To ues the loading screen or not to ues,,,

[Hellenia]

this is starting to bug me .. the loading screen are long,, very long .. and some times i get stuck in them . i'v spend some time in defraging and cleaning up the files on this old pc .. only to ahve to hard shut it down to get out of the game,,, in loading screens . and that is not a good thing. but if i have it off the world and the portels dont all ways load . the portles jsut takes a few to load up .. but the wolrd i ahve to re-log .. i know many others are haveing the same thing as i. why are the loading screen taking soo long ? i know this is a old But Still a grat game but i am hoping this wont stay like this :P its not fun waiting waiting and more waiting on the loading screens >_> and no fun when u get stick and u ahve to hard shut down the pc. :P i under stand that we have to load in files of the world and stuff .. but not every time we port . i dont know just kina wishing the loading screens dont take soo long and we dont get stuck in them :P

[LungTien Temeraire]

I don't use loading screens since I drown after having seen the game crash while flying over deep water. Also useful to remove it to prevent mobs to jump on your character while loading (like at some satyr islands' pads), and being unable to react.

[Hellenia]

had that happen b4 as well >_> not fun .. i know u wont get attcked tel u move when first time loading in .. but falling seems to make the game think u moved :P and the hell's ilands and porting in is no fun loading in dead .. i'm just getting tired of having to re-log do to me falling threw the wolrd on my by-pid . or part of the world not loading in and i ahve to re-log to fix.. uesing the loading screen soo far seems to fix it it just i get stuck in them and have to hard shut down my pc .. or the long loading screens .. but hehe i still like the little saying on the loading screens XD "keep walking little gnoom that dragon shaped shadow over u is just a cloud " hehe ..

[Raptress]

Sometimes you can fix the "world not loading" issue by clicking the X to close the game window and then mashing the Stop Action key. For whatever reason, the game will actually stop the action of closing, and in the right circumstances, unloaded terrain will suddenly start loading. Not sure if this method also works with using /quit or whatever other ways there are to exit the game.

Personally, as soon as I found out I could turn the loading screens off, they went away, and I've never used them again except to do the odd test with glitchy behavior I'm experiencing or something.

Every issue that crops up because I've turned them off has been nothing to me compared to sitting through those loading screens.

Your mileage may vary obviously since turning them off is unsupported. For instance, I really don't encounter the issues that Runos describes under this post with it off, and I cannot recall a time where using the loading screen would have made anything faster, ever. So, while Runos has a list of pros and cons and switches between the two options, my personal experience is almost all pros and I never switch.

[RuneDragoon]

Its a mixed set of pros and cons for me either way, so I'll share my experiences:

Loading screen off:
Pros!
- Often faster. I can load up and zip off.
- I can teleport to elnath and not be dead when I'm loaded!
- Dual box friendly. See below why.
Cons!
- Invokes crippling lag frequently after teleports for me.
- ^... Sometimes so bad that if I crash, I appear several ports behind where I was.
- Takes longer to spawn character if its loading tons of stuff.

Load screen on:
Pros:
- If I have been somewhere before I find it can be faster than load screen off.
- Places with lots of stuff seem to load up faster if I have been there before.
Cons:
- Not dual box friendly. If I try to change windows while a load screen is up (ie: to send second character through portal too), it throttles my machine. It doesn't even have to be another istaria window. The only way to decrease the chance of throttling is to count to five, then change windows, but its not 100%.
- VERY slow in new areas. Overall slow except in certain cases where it loads almost instantly and fuss free.
- I occasionally encounter a complete and total lock up, I guess a memory leak, where the game stops doing anything and starts nomming computer resources. I keep forgetting to grab the game log and give it to Vi to help them out.

I've been using the load screen lately as its been working faster (providing it doesn't freeze) and it is getting better over time I think. But when I want to run two characters I turn it off, no questions asked, because of the problems with completely locking up my machine for 5 to 30 seconds.

[Dhalin]

My computer must be very strange (or very powerful), because I leave my loading screens on, and have never, ever ran into a problem at all.

For reference...

CPU: AMD Phenom Quad-Core
RAM: 8GB DDR2
OS: Win7 64-bit
GPU: Radeon HD 56xx, 512MB DDR3

[Frith-Rae]

quad-core and 8 gig of ram..yup pretty powerful! AT least for most video games! The only thing that isn't powerful is the single-video card.

I've got quad core and I think 6 or 8 megs can't remember, but with dual SLI video cards. And yea I've rarely had problems with loading screens (in years anyway..) I use to play with them off sometimes but I prefer them on and so they've been on for awhile.

[Raptress]

Perhaps that explains why my loading screens have been off for years. Up until yesterday, I've been playing with 1.1 GHz single-core CPU, 2.5 GB of (old) RAM, and a GeForce 7600. :P

[Hellenia]

hmm my old hamster pc is

windows xp home edition version 2002
pack 3

Compaq Presario
AMD athlon (m) xp 3000+
217 GHz. 1.00 gb of ram <---- has 2 stick of 512 ram :P

and the g-card is
ATI radeon 9600 rosewell <-- got it from newegg.com yr's ago only was $100

i know the mainbord is about to go any time :P the compasters are not looking soo ..good .

[Shian]

As a minor addendum, there's a kind of peer pressure to not use load screens. Most players don't use them as as such can use the chat all the time. If one is stuck behind a load screen, you're 5 or 6 minutes behind the conversation.

This and the drowning issue are the reasons I don't use the load screen even knowing that I get weird issues like the world not loading properly.

[Extell]

Pray tell, how would one turn these load screens on or off? I found the article on the Wiki (http://istaria.wikia.com/wiki/Game_Settings), but when I try to type the command in game, it says its not a valid command. Am I not holding my mouth right when I type it? I got my tongue out and up, mouth flat...

P:

EDIT: I just noticed the /setpref . Mouth readjusted...Will try again when I get home :P

[hallucin8]

Hehe, yup if you type:
/setpref useloadingscreen false
that will turn off the loading screen, naturally TRUE will turn it back on. Sounds like you had your mouth positioning just right though
Just keep in mind it is not technically supported, so if you're having issues with terrain not loading etc. make sure you turn it back on for the mean time.
Good luck

[Dragonboy]

I am running on Win XP 32bit sevice pack 3.
AMD Athlon dual core 2.71GHz with 4 Gb RAM.

I can run the game highest graphics or lowest graphics on single logon without difficulty except for the loadingscreens. They always take ages for me not mattering if I already went to that place or not.

This is mostly the reason I always have the loadingscreens off. So far only 2 locations gives me problems on a regular bases like not completely loading my character or the surroundings.
It is kinda annoying to constantly having to recall to bindpoint or having to quit the game entirely because the area or character simply does not load. BTW I only have to quit the game when I went flying through the portal and something does not load (I cannot recall while flying and I cannot land because my character will not load properly).

However despite these slight issues I play without loading screens because having them active just takes too long during crafting to wait and wait.