Does loading a game from startup require more data than loading a save file?

[lansing]

I was watching this video about load time comparison on Assassin's Creed Valhalla and the load time from game startup to the main menu was significantly longer than loading into a save from the main menu. The latter only took 16 second while the former took more than 50 seconds.

 

Does the game startup actually require more data load than loading into a save file?

 

 

[Letgomyleghoe]

2 minutes ago, lansing said:

Does the game startup actually require more data load than loading into a save file?

yes, your loading up most of the game textures, code etc when starting up, and very minimalistic information when loading a save

[WereCatf]

3 minutes ago, lansing said:

I was watching this video about load time comparison on Assassin's Creed Valhalla and the load time from game startup to the main menu was significantly longer than loading into a save from the main menu. The latter only took 16 second while the former took more than 50 seconds.

 

Does the game startup actually require more data load than loading into a save file?

Entirely depends on how the game has been designed. There is no general rule, not all games handle things the same way.

[lansing]

7 minutes ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

yes, your loading up most of the game textures, code etc when starting up, and very minimalistic information when loading a save

But that would not make sense if the player had like 10 saves from different locations. It doesn't make sense to load textures for all of them when the player is only going to load into one save.

[SkilledRebuilds]

17 minutes ago, lansing said:

I was watching this video about load time comparison on Assassin's Creed Valhalla and the load time from game startup to the main menu was significantly longer than loading into a save from the main menu. The latter only took 16 second while the former took more than 50 seconds.

 

Does the game startup actually require more data load than loading into a save file?

 

 

Games starting up have more to do / load / initialize,..behind the scenes,.. like Pre-loading the basics (GUI/Frameworks, TIMED Logo's are not intensive but still have to wait them out) but the 'continue' from Main Menu already has that stuff done,..

 

And for Cold booting a Game vs Closing and Reloading, some is in SYSRAM and 2nd loads are much faster,.. you see this on PC too, Start Windows,..once a game is cold booted, close and reopen it, it'll start much faster.

[NineEyeRon]

If things load too quickly I don’t have time to get a drink

[lansing]

34 minutes ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

Games starting up have more to do / load / initialize,..behind the scenes,.. like Pre-loading the basics (GUI/Frameworks, TIMED Logo's are not intensive but still have to wait them out) but the 'continue' from Main Menu already has that stuff done,..

 

And for Cold booting a Game vs Closing and Reloading, some is in SYSRAM and 2nd loads are much faster,.. you see this on PC too, Start Windows,..once a game is cold booted, close and reopen it, it'll start much faster.

So the startup should be very fast and the reason that it took like 50 seconds was because they want to show all the developer logos?

[mariushm]

When you load a save for the first time, the game has to load a lot of textures and other things the video card needs to create the picture in the game. The game also loads sound effects, background music, subtitles if you have captioning on and other things.

The game also launches its own basic AI to control NPCs, to animate crowds in the game and so on.

 

When you load a save file,  the game knows those textures, those sound effects, that background music is already loaded ... or most of it, because with some video cards not all the stuff can fit within the video card, so the game, as you move through the map or go into new locations,  will throw out some textures and load new relevant textures from disk. 

Basically, when you reload a save file, if you're in the same level, the game already has most of the stuff needed in memory, so it doesn't need to read it from disk, unpack it, convert it into the format the video card likes, upload it into the video card and so on... so when it skips a lot of things, you get faster load time.

The game also just sends a "reset" command to all those AI's the control NPCs, animate crowds, and so on, so it takes much less time to be ready to put control back to the player.

 

Think of a save file as  just a log of what happened since the player entered each level he played so far.

The game knows a default state of the level, a blank state when you enter a level for the first time, and then the save file contains notes about what changed so far in the level.

It will say stuff like "glass window" changed state from normal to "broken"  after player shot a bullet through a window, it will also say "create object "glass shards on floor" at location x,y which is in front of the glass window" , 

A save will also store info about where the NPCs that move around in the map are located, if their position is different than the startup position, it will say what answers they gave, what wasn't asked, so if the NPCs have a tree of questions and answers you can resume interrogating the NPC and he behaves correctly.

 

So after a save is loaded, the game simply has to reset everything to the original positions defined in the "game level" file, and then go through the notes in the save and reposition NPCs, create some objects if needed (broken glass shards on floor, broken chair, damaged crates/barrels,  whatever)

 

[SkilledRebuilds]

5 minutes ago, lansing said:

So the startup should be very fast and the reason that it took like 50 seconds was because they want to show all the developer logos?

It was stated in the Video one of the Consoles has more UBIsoft/Whatever logo's on display than the other one...
So yeah...seems likely that's why you see such a delta between the times.

