SP - General Suggestions: Improving/elimating load times

Users who are viewing this thread

In the current beta version of the game, the way conversations are loaded isn't optimal Imo it wasn't a problem in the old game because of the pretty low polygon count of most characters and assets but now I can see load times upwards of three minutes even after the optimized update. Would it be possible to make an option where instead of loading a 3D model with a 2D background you can just use a small 2D portrait of the character to pop up on the campaign map and have dialogue options pop up beside it? Like how in cities you have portraits of each important character in the city, you can just use those. I really love the game and how dedicated your relatively small studio is at making it better. thank you.
 
I don’t have access to my computer rn
but it’s mostly happening in towns when I talk to crime lords or merchants. Like bandit parties and lords usually load fast although lords wearing complex armor usually take a fair bit longer.
 
Ah ok. I thought you meant with the new map conversation screen, it's taking minutes to load. You meant it takes that long to open conversations in towns.

We have plans to bring the new conversation screen to town conversations, like when you open the popup on settlement overlay, when you press talk, the new conversation screen will open up but we don't have an ETA atm so stay tuned.
 
Ah ok. I thought you meant with the new map conversation screen, it's taking minutes to load. You meant it takes that long to open conversations in towns.

We have plans to bring the new conversation screen to town conversations, like when you open the popup on settlement overlay, when you press talk, the new conversation screen will open up but we don't have an ETA atm so stay tuned.

Thank you for this insight. May I derive from what you said that, according to this plan, we won't actually go into towns to talk to people? We would simply get a default background and when the conversation is over we are back to the world map?

If the assumption above is correct, I think you are trying to address the symptom of a problem rather than the problem itself.

One of the annoying things of talking to town notables is the delay caused by load time, but that is only annoying because there are 0 other reasons to be in a town scene. Since there is nothing else to do in there, having to sit through two loading screens (in and out of town) is annoying. Fixing that by removing the loading is addressing the symptom though.

If you have any plans of making town scenes more enticing to visit, I would strongly discorage you from making the fix you proposed.

Before anyone points out that we can have our cake and eat it too by having both this fix AND more enticing town scenes down the line, I would disagree from a management perspective. I fear we won't see the dedication that town scenes need if players can so easily avoid them. Time and time again I have seen content being cut in the name that "too few players" would experience it.
 
Thank you for this insight. May I derive from what you said that, according to this plan, we won't actually go into towns to talk to people? We would simply get a default background and when the conversation is over we are back to the world map?
Yes

If the assumption above is correct, I think you are trying to address the symptom of a problem rather than the problem itself.

One of the annoying things of talking to town notables is the delay caused by load time, but that is only annoying because there are 0 other reasons to be in a town scene. Since there is nothing else to do in there, having to sit through two loading screens (in and out of town) is annoying. Fixing that by removing the loading is addressing the symptom though.

I’m sorry but I don't agree. Even if there were other reasons to be in a town(there are), player is not clicking "Talk" to do those things. All they want to do, in that instance, is Talk to the NPC. We should make that happen as soon as possible, without delay.

If you have any plans of making town scenes more enticing to visit, I would strongly discorage you from making the fix you proposed.

Those changes/plans are not related to this change in any way. Players can still enter towns or talk to NPCs in towns through a different button like "Visit" when this is implemented.
 
@emrozdemir thank you for your reply.

I agree with you that, in the scenario you described, the primary goal of the player is to talk to a specific NPC.

My argument is that introducing shortcuts is not always the best thing. One must consider the overall feeling that the game is trying to convey.

Zipping everywhere may be convinient, but it does nothing to help flesh-out your in-game world. I am a big fan of menu-related shortcuts though :wink: .

Also, your (as in TW) proposed shortcut approach robs the player from bumping into interesting things happening in the settlement, potential side-quests or even just random events that help flesh-out the world. Obviously, this is only a problem if your settlements trigger events somewhat dynamically, which currently doesn't seem to be the case and the very thing I posed as the root of the problem in my previous post (not having anything else to do in a settlement but to talk with the one NPC I went there to talk to anyway).

