Map loading times

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oxidize
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Dec 13, 2002 8:00 am

Map loading times

Post by oxidize »

Any one know the reason why it takes absolutely ages (like 3 minutes) for the map to change on some of the servers?

I'm running some servers you see - and if possible would love to eliminate this problem as it makes people disconnect.

It might be something as simple as 1 cfg command, but if you know how to make it change as quickly as possible that would be greatly aprechiated.
o'dium
Posts: 11712
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2001 8:00 am

Post by o'dium »

Thats because your running the game on too high a detail setting. Q4 needs a lot of ram, at least a gig for decent perfomance, 2gig for the best performance. (Although 1gig is more than fine).

It has to swap a LOT of textures each time it reloads a level, and obviously lowering your texture detail will make this quicker.

It may play good enough for you, but lower the detail and see how much quicker it loads.

It may also be your ram, it may be too slow, and it may even be to hot.
kleeks
Posts: 161
Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2001 7:00 am

Post by kleeks »

these are dedicated servers odium
jester!
Posts: 969
Joined: Mon Oct 31, 2005 1:55 am

Post by jester! »

Yeah I was wondering this myself, the difference on a few of the servers I play on is minutes...
kleeks
Posts: 161
Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2001 7:00 am

Post by kleeks »

hmm many musings - although managed to find nowt on google, and i'm damned if i can see any cvars that may help with this problem.

some of the things i'm wondering if they may effect things ?

- how often are the servers rebooted (could it be if they are left to run for a long time things could get 'clogged up?' - I'm sure we rebooted q3 servers daily for a reason)
- how are the maps called (are you using a mapcycle.scriptcfg or a list in the server.cfg)
- also wondered if the difference was accounted for by some of the servers you use running linux and others windows jester ?

I apologise for the complete lack of answers :icon32:
jester!
Posts: 969
Joined: Mon Oct 31, 2005 1:55 am

Post by jester! »

Hmm good question, I think the reboot one may have something to do with it, I dont know, I will have to jump in irc and ask around later on one of the specific servers that is really bad.
Ezekiel
Posts: 232
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2000 7:00 am

Re: Map loading times

Post by Ezekiel »

oxidize wrote:Any one know the reason why it takes absolutely ages (like 3 minutes) for the map to change on some of the servers?

I'm running some servers you see - and if possible would love to eliminate this problem as it makes people disconnect.

It might be something as simple as 1 cfg command, but if you know how to make it change as quickly as possible that would be greatly aprechiated.
I demand pictures of UKJSalty on the loading screens!
Psyche911
Posts: 1742
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2002 8:00 am

Post by Psyche911 »

o'dium wrote:Thats because your running the game on too high a detail setting. Q4 needs a lot of ram, at least a gig for decent perfomance, 2gig for the best performance. (Although 1gig is more than fine).
I'm not seeing that at all. I ran Q4 in window mode and it rarely went over 350MB of RAM. When loading maybe up to 400. That's with medium settings. You're saying with high settings the game uses twice as much RAM?

P.S. I had 1GB, recently upgraded to 2GB. Loading times were quick before and after.
Hex
Posts: 190
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2002 7:00 am

Re: Map loading times

Post by Hex »

oxidize wrote:
I'm running some servers
What are the hardware specs on the servers? SCSI/IDE? ata33/133/u160/what? OS? etc?

Maybe like odium said with loading lotsa graphics, or slowness of the I/O (slow drive access, defrag problem) or simply too slow a machine?
PuPPeT
Posts: 18
Joined: Fri Oct 28, 2005 10:05 am

Post by PuPPeT »

well maybe those servers use this command :
net_serverReloadEngine -->

"perform a full reload on next map restart
(including flushing referenced pak files) -
decreased if > 0
"
Quakers Don't Die.. They Respawn..
kleeks
Posts: 161
Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2001 7:00 am

Post by kleeks »

hehe n1 puppet, that looks like it could well do it

edit : hmmm it does appear to be set to 0 already
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