshit, look at all the maps that have been released that are well made. Lots of these came from consoles too, people who have managed to build and iterate their own creations. I've seen the editor on all platforms. It might be smoothest on PC, but it still operates cleanly on consoles. If its not up to your standards then play something rleased 10 years ago, your load times will be instant.


You're right, obviously I was claiming that no quality maps do exist/can possibly be constructed with Snapmap.
You seem really touchy about any perceived criticism of Snapmap for some reason, so rather than continue to engage with you on a topic that is not directly related to my question, I am going to re-focus this thread by saying it is not a "beat up on Snapmap" thread. I'm just trying to learn a little more about the technical processes in play.

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greendingbat said:

I am indeed curious about the specifics, just because most of that information seems like it's already in memory in the editor. Like I said, I am running a console version of the game so most of the behind-the-scenes details are unavailable to me. If anyone here does know exactly what is happening during that load, I'd be interested in learning about it.


The only things that jump out as being missing from the editor when actually in game, are the things that function in-game but not in the map. Examples : Demon AI, asset sounds such as walking, shooting, jumping, ambient noises (excluding module sound layers). Also, editing the level is a lot different than running what is essentially an executable. When you go to play the map, you're executing a config file that is generated from the map you built (which is how there are no downloads required to play any snapmap, other than few KB of text). You are essentially re-loading all the assets from the editor in this process in addition to things missing/not loaded for editor purposes. It uses the same formula when you load a random published snapmap as it does when you go from edit to play mode in order to generate the level to spec.

There are also things you may notice that don't occur during snapmap, such as making trigger volumes invisible via the trigger settings. It will be invisible in-game, but not in the editor. This is obviously for usability, but its an extra step the game has to bake in when loading up the level proper.

I don't know exact specifics, but these should be headed towards what you're looking for.

As a sign of good faith i've hunted down a few lists of all known console commands for doom. You might be using a console and not a PC which can take advantage of these commands, but if you find an opportunity - or if someone else decides to, there may be information that can be found through these commands.

List 1 : http://pastebin.com/wtgf65Qt
List 2 : http://pastebin.com/4uqmVEmr

greendingbat said:

You're right, obviously I was claiming that no quality maps do exist/can possibly be constructed with Snapmap.


You said that iteration by playing, editing, and repeating until the map is done is not possible. This is not true. I use all the great maps that have gone through this iteration process, including my own, as proof otherwise.

greendingbat said:

You seem really touchy about any perceived criticism of Snapmap for some reason, so rather than continue to engage with you on a topic that is not directly related to my question, I am going to re-focus this thread by saying it is not a "beat up on Snapmap" thread. I'm just trying to learn a little more about the technical processes in play.


Just things that I find to be unfounded. Like saying iteration isn't possible, or that snapmap is effectively an unusable game mode because you have to boot into it after already launching the initial campaign mode. I have grievances with snapmap as a daily user.

Examples :
- The map editor interface is clearly optimized for a controller and the PC map controls suffer a lot for it. I use a controller except for inputting numbers/variables/text because its the best way to do it.

- Hard limits on map size can be quite frustrating for designers, and other limits like 12 live demons at one time, and a limited (although extremely expanded since release) module set means you see a lot of the same enviornments unless you are willing to go nuts with textured blocking volumes and props.

- On the topic of custom geo using props/volumes, monster AI suffers navigation around these because they are foreign to the AI and they cannot traverse many parts of levels that are built exclusively on blocking volumes or props.

- Snapmap is still missing some core elements from campaign, such as weapon mods that are randomly excluded, and weapon inconsistencies like the gauss cannon having the multi-player ammo count instead of single player ammo count, highly limiting its use.


These are just a few issues I have off the top of my head. Snapmap isn't perfect, but its one hell of an amazing thing that they have given us to play with and I see a lot of complaints from people who barely, or have never used snapmap, which drives off other would-be snapmappers. A lot of these complaints are poor excuses to look over the editor, so I choose to say my 2 cents about it because I find it to be beneficial. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

I hope you find what you are looking for. This is probably my last contribution to this thread.

