Tweaks?

[ChandlerL]

Here's a question for the veterans-- is there a tweaking FAQ on I-War 2? A FAQ that describes changes one can make to the flux.ini file, for example? I noticed that the ini file has curious settings like "video_memory = 0" and "directx8_available" and "use_directx8"-- many others that are worthy to have been documented.

For instance on a P4-3Ghz, 512MB Rambus RAM, I have to put up with an extraodinary load time going from inside my base to outside in my ship. I haven't timed it, but it's at least 60 seconds or more.

[Ranger]

There is a reason for that of course...The entire CLUSTER is being loaded, that's a couple thousand plus places, plus the initialization of several dozen scripts. It may take a while yes, but it beats having micro-loads every time you jump somewhere. I'd prefer one large level load than 2 dozen micro-loads, makes you feel like you're actually IN space.

[Parias]

Originally posted by Ranger
There is a reason for that of course...The entire CLUSTER is being loaded, that's a couple thousand plus places, plus the initialization of several dozen scripts. It may take a while yes, but it beats having micro-loads every time you jump somewhere. I'd prefer one large level load than 2 dozen micro-loads, makes you feel like you're actually IN space.

You've got to be kidding. In all my time playing EOC, it has never taken over 30 seconds to perform a loading sequence - usually it's closer to ten seconds or less, actually. "It's loading a lot of stuff" isn't what's wrong with his setup - though I have no idea what is.

[ChandlerL]

Actually Ranger, I feel better about it since it isn't just me and appreciate you validating the characteristic.

I always blame myself before I blame a product-- I thought it was something to do with my configuration. If the load time is a norm, then it's OK (the game's worth it).

Cheers. :)

[Ranger]

Well it HAS been a while since I've played I-War and back then I had a slower comp that took up to a min to load it, so I figured it was because they were loading stuff.

[ChandlerL]

*chuckle*

OK.. So it IS my configuration. Hmm. I'll time it Pirias and see what the actual length of loading time. In the meantime, could you post up your flux.ini? I want to see if our configs, as setup by the program, are the same.

I don't believe it's my setup, I believe its the configuration of I-War 2-- the way it's interacting with my hardware. I noticed that when it is "loading," there is virtually no disk access suggesting it's CPU bound (or timeouts).

[Parias]

*Shrugs*

Right here:

http://parias.korax.us/IdiotProof/flux.ini

[MajorTom]

30 secs is more like it on older PCs, but not on a P4 3Ghz.

Is your CD drive perhaps delaying things while searching for a movie? If so you can copy the movies to your EOC directory and change the search path in your flux like this

[FcResourceManager]
search_paths[0] = .\EpicOnlb
search_paths[1] = .\resource
search_paths[2] = .\streams
search_paths[3] = .\movies
search_cd = 0

Note: if you don't have the MP mod Epic online installed it should look like this

[FcResourceManager]
search_paths[0] = .\resource
search_paths[1] = .\streams
search_paths[2] = .\movies
search_cd = 0

Theoretically a sound problem could also cause a delay

look for: disable_sound = 0
in the section [FcGame]

For a test, temporarily set that to
disable_sound = 1
Then see if it loads noticably faster?

[GrandpaTrout]

Mods will also increase your load time. Especially new ships. I think the game is compressing the texture files at load time. 40+ meg of new textures is really painful. (anyone feel like writing an *.iff to *.ftc converter? anyone? anyone? no? didn't think so...)

If you have developer mode turned on you can switch on the performance screen CTRL-ALT-P (IIRC). Toggle that a few times to get to the load time performance screen.

If there were a way to get rid of the resources.zip file and just use the expanded directory, that would cut out the decompression time. But I have never gotten that working.

[ChandlerL]

Thanks Major and Trout. I'll give those changes a shot and see what happens. I did copy the movies from the CD to the HD to speed things up, however, I hadn't made that change in the flux.ini that you had.

I'll do so now and see what's new.

[ChandlerL]

UPDATE:

Yup! That was it. That change to my flux.ini adding in that movie search path along with changing the search_cd flag to 0 made all the difference. General loading times are now close to instantaneous while loading times going from base to space is around 3 seconds.

Well done. :up: