[General] How do I preload files?

[Aeroblyctos]

Hey,

I'm creating a campaign. I heard that there is a way to load models in-game and not during loading screen. How to do that?

 

[Ezekiel12]

The best way imo is to create and remove a unit which has the model.

call RemoveUnit( CreateUnit(...) )

 

[jonhysone]

To preload models ingame and not in loading screen, you should use the event of (elapsed time is 0.00) , it will cause a lag spike in the beginning but the loading screen will be way taking shorter time
For Models :

• Game - Preload 'Your Model'

For Units/Doodads :

• Unit - Create 1 'Your Unit' in your point facing default building facing angle
• Unit - Remove (Last Create Unit)

Good luck

 

[defskull]

This determines a good map and a bad ones.

Deciding when to preload big files (such as ability level that is huge, etc).

Usually people do it in the loading screen but it will make your loading longer, therefore people would load it at start of game, but this will also stall your players (unless you have a cinematic to follow up with).

I suggest you can preload some files slowly in each phase, during in-between cinematics.
A cinematic consist of fade to black element, while fades out, preload the files.

 

[Vinz]

Or have 2 seconds at start of game dedicated to preloading stuff, then disable player control during that period.

 

[defskull]

Or yeah, like The Kingdom of Kaliron development team stated at the start of the game, it shows a Game Message of "Preloading files . . .".

That's just straight up honest.

 

[Aeroblyctos]

I don't have any idea how this works. Do I have to disable all models from loading screen or what?

 

[Vinz]

No, just preload the files. For abilities adding/removing them will remove lag on first cast.

 

[Aeroblyctos]

No, just preload the files.

This didn't help me at all. I have 0% knowledge about this. I don't even know what I'm talking about. I just heard that with these words I have put to this thread I may learn more how to reduce the laoding screen time of the campaign. Kitabatake simply wrote those first sentences of this thread.

So far I haven't learnt anything.

So far what I believe how this works is that I "remove" all models from the campaign and then one by one I add models to the campaign with triggers.

For abilities adding/removing them will remove lag on first cast.

That I have already done.

 

[edo494]

you can also preload stuff periodically, every so often. It may cause lag spikes at the beginning, but you can note that to the users too

 

[Dr Super Good]

you can also preload stuff periodically, every so often. It may cause lag spikes at the beginning, but you can note that to the users too

It will still cause performance difficulties the first time it runs and then it will simply waste system resources there after. Pre-load should only be done once per session.

 

[edo494]

if I preload so much staff that I need to spawn another thread, and it freezes the game for good 10 seconds, I can just as much split it. But yes it is not really practical, I will rather wait 10 seconds then make the game freeze every 5 seconds for 1 seconds for like 2 minutes

 

[Garfield1337]

I'm not sure, but I think Aero is asking what to remove in order to reduce campaign loading time, so that he can load whatever he has removed later, during the game.
Well, you can't really add models during game and as far as I know preloading them won't reduce your loading time, but it will remove the spike that occurs the first time models are introduced in the game.
I might be wrong here, so someone correct me if I am.

 

[Dr Super Good]

I might be wrong here, so someone correct me if I am.

Preloading will load the data and assets at that time before they become critical for the game to progress. Proper preloading like in SC2 does not stall game progression (happens in parallel) however unfortunately WC3 lacks this.

If you preload all assets at map initialization the map will take longer to load. If you pre-load them in-game then the same amount of time will be taken in game as if it was done during the load screen. It usually is better to pre-load during the load screen unless you specifically know you will not need all the assets. By staggering pre-loading you could drop it down to the odd frame lost here and there however WC3 has a very poor pre-load mechanic (like SC2, it should not alter gameplay much at all).

 

[Garfield1337]

If you preload all assets at map initialization the map will take longer to load.

I think this is what the OP is trying to avoid. Considering he barely knows anything about preloading, I don't think he's using it in his map. Actually, he probably thinks the models are preloaded during loading screen, but wants to delay this.

 

[Aeroblyctos]

Currently it takes 5 minutes to load a single chapter(map). The campaign has 1500 imported models. So I'm pretty much trying to reduce this huge loading time.

Is this even worth it?

 

[edo494]

If there is no campaign-wide importing(like you can have units), ignore what I wrote

are the models attached to the campaign? if it is so, try to splitting the models to maps that need them.

Example:

Lets say I have map A, B and C. Map A and map B uses model M1, and map A uses model M2 together with map C. It is good to place the models to campaign-wide import to safe space, but at the end, map B will also need to load M2, which it doesnt even use

 

[Dr Super Good]

It should only load imported models if they are used anyway so I fail to see how any of that would make a difference. This is obvious when it comes to map protection since then the only references to the model path are inside data itself (so how can it load model it does not know the path of?).