Long loading times

[Garnier]

I just reinstalled MTW after a while, and I've noticed that loading screens take 45seconds to 1 minute. Is it normally like that? Its really annoying .. maybe I'm spoiled by RTW.

[Martok]

Well I know on my old PC that the game often took that long to load screens. So if your machine is somewhat older and/or has lower-end specs, it's entirely possible to have longer load times like what you've mentioned.

Otherwise, though, people have experienced problems with MTW having long loading times, even on newer/high-end machines. If this the case for you, then I suggest you check out this post I sticked to the top of the Main Hall. It includes a couple different solutions to try. And if nothing else, you can always post your problem in the Apothecary and see if the guys there can help you out.

Either way, I wish you luck!

[Garnier]

I have a fairly new computer:
A64 FX-55 2.6ghz
2GB 667mhz RAM
X1900XT

[Noir]

It sounds like there's something wrong then because i play MTW in a machine of much lower caliber and it loads in seconds.

Noir

[The Unknown Guy]

Sometimes my laptop (2.4) runs a bit slow loading, but normally it´s fast. It happens usually when I´ve multitasked, apparently some residual stuff stays in.

I also find the game slower after many many turns have passed. "Thinking" (campaign map) time increases a lot, as more provinces are involved.

[Garnier]

Sometimes my laptop (2.4) runs a bit slow loading, but normally it´s fast. It happens usually when I´ve multitasked, apparently some residual stuff stays in.

I also find the game slower after many many turns have passed. "Thinking" (campaign map) time increases a lot, as more provinces are involved.

I'm talking about loading the campaign after a battle, and loading the battle during campaign. Not the AI turns, they go pretty fast.

[Garnier]

I just tested it on my brothers computer:

512mb RAM
pentium 1.8ghz
Radeon 9200

And the loading started instantly (loading took about 10 to 15 seconds)
See, its not like the loading takes a long time, the problem is that the loading bar doesnt start to turn red for 45 seconds. Once it starts it takes about 10 or 15 seconds to load.

[Geezer57]

Try adding an empty text file named skipcredits.txt to the Medieval - Total War folder. That will stop the intro movies from running, which often speeds things up quite a lot.

[caravel]

Are you referring to the loading of the campaign map after selecting a campaign, or the loading of a battle? Check your error.log file in the MTW installation folder. If that is full of errors post them here.

[Garnier]

I know this is a severe case of posting in an old thread, but it's precisely the same topic. I'm still having the problem I posted this thread about, on the same computer.

I actually didn't see Asai Nagamasa's last post here. I just was thinking about this again and looked in this thread and saw it.

The fact is, my error.log does have an error in it. I have the log back to September 2007 when I made this thread about it.

Here is the log from that time. The log is a lot longer than this but it's the same error all the way to the present date.

Errors for session started: Thu Sep 06 15:08:24 2007

C:\Source\VikingsPatch\Crusaders_TW\main3d_1.cpp(7115) : DirectX call : DDERR_SURFACELOST
Errors for session started: Thu Sep 06 15:20:00 2007

C:\Source\VikingsPatch\Crusaders_TW\main3d_1.cpp(1929) : DirectX call : DDERR_SURFACELOST
Errors for session started: Sat Sep 08 09:22:43 2007

C:\Source\VikingsPatch\Crusaders_TW\main3d_1.cpp(1929) : DirectX call : DDERR_SURFACELOST
Errors for session started: Sat Sep 08 18:17:46 2007

C:\Source\VikingsPatch\Crusaders_TW\main3d_1.cpp(1929) : DirectX call : DDERR_SURFACELOST
Errors for session started: Mon Sep 10 10:09:33 2007

C:\Source\VikingsPatch\Crusaders_TW\main3d_1.cpp(1929) : DirectX call : DDERR_SURFACELOST
C:\Source\VikingsPatch\Crusaders_TW\main3d_1.cpp(1929) : DirectX call : DDERR_SURFACELOST
Errors for session started: Mon Sep 10 10:19:34 2007

C:\Source\VikingsPatch\Crusaders_TW\main3d_1.cpp(1929) : DirectX call : DDERR_SURFACELOST
C:\Source\VikingsPatch\Crusaders_TW\main3d_1.cpp(1929) : DirectX call : DDERR_SURFACELOST
C:\Source\VikingsPatch\Crusaders_TW\main3d_1.cpp(1929) : DirectX call : DDERR_SURFACELOST
C:\Source\VikingsPatch\Crusaders_TW\main3d_1.cpp(1929) : DirectX call : DDERR_SURFACELOST
C:\Source\VikingsPatch\Crusaders_TW\main3d_1.cpp(1929) : DirectX call : DDERR_SURFACELOST

[Geezer57]

I have a fairly new computer:
A64 FX-55 2.6ghz
2GB 667mhz RAM
X1900XT

I know this is a severe case of posting in an old thread, but it's precisely the same topic. I'm still having the problem I posted this thread about, on the same computer.

I'm going from memory here, and it was quite a while ago, but I seem to remember a series of threads in the hardware section that indicated this issue was ingrained in the newer ATI Radeon series of video cards (x1800 and newer). You might check in the Apothecary or Hard-and-Software sections for more up-to-date info.

Good luck!

[caravel]

DDERR_SURFACELOST

This has something to do with alt tabbing and resolution switching. I've seen this in error.log in the past - on systems that did not exhibit the slow load screen problem.

