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Linguica

The state of Snapmap, July 2017

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Hmm, I haven't checked out Snapmap in a long time, let's give this map a whirl.

 

 

Actually, never mind, I don't feel like it anymore.

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What is with modern games and their loading times?  I've started playing a bit of Battlefront recently (it was $9.99 on sale, don't judge me) and simply changing a level is a three minute wait.  It's like we're slowly returning to the old Commodore 64 tape loading days.

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3 hours ago, Bauul said:

What is with modern games and their loading times?  I've started playing a bit of Battlefront recently (it was $9.99 on sale, don't judge me) and simply changing a level is a three minute wait.  It's like we're slowly returning to the old Commodore 64 tape loading days.

I guess that's a natural result of every game this generation being open world/having big maps with complex geometry. Last gen was mostly linear games so loading times were merciful the majority of the time. Of course, there's also weird engines like idtech 5/6 with its megatextures that make matters worse...

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Christ the loading times are over half of the video! That's pathetic. I could make a map in GZDoom Builder where you start from a ship, fall, and fight 300 demons at once (not 12) in an area that looks even better in the same time it took to load up the game!

 

I wish id would just ditch the entire megatexture system and focus on detailing individually like the old style of games. It really seems like with better graphics and more technological improvements, you spend more time downloading the game and waiting on loading screens than you do playing it.

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SnapMap has gotten kinda stale anyway. Only rarely do I see truly interesting and impressive SnapMaps anymore.

 

Or maybe I just don't play it enough.

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Don't get me wrong, SnapMap doesn't load quickly on my Xbox One, but it certainly isn't that slow.

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I was just talking to a friend about this yesterday.  SnapMap's load times are fucking abysmal now.  It really kills the experience for creators and players alike.

 

I timed it last night on my PC and even with skipping the intro videos (via having their files renamed) and launching directly into SnapMap (via a shortcut command), it still took over 3 minutes and 30 seconds just to reach the menu!  That is beyond unacceptable.

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10 hours ago, MrGlide said:

You don't keep doom on an ssd do you?

That *IS* the load time on a SSD.

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Wow, I'm blown away, It didn't used to be that slow. I wonder why it's so much slower now.

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3 hours ago, MrGlide said:

Wow, I'm blown away, It didn't used to be that slow. I wonder why it's so much slower now.

It's simply because they've added so much content to it.  Keep in mind it once consisted only of Industrial-themed modules and a small selection of props.  Now we have loads of modules spread across four entirely separate themes and a ton of props.  That's a hell of a lot of data to have to load in.

 

It's turned out to be the very definition of a double-edged sword.  While we can do so many more things now than we could back then, it's also quadrupled (at least) the load times.  It's a shitty situation, and one that will probably only ever be resolved by the faster hard drives of the future.

Edited by chubz

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I wonder what it takes to get their "community managers" to spot your map. It may just be the pride of my own map talking, but I believe I made a great one that offers more single player type of content to experienced Doomers.

 

If you guys survive the loading times, check out: Memento Mori Machina.

 

(It's not related to that wad with the similar name)

Edited by Chezza

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At first I thought it was going to be a terrible map or something, but nope, that intro was hilarious and actually got me interested in trying it out.

The 5 minutes beforehand made me lose complete interest, however.

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On 2017-07-07 at 7:06 PM, MrGlide said:

Wow, I'm blown away, It didn't used to be that slow. I wonder why it's so much slower now.

no, it's always been super-slow to load for me. it's fine once the game has started up, but it's always taken minutes for me to get the game to load. and god forbid you load the wrong game mode by accident...

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it's definitely an interesting use of resources in SnapMap. nothing i ever played was close to having an intro like that. the most in-depth thing i played was a Doom 3-type mod, and it had some pretty glaring shortcomings due to SnapMap being pretty limited.

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Can't they juste split the loading times? I mean it doesn't have to load everything at the same time. When you want to load brick props and textures it loads those, when you want to load RES Ops resources it loads those etc.

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So, wait, DOOM's loading everything into memory? Explains how everything appears so quickly, only having a very small pause before something new is seen. However, surely that eats a lot of memory if the game does load everything into memory...

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Guest MIND

Less bitching. More map making and collaborating. 

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On 7/6/2017 at 9:01 PM, Piper Maru said:

Doom 5 will be out in stores before that finishes loading.

LOL Jesus is gonna be here before that finishes loading.

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On 7/10/2017 at 1:41 PM, Trycon said:

Megatextures was a mistake.

  Reveal hidden contents

id pls fix

 

 

 

Megatexturing in idtech5/6 by nature will have little-to-no effect on initial loading times. The whole point is they are streamed on demand when the scene needs them JIT, because they are otherwise too large to store in RAM/VRAM.

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On vendredi 7 juillet 2017 at 10:58 PM, chubz said:

It's simply because they've added so much content to it.  Keep in mind it once consisted only of Industrial-themed modules and a small selection of props.  Now we have loads of modules spread across four entirely separate themes and a ton of props.  That's a hell of a lot of data to have to load in.

But why? It doesn't need to load any of that stuff before showing the map select screen! And once the map has been chosen it should only load the content that this map actually uses.

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13 hours ago, Edward850 said:

Megatexturing in idtech5/6 by nature will have little-to-no effect on initial loading times. The whole point is they are streamed on demand when the scene needs them JIT, because they are otherwise too large to store in RAM/VRAM.

RIP Modding though.

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On 7/7/2017 at 9:57 AM, Linguica said:

That *IS* the load time on a SSD.

Out of curiosity, what are your system specs? Because I just booted up Snapmap and went to the same map, and the entire process took just over three minutes---still not great loading times to be sure, but I don't even have an SSD.

 

If it's been a while since you booted up Snapmap, *maybe* that's the reason it took so long. I seem to recall that every time there's a substantial Snapmap update, it takes significantly longer to load, but only that first time. My thought is that maybe your system is creating some type of resources for Snapmap to use later on, but it only has to do it whenever there's an update to Snapmap. It seems like a plausible explanation.  

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