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Yeah, I doubt we'll ever discover the reasons for the obnoxious loading screens. Snapmap had such high expectations and ultimately failed its customers.

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VentedPennies said:

Yeah, I doubt we'll ever discover the reasons for the obnoxious loading screens. Snapmap had such high expectations and ultimately failed its customers.

Did it? It seems to do exactly what they advertised: A quick and easy way to construct new maps and modes of play. Given the engine it's running on, none of that wasn't met.

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It's not quick nor easy. I think the low #'s of players are plenty of proof of that.

Great, you designed a mapping tool that can create maps, but there are so many headaches involved no one wants to play said maps. Good job.

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So if you're not trolling then why are you even in this sub-forum?

I know you might think differentely... But I think you'll find nobody cares about your opinion :)

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I'm only here to chime in with my main reason for not bothering with snapmaps is indeed the loading speed. They should fix this in some way. If it even is possible.

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Linguica said:

I don't have any solutions to the problem but I just want to mention that this is like the #1 reason that I never actually look at / play any Snapmaps. The time process to load the main game, reload in Snapmap mode, look up a snapcode or whatever it's called, and load the Snapmap, is just infuriatingly long, especially when you compare it to a classic Doom WAD, which (discounting download time) takes, like, a second to get going.


Ive made a post with youtubers who post great levels they find. That way you dont have to waste your time.

https://www.doomworld.com/vb/snapmap/88891-cyber-hell-gameplay-vids-e1-hellbound-eteral-e2-agonys-garden/

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My intention wasn't for this to turn into another "piss on Snapmap" thread. I think I wrongly gave that impression with the poorly-worded title.

Since we're talking about it, though, here's my two cents:
Ultimately, I think Snapmap is well-designed. I think a lot of the limitations that frustrate people are tied to complexity of modern game engines more than failures in the tool itself. I was especially impressed with how smoothly and intuitively it controls on the XB1. It manages to provide access to considerable depth and complexity without feeling cluttered or having an impossible learning curve.
It does have its limitations, some of which are frustrating. But I think a lot of people had grown accustomed to the tools available to the old modding community, which are just from a different world. Doom Builder and Snapmap have very different design (and gameplay) philosophies behind them.

ANYway, thanks to Moon Marin for the links. It looks like there's some stuff to be learned about the under-the-hood workings there.

If anyone out there has more technical knowledge about how Snapmap works, that's what I was really after here.

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I think the time it takes could be a variety of factors, ranging from things like activating AI and other such scripts (Including ones the player added) in addition to baking in things like navigation and collision so that the monsters won't get lost in the levels the player just created.

Since the monsters are static in the editor and there's no real collision to speak of (Everything in a standstill and the editor's camera just clips through everything without any gravity), I'd say there's reason to believe that the bulk of the code necessary for actually running the game's logic isn't loaded in the editor.

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MetroidJunkie said:

I think the time it takes could be a variety of factors, ranging from things like activating AI and other such scripts (Including ones the player added) in addition to baking in things like navigation and collision so that the monsters won't get lost in the levels the player just created.

Since the monsters are static in the editor and there's no real collision to speak of (Everything in a standstill and the editor's camera just clips through everything without any gravity), I'd say there's reason to believe that the bulk of the code necessary for actually running the game's logic isn't loaded in the editor.


That's a good point!

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Moon Marin said:

If your game isn't loading fast enough, improve the hardware. You can upgrade hard drives in both consoles and PCs to an SSD if it's that much of an issue.


I would agree with you if we were talking about a 20 GB game but we're talking about the latest absurdly large game that keeps on growing. Most SSDs in consumer PCs right now are 128GB, 256GB at most. You'd be foolish to install Doom on one of those, there wouldn't be much space left for anything else. In fact with the 128GB scenario your SSD would probably be filled by just Windows and Doom at this point and when they push the next update you run out of space and have to relocate your game files to a regular HDD after all.