[We Didnt_t start_the_fire]

On 11/14/2020 at 12:49 AM, mariushm said:

When you load a save for the first time, the game has to load a lot of textures and other things the video card needs to create the picture in the game. The game also loads sound effects, background music, subtitles if you have captioning on and other things.

The game also launches its own basic AI to control NPCs, to animate crowds in the game and so on.

 

When you load a save file,  the game knows those textures, those sound effects, that background music is already loaded ... or most of it, because with some video cards not all the stuff can fit within the video card, so the game, as you move through the map or go into new locations,  will throw out some textures and load new relevant textures from disk. 

Basically, when you reload a save file, if you're in the same level, the game already has most of the stuff needed in memory, so it doesn't need to read it from disk, unpack it, convert it into the format the video card likes, upload it into the video card and so on... so when it skips a lot of things, you get faster load time.

The game also just sends a "reset" command to all those AI's the control NPCs, animate crowds, and so on, so it takes much less time to be ready to put control back to the player.

 

Think of a save file as  just a log of what happened since the player entered each level he played so far.

The game knows a default state of the level, a blank state when you enter a level for the first time, and then the save file contains notes about what changed so far in the level.

It will say stuff like "glass window" changed state from normal to "broken"  after player shot a bullet through a window, it will also say "create object "glass shards on floor" at location x,y which is in front of the glass window" , 

A save will also store info about where the NPCs that move around in the map are located, if their position is different than the startup position, it will say what answers they gave, what wasn't asked, so if the NPCs have a tree of questions and answers you can resume interrogating the NPC and he behaves correctly.

 

So after a save is loaded, the game simply has to reset everything to the original positions defined in the "game level" file, and then go through the notes in the save and reposition NPCs, create some objects if needed (broken glass shards on floor, broken chair, damaged crates/barrels,  whatever)

 

I think the first too phrase is confusing, I think you mean start a new one vs a save file.

[We Didnt_t start_the_fire]

On 11/14/2020 at 12:45 AM, lansing said:

So the startup should be very fast and the reason that it took like 50 seconds was because they want to show all the developer logos?

Not necessarily, basically depending on the game and size of the save file to have all that data, in which your actual game seize in the SSD space will take more space practically. You may see it in Windows at times the game get larger overtime with saves, especially over older games whiteout a launcher and not having an proper interface. Most cases in modern game sand consoles, the engagement level of the SSD space and actually ram too is less than actual usage, because they need it reserved for those kind of functionality or some game offer in game capture outside the OS. 

 

It is not just the dev logo, it have to run all the game check and loading Ui, with pre-testing and pre-checklist of everything. Engage the different firmware and API etc. The save file already have all those data and can just go and fetch the assets and textures. Basically the save file already contain all the addresses of the packets and protocol sequence it needed. All the links for the datas if you will, while the pipeline is already established. 

 

Not saying it couldn't be more faster cold boot, either with optimization, larger save files(for save files launch), or a more dramatic paradigm shift to more parallel programing while related but separate function of loading more things with the GPU(already seeing it taking shape but it is just the beginning with SAM or Direct storage). On the hardware side, better CPU or SSD and compression scheme in that order, albeit mostly for the first two two option it is more a tossed up depending on the game. With a slight advantage yet to the order listed them, but it simply won't make up more than 2.5G of speed difference.

 

Side note: intended for a quick bracket but was getting long for the launcher one (I am sure this take aback a lot of us that is getting rather used to launchers, find the correct files in file manager, still doing it for molded games/settings though, scroll down to the app/game and start it. Haven't done too much lately because of convenience with what we have now).

[We Didnt_t start_the_fire]

On 11/14/2020 at 12:45 AM, lansing said:

So the startup should be very fast and the reason that it took like 50 seconds was because they want to show all the developer logos?

 

On 11/14/2020 at 12:49 AM, mariushm said:

When you load a save for the first time, the game has to load a lot of textures and other things the video card needs to create the picture in the game. The game also loads sound effects, background music, subtitles if you have captioning on and other things.

The game also launches its own basic AI to control NPCs, to animate crowds in the game and so on.

 

When you load a save file,  the game knows those textures, those sound effects, that background music is already loaded ... or most of it, because with some video cards not all the stuff can fit within the video card, so the game, as you move through the map or go into new locations,  will throw out some textures and load new relevant textures from disk. 

Basically, when you reload a save file, if you're in the same level, the game already has most of the stuff needed in memory, so it doesn't need to read it from disk, unpack it, convert it into the format the video card likes, upload it into the video card and so on... so when it skips a lot of things, you get faster load time.

The game also just sends a "reset" command to all those AI's the control NPCs, animate crowds, and so on, so it takes much less time to be ready to put control back to the player.

 

Think of a save file as  just a log of what happened since the player entered each level he played so far.

