Problems with loading and lag. Help please.

[Kiamarra]

Recently, I and a few others have had some MAJOR problems with loading lag. When I port someplace, if often takes 10~15 minutes for everything to load, not to mention the long while it takes for even my character to appear. The screen goes black for awhile, then the buildings and landing pad load, then eventually the ground loads. It has occasonally caused the game to crash even. I only have this problem when porting, if I fly someplace everything loads like it did a few days ago-fast-so I have been flying my way around, and I must say, no matter how much I love flying, it's getting rather..time-consuming. It also takes forever for my animations to load; the first day this started happening it took a good 20 minutes for my animations to fully function.
And as I said, this has only been happening recently, I did not have this problem before. A few of my friends are experiencing this as well.

EDIT: agh, somebody move this please -_- Dunno how that happened.

[Sindala]

when your next in-game try -
/setpref useloadingscreen false

this will normally speed things up between ports. also try turning down your view distance on the settings, as when you port it will load huge amounts of land you cant even see if its set to high for your comp to cope with.

oh, sorry if you have allready done these, its late here and they are all i can think of now.

[Kiamarra]

I have done that already, been like that before this all started happening. :P But thanks anyways. ^^

[Steelclaw]

Load performance and port times depend on your hardware as well as your network connection. 10-15min for a port is a bit long, so there's definitely something weird going on. How about answering some questions?

First, tell me a bit about your computer. How much ram does it have? What CPU? How much disk space is free?

Second, describe the initial load time. How long does the rectangular splash screen stay up before the big game window opens?

Third, what kind of internet connection do you have? (dial-up? cable? dsl?...)

Fourth, is your computer on a LAN of some sort? (How does it connect to the cable modem / dsl modem?)

[Kiamarra]

Load performance and port times depend on your hardware as well as your network connection. 10-15min for a port is a bit long, so there's definitely something weird going on. How about answering some questions?

First, tell me a bit about your computer. How much ram does it have? What CPU? How much disk space is free?

Second, describe the initial load time. How long does the rectangular splash screen stay up before the big game window opens?

Third, what kind of internet connection do you have? (dial-up? cable? dsl?...)

Fourth, is your computer on a LAN of some sort? (How does it connect to the cable modem / dsl modem?)

Free space-95.5GB and total size is 111GB.
RAM..not sure how to check that, can you tell me how?
CPU is a dell, with windows XP.

As for load time, not very long..3 minutes at the most.

But this just started happening recently.

[Steelclaw]

The ram can be found in the system properties window, use winkey+break, or right click on 'my computer' and hit properties, or start menu -> control panel -> system.

The cpu is not a Dell. It's probably going to be made by Intel or AMD. (this information is also in the system properties window)

The initial load time is about right. 1-3 minutes is fine. This means your disk is probably not bad. (A failing hard disk will seriously slow things down.)

Which brings me to your network connection. See items three and four.

[Kiamarra]

The ram can be found in the system properties window, use winkey+break, or right click on 'my computer' and hit properties, or start menu -> control panel -> system.

The cpu is not a Dell. It's probably going to be made by Intel or AMD. (this information is also in the system properties window)

The initial load time is about right. 1-3 minutes is fine. This means your disk is probably not bad. (A failing hard disk will seriously slow things down.)

Which brings me to your network connection. See items three and four.

Ah, got it. 1.0 GB of RAM, cpu is intel.

My connection is..broadband/DSL I think its called, provider is comcast.

Connected wirelessly, LAN I think.

[Steelclaw]

Ah. Now it gets interesting.

1GB ram is a bit on the low side. It won't hurt to bump that up to 2. That's not going to help you with this problem, but it will help with your overall performance. Let me know if this sounds interesting.

Your internet connection is over DSL and your LAN is wireless. There's nothing /wrong/ with that, although both are more sensitive to interference than hard-wired connections. Anyway. The next step is to see what your network connection is like.

Next time you have trouble porting, immediately perform the 'ping' test listed at post #6 in this thread:

http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=17754

(read it now and go ahead and to a practice run or two so you're comfortable doing it)

[Arietna]

I'd change the wireless for wired straight away. Use a dLAN if your computer is not located next to the router/modem.

That way you get less packet loss, more security, and no microwaves filling your house

[AmonGwareth]

Have you defragmented your harddrive recently? If not, you should do that as the client hits the harddrive a lot so a fragmented drive can slow it down.

It could also be corrupt sector files and its having to reload them each time. You might consider making a backup of your world cache (separate from your horizons install) and then deleting the world cache (not the backup). You will experience longer load times the first time you visit a location, but it should be quicker each time after that.

Amon

[gopher65]

Once again, I'll also say that this is exactly the symptom that some people get from the combination of HZ and funky Creative sound card drivers. That might not be the problem, but it can't hurt to disable your soundcard just once. If it fixes it, then you know what the problem is. If nothing happens, then you know the problem is elsewhere.

I myself didn't have this problem for years (though others with the same equipment reported the problem during that time), and then one day, poof, it appeared. I disabled my same, old soundcard, and the problem went away.

[Kiamarra]

Managed to fix it, tried turning off my anti-virus program and voila! back to normal :P

Definately going to defrag though, haven't in awhile.
But thanks everyone, for the help ^^

[Justa Mirage]

Kiamarra, I can't post exact details but if you feel unsafe about turing off anti-virus all together, this is what I have done:

Find (using RTS 'real time scanning') section of your anti virus (if it's Symantec, this is where it would be)

Find the "exceptions" area of the options for the RTS scan

Find the "Horizons" folder path (C:\program files\artifact entertainment) it could be a different drive letter, or "Tulga games" etc for the directory your game is in. Put that path into the exceptions list so your anti virus program won't RTS scan any files in that folder.

Voila! same results, but your AV is still working.