I have the same problem with the loading bar, ultimately it stopped me playing this game as I've never found any solution (apart from pulling out my graphics card and reverting to using the crappy onboard).

[Garnier]

Do you mean that changing to the onboard graphics solved the one minute loading delay?

If it's true, could be useful for some people. I can't exactly switch cards myself, but it's good to know about.

Thank you.

[Vantek]

MTW really is pretty terrible with loading times. I think they stem from (also terrible) compatibility issues. My P4 1,7GHz laptop loads as slow as my old PIII 450MHz Riva TNT2, and another ~2GHz desktop I tried took even longer (and would occasionally crash). 45-60 seconds is actually tolerable IMO, you should be happy that you can even play the game at all considering how terrible its compatibility is :P

[Garnier]

My brother's computer which is nearly as fast as my own does not have this issue, the loading is quick (just ~5 seconds usually). It's not the computer being slow. It's not even a long loading time actually, it's a long delay before the loading begins.

[uk_john]

I have a 4850 ATI and the red loading bar take 3-5 MINUTES to load a strategic or tactical map! This despite whatever resolution I set the game or my desktop I have ended all the services, like firewall, etc and still the same! It even takes that long if i just Escape to save and then click on 'Return to game'!!!!!!!!!!!!

[The Unknown Guy]

I'm having a simmilar problem in my asus. Which is of course an improvement over the last time I tried to install MTW in it.

I sort of wonder if it's due to the external dvd drive.

[caravel]

I now suspect that this problem is somehow related to ATI HyperMemory. It mainly seems to affect the newer PCI-E, X1xxx and HD series cards.

I ran some tests yesterday by rebooting with restricted system memory. I restricted the system RAM from it's 2GB through 512MB and 256MB right down to 128MB and the loading bar delay was reduced to about 20 seconds from the usual 2 minutes, but the game was obviously unplayably slow due to lack of RAM and severe swapping to disk. I also tested running on a single CPU core and that didn't make any difference.

This could be seen as evidence of "the more system RAM you have, the worse it gets", but I think it goes further than this. Personally I have a hunch that it's the hypermemory area allocated by the ATI driver that is somehow causing the slow loading problem with MTW (which is probably quite simply incompatible with it for whatever reason). The less system RAM you have, the less hypermemory can be allocated. In theory hypermemory should cause a problem as it's not a fixed reserve, but more a of a dynamic maximum available.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like it can be disabled or adjusted in any way - hence the problem.

I had a similar problem some years back with an Nvidia card (a 7300GT), though that was an AGP card (running in my old motherboard). I seem to remember that reducing the AGP aperture down to the minimum reduced the loading delay significantly, but I don't think it eliminated it. So it seems probable that MTW has issues with AGP Texture Acceleration/HyperMemory on certain newer graphics cards, but not with Nvidia's TurboCache?

Interestingly MTW has the AGP slider in the video options, I've never seen this make much difference, but it's absent from Shogun and that does not have this issue at all. I would guess that something CA added to the game, regarding this AGP slider, is tripping this fault.

[Wytchfynder]

I suspect Asai is onto something there. Over the years Ive owned a variety of pcs and laptops. Some would play Med1 fine, alas most wouldnt. I been hit with that Nvidia uncontrollable unit stuff which I see still remains unfixed/unpatched.
My main gaming comp pre 2009 was P4 3ghz 2gb ram, winxp and ati HD2400pro which played most games fine. Med1 though had an extremely long wait, 5 minutes, before anything started to load up and the comp sounded like it was in pain. The red bar when it did appear took maybe only 10 seconds but then was a 50/50 gamble whether it carried on or crashed.

[Garnier]

A development:

My brother recently upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7. He was having this same long loading time problem. Actually he's using the same hardware I posted at the top of this thread:
A64 FX-55 2.6ghz
2GB 667mhz RAM
X1900XT

After installing Windows 7 (64 bit), we installed MTW. And the long loading time problem is gone. The red bar starts filling instantly and only takes 5-10 seconds to finish.

Also interesting: the first time he ran the game, we hadn't actually installed it, I simply copied the game from my computer. So it had the same settings as I use on mine, including 1280x1024 campaign map res. It actually loaded the campaign map fine and seemed to be working, apart from problems with the mods I had.

Then after he installed it fresh from the discs, it crashes when he runs any campaign map res above 800x600. This is fishy, because obviously 1280x1024 CAN work on his computer as evidenced by our first try. Some other setting combined with that must be causing the crash!

I still am on XP with a similar machine (including X1900XT), and still getting the long loading times. I tried disabling ATI Shared Memory in ATI Traytools but that didn't change anything for me.

[caravel]

Still looks like an AGP/PCI-E driver or GART issue. AGP or PCI-E cards?

XP had some AGP issues, mostly with Nvidia drivers, which have been fixed in Vista/7.

[Garnier]

Both are PCI-E. We have the exact same video card, the only difference would be Win7 vs XP, and the different drivers we're using.

[caravel]

Same driver versions, exact same settings?

If so then the Windows XP AGP/PCI-E GART driver still looks like the likely culprit.

[Garnier]

Same driver versions, exact same settings?

Yes.

So what do you think the verdict is? Upgrade to Win7 or change graphics card is the only option?

[caravel]

What about motherboard chipset drivers - tried updating those?