This also gives me a chuckle every time someone says "megatextures are fixed now". Only the streaming has improved. The space and loading time problem is still there. It's still a laughably inefficient way to store textures. Nobody is going to remember Doom 2016 for its particularly great textures. The textures are nothing special. What everyone is going to remember are endless load times or worse, running out of space on SSDs and older HDDs.

Moon Marin said:

You can create multiple shortcuts for each game mode, that takes less key presses than what it took to type out that you refuse to do so.


I personally do this and it doesn't help much. It saves me a button press or two, automatically loading the correct mode. But that's what should be happening to begin with. You shouldn't have to fix this, there is no plausible excuse for the lack of a basic selection screen where you pick what mode you want before loading anything. Why load singleplayer unprompted only to reboot the whole engine when the user selects something else? This all goes back to the terrible mistake that was outsourcing the multiplayer and using a different engine.

It's funny how you remind people that times have changed since the 90s - some mindsets apparently haven't. Users don't want this kind of inconvenience and developers who still refuse to learn this lesson will see their product suffer. Couple endless loading screens with frequent crashes and you're conditioning players to avoid Snapmap at all costs. As a map maker even I don't bother playing other people's creations! I just watch their youtube videos and go "ah, neat idea". The prospect of twiddling my thumbs for 5 minutes until Snapmap has loaded, only to then watch it crash when loading some map? Yeah, right. That would mean I'd have to do nothing for another 5 minutes before I could get working on my own stuff. I already have to restart it once or twice a day when it crashes during play-testing (always during playtesting). We all love the "world" inside Snapmap, the levels you can create, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who loathes absolutely everything else about Snapmap. The menus, the loading screens, the clunky tools, the sluggish console UI, everything. It's all slow, unreliable, plays annoying sounds for no reason (hover cursor over a pinky lately?) etc.

Trying to spin this as a user problem (somehow we're not computer-savvy or pain-tolerant enough) equates to digging Snapmap's grave. Snapmap's value is entirely derived from its ability to capture users' attention. If nobody is going to put up with this terrible program to play my maps then why should I keep making maps? No players, no creators, game over.

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symmetron said:

Nobody is going to remember Doom 2016 for its particularly great textures. The textures are nothing special. What everyone is going to remember are endless load times or worse, running out of space on SSDs and older HDDs.


Actually, I find it quite noticeable that they've essentially solved the problem of repeating textures looking quite ugly, something that's more noticeable in its outdoor environments on high ledges. The difference is quite apparent, even more so on Rage since it had large enough environments to really appreciate that kind of thing. Granted, the massive amount of space they take up IS problematic but you shouldn't downplay the benefits of it, either.

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You have a point on Rage but it's not useful in Doom at all. Metallic interior architecture has never suffered too badly from tiling issues. Meanwhile, Bethesda's open world games have horrific tiling issues, yet they won't use megatextures. The irony.

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symmetron said:

Meanwhile, Bethesda's open world games have horrific tiling issues, yet they won't use megatextures.

You absolutely do not want to use megatexturing with a Bethesda sized open world game. You actually want to be able to store the game somewhere.

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Well yeah, that's my point. Megatextures can't be used to remove tiling from precisely the cases that need it most. The best it can do is balloon up a standard FPS from the 20 GB it should fill up to 80, with little noticable benefit.

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I had one idea to have a few variations of each tiled texture and program the engine to randomly pick which ones to fill out so that ruling isn't so apparent while still saving a ton of space compared to mega textures.

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Doktor Mandrake said:

So if you're not trolling then why are you even in this sub-forum?

I know you might think differentely... But I think you'll find nobody cares about your opinion :)


Think "differentely" than whom? Name one person who just absolutely loves the loading times and has bought Snapmap to enjoy them. My opinion isn't different, it's the norm that sunk Snpmap. As someone who made maps and wanted it to succeed, it's a disappointment that this great asset failed because of something as ridiculously 90's as loading times and menus.

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Once I get into the SnapMap module on my Xbox, the load times for the maps seem pretty reasonable. About as fast, sometimes faster, than load times in the single player campaign.

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