The game knows a default state of the level, a blank state when you enter a level for the first time, and then the save file contains notes about what changed so far in the level.

It will say stuff like "glass window" changed state from normal to "broken"  after player shot a bullet through a window, it will also say "create object "glass shards on floor" at location x,y which is in front of the glass window" , 

A save will also store info about where the NPCs that move around in the map are located, if their position is different than the startup position, it will say what answers they gave, what wasn't asked, so if the NPCs have a tree of questions and answers you can resume interrogating the NPC and he behaves correctly.

 

So after a save is loaded, the game simply has to reset everything to the original positions defined in the "game level" file, and then go through the notes in the save and reposition NPCs, create some objects if needed (broken glass shards on floor, broken chair, damaged crates/barrels,  whatever)

 

1 minute ago, We Didnt_t start_the_fire said:

Not necessarily, basically depending on the game and size of the save file to have all that data, in which your actual game seize in the SSD space will take more space practically. You may see it in Windows at times the game get larger overtime with saves, especially over older games whiteout a launcher and not having an proper interface. Most cases in modern game sand consoles, the engagement level of the SSD space and actually ram too is less than actual usage, because they need it reserved for those kind of functionality or some game offer in game capture outside the OS. 

 

It is not just the dev logo, it have to run all the game check and loading Ui, with pre-testing and pre-checklist of everything. Engage the different firmware and API etc. The save file already have all those data and can just go and fetch the assets and textures. Basically the save file already contain all the addresses of the packets and protocol sequence it needed. All the links for the datas if you will, while the pipeline is already established. 

 

Not saying it couldn't be more faster cold boot, either with optimization, larger save files(for save files launch), or a more dramatic paradigm shift to more parallel programing while related but separate function of loading more things with the GPU(already seeing it taking shape but it is just the beginning with SAM or Direct storage). On the hardware side, better CPU or SSD and compression scheme in that order, albeit mostly for the first two two option it is more a tossed up depending on the game. With a slight advantage yet to the order listed them, but it simply won't make up more than 2.5G of speed difference.

 

Side note: intended for a quick bracket but was getting long for the launcher one (I am sure this take aback a lot of us that is getting rather used to launchers, find the correct files in file manager, still doing it for molded games/settings though, scroll down to the app/game and start it. Haven't done too much lately because of convenience with what we have now).

 

TL:TR

My post was intended to be an tl:dr and some small clarification (simply it, less technical) since @mariushmexplain it pretty well. It just ballooned. 

SO here is the TL:TR

 

It is not just the dev logo that tis intended to stretch the time, it have to run all the game check and loading Ui, with pre-testing and pre-checklist of everything. Much like a pre-flight check list. Planning the route(takes way more time then you may think, everything have to be calculated), get approval and everything else.

 

• Back to the game, game need to engage the different firmware and API, most importantly establish links between data, the pipeline and the data addresses, register them, check for corruption etc.

 

• The save file already have all those data and can just go and fetch the assets and textures. Which it already have the route for them, no need to look for them over the SSD. Think of the Win file manager search function, slow if you don't know the directory already
  
   
• Basically the save file already contain all the addresses of the packets and protocol sequence it needed. All the links for the datas if you will, while the pipeline is already established. 

 

 

[We Didnt_t start_the_fire]

On 11/13/2020 at 11:54 PM, lansing said:

I was watching this video about load time comparison on Assassin's Creed Valhalla and the load time from game startup to the main menu was significantly longer than loading into a save from the main menu. The latter only took 16 second while the former took more than 50 seconds.

 

Does the game startup actually require more data load than loading into a save file?

 

 

I just watched the full video cause I am curious, and it does confirm my thoughts  though separately that PS5 graphics and smoothness of time frame with the visible tearing look weaker and a bit weaker respectively. With respect to the loading, water usually take a bit longer to load since there loading point is different, with everything PS5 should have an 25-30 sec or less advantage in cold boot. About 30-40%faster depending on game, usually the odd games will have smaller XSX time because of faster CPU and memory.

[lansing]

21 hours ago, We Didnt_t start_the_fire said:

I just watched the full video cause I am curious, and it does confirm my thoughts  though separately that PS5 graphics and smoothness of time frame with the visible tearing look weaker and a bit weaker respectively. With respect to the loading, water usually take a bit longer to load since there loading point is different, with everything PS5 should have an 25-30 sec or less advantage in cold boot. About 30-40%faster depending on game, usually the odd games will have smaller XSX time because of faster CPU and memory.

There is this video of the PC version of the game where the uploader hacked away all the logo animation and it turned out only taking 15 seconds to get into the main menu, with his SSD transferring at 390 MB/s max. So it's relatively safe to say now that all those logo animations on all the platforms were just there for displaying purpose, not to buy time for data loading.