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Home » Tiberian Technologies / Blackhand Studios » Tiberian Technologies Forum » Change the load-sequence back to stock please
Change the load-sequence back to stock please [message #486608] Wed, 05 March 2014 01:27 Go to next message
zunnie is currently offline  zunnie
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Registered: September 2003
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General (2 Stars)

There are a number of maps in rotation on our server where some people simply cannot play because they lose connection as soon as they are done 'loading'.

It seems to be related to the way 4.x (pre)loads maps into memory or something. I suspect it takes too long on some lower end pc's and the transition between the loading screen and the game itself takes too long or it interrupts the connection between the client and server JUST long enough for them to lose connection completely which results in them not being able to play the map.

I also notice a significant slowdown to startup the game and going to the "Joining game.." screen when you have many maps in your TTFS folder like everyone does who plays on NewMaps regularly.
It takes my pc like 10 seconds to load everything and go into actually joining the game.

To test this: Go into LAN 1 Player and click "Host Game" ; you will notice it takes quite a long time to get to the options for setting up your lan server. THIS delay also happens when joining the server with RenList or any other Direct Connection tool.

So: As per a test for the next 4.x version could you revert the changes made to the loading mechanism so loadtimes are reduced again? This is what is messing up the maps for quite a few people. Or at least try to investigate why this is happening.

Thanks for reading.

EDIT: To try reproduce this you can install the mappack we use @ http://multiplayerforums.com/index.php?/files/category/32-mappacks/ and then host MPF_Valley for example.


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[Updated on: Wed, 05 March 2014 02:02]

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Re: Change the load-sequence back to stock please [message #486610 is a reply to message #486608] Wed, 05 March 2014 02:51 Go to previous messageGo to next message
danpaul88 is currently offline  danpaul88
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I'm pretty sure it IS using stock loading code... you seem to forget the "fast" loading was actually a mod in the early days of scripts.dll which caused a lot of unintended side effects by skipping parts of the stock loading sequence.

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Re: Change the load-sequence back to stock please [message #486611 is a reply to message #486608] Wed, 05 March 2014 02:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
zunnie is currently offline  zunnie
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Well whatever changed it is causing people to drop out.

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Re: Change the load-sequence back to stock please [message #486741 is a reply to message #486608] Wed, 12 March 2014 17:37 Go to previous messageGo to next message
liquidv2 is currently offline  liquidv2
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i was actually happier with the side effects than i am with the slow load
Iran or someone said you can place an empty file called always.dat (or something) in either your Renegade or Data folder and it will let you load quickly again

why are all of the single player objects required to load before joining a multiplayer game Sad


liquidv2
Re: Change the load-sequence back to stock please [message #486743 is a reply to message #486608] Thu, 13 March 2014 01:24 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iRANian is currently offline  iRANian
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always.dat contains only about half of the game's files to pre-load, including missing quite a bit of multiplayer stuff.

Long time and well respected Renegade community member, programmer, modder and tester.

Scripts 4.0 private beta tester since May 2011.

My Renegade server plugins releases
Re: Change the load-sequence back to stock please [message #486744 is a reply to message #486608] Thu, 13 March 2014 03:01 Go to previous messageGo to next message
danpaul88 is currently offline  danpaul88
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always.dat contains pretty much all of the assets for multiplayer maps, the maps themselves usually only include terrain and props specific to that map. always2.dat contains files that were patched in or modified post release.

An empty always.dat will indeed make your loading faster... in fact, it'll be almost instant. You'll see an error dialog before you even hit the menu screen (which itself lives in always.dat)



And, to clear up the misconception.. it does NOT pre-load always.dat, it pre-loads specific individual files from inside always.dat, specifically those needed for the map that is currently loading. Thus it does NOT pre-load single player assets unless they are used by the map you're playing on.


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[Updated on: Thu, 13 March 2014 03:05]

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Re: Change the load-sequence back to stock please [message #486745 is a reply to message #486608] Thu, 13 March 2014 09:22 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iRANian is currently offline  iRANian
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Nope, it also loads the single player assets even for multiplayer games (checked this with a debugger) and it misses quite a bit of assets shared by both single player and multiplayer (including the arms and legs of certain characters).

Long time and well respected Renegade community member, programmer, modder and tester.

Scripts 4.0 private beta tester since May 2011.

My Renegade server plugins releases
Re: Change the load-sequence back to stock please [message #486748 is a reply to message #486608] Thu, 13 March 2014 09:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
danpaul88 is currently offline  danpaul88
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The list of files that are loaded is controlled by the dependencies tab on the presets in LE, it loads any file which is referenced as a dependency of any preset of which an instance exists on the map. Most of the dependencies are set on the building controllers which pull in the various vehicles and whatnot.

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Re: Change the load-sequence back to stock please [message #486787 is a reply to message #486748] Sat, 15 March 2014 16:27 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Sean is currently offline  Sean
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Colonel
Just remove the maps with the issues?

It's not like there isn't enough maps to choose from.

Plus it's probably an issue with the maps themselves, as there's never been an issue of "dropping out" when the default loading of Renegade was restored in Scripts 4.0.


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Re: Change the load-sequence back to stock please [message #486835 is a reply to message #486608] Tue, 18 March 2014 13:23 Go to previous message
jonwil is currently offline  jonwil
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FYI, Saberhawk has a fix that he says should solve the problem of timeouts when loading larger maps. I need to talk to zunnie on IRC and get some people to test this fix, then it will be released to the public once I am satisfied it works.


Jonathan Wilson aka Jonwil
Creator and Lead Coder of the Custom scripts.dll
Renegade Engine Guru
Creator and Lead Coder of TT.DLL
Official member of Tiberian Technologies
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