Experiencing small things happening around you in settlement scenes is a great way to sell to the player that this is a "real" world.
 
...
I’m sorry but I don't agree. Even if there were other reasons to be in a town(there are), player is not clicking "Talk" to do those things. All they want to do, in that instance, is Talk to the NPC. We should make that happen as soon as possible, without delay.
...
Recently I returned playing Warband and I enjoyed the speed of entering/leaving/trading/...
- Why are we obliged to maintain [TAB] pressed ? In warband you do not, so it is "without delay".
- Can't you bufferized the pictures (or whatever it is) that takes seconds to load when you look at the inventory (or trade, or loot) ?
Really, playing Warband remembers me the speed we lost in Bannerlord. That's a pity.
(and thanks for the speed change when chatting before battle)
 
@guiskj Let's agree to disagree.

- Why are we obliged to maintain [TAB] pressed ? In warband you do not, so it is "without delay".
Because of miss clicks.

Can't you bufferized the pictures (or whatever it is) that takes seconds to load when you look at the inventory (or trade, or loot) ?
They're cached actually. Most of the things you see like banners, banner icons, character portraits, item icons, weapon icons etc. have their own cache pools. But when something is not requested for some time, it's space is cleared up. Keeping all those renders in memory would cost a lot of memory real estate that we can use for other things.

Really, playing Warband remembers me the speed we lost in Bannerlord. That's a pity.
Comparing Warband's performance to Bannerlord's performance is not really fair comparison, especially UI.

Unless we keep every single screen open in the background, it'll never be instant. And if we keep them open at all times, memory used up by the game will skyrocket. It's a trade off. This doesn't mean we can make it better and faster, we're always working on improving the game.
 
@guiskj Let's agree to disagree.


Because of miss clicks.
Someone complain about miss clicks in Warband ? Can you make a poll ?
They're cached actually. Most of the things you see like banners, banner icons, character portraits, item icons, weapon icons etc. have their own cache pools. But when something is not requested for some time, it's space is cleared up. Keeping all those renders in memory would cost a lot of memory real estate that we can use for other things.
There must be a problem of buffer size or duration because I have loading time for inventory/trade/loot each time.
Comparing Warband's performance to Bannerlord's performance is not really fair comparison, especially UI.
You're right. But it is just to point that you have made choices slowing the gameplay and that could be avoided.
Unless we keep every single screen open in the background, it'll never be instant. And if we keep them open at all times, memory used up by the game will skyrocket. It's a trade off. This doesn't mean we can make it better and faster, we're always working on improving the game.

Speaking of "fairness", I did not ask for "every single screen".

And I am sure you do all you can to improve the game !

 
There must be a problem of buffer size or duration because I have loading time for inventory/trade/loot each time.
I'll take a look. But in the end, those renders should not affect loading times, they're handled in the background asynchronously.

You're right. But it is just to point that you have made choices slowing the gameplay and that could be avoided.
I would love to talk about these in detail and hear your feedback, or you can open a post under "Feedback & Suggestions > Singleplayer > UI" and we can discuss it there.
Speaking of "fairness", I did not ask for "every single screen".
"If some of the screens are instant, why not all of them?" would be the feedback I'm sure.
 
There must be a problem of buffer size or duration because I have loading time for inventory/trade/loot each time.
I had a two-or-so second delay for opening inventory before, found out it was due to having cheats enabled, as it forces to load every single item in the game on the cheat side of the inventory. Disabling cheats made it so much faster.
 
I had a two-or-so second delay for opening inventory before, found out it was due to having cheats enabled, as it forces to load every single item in the game on the cheat side of the inventory. Disabling cheats made it so much faster.
I do not even know how to enable cheats. (and I do not want to know).
 
Back
Top Bottom