[!] Very slow load times

[BlueCharisma]

Sometimes when starting a game from galatic war (only mode i play) it takes a very long time to load the map. Though i just noticed this last time i started it that after it seems to stop doing anything clicking on the mouse made it load up the map right away so not sure if it will do that everytime, as the time before that clicking the mouse sent it into an unresponsive process that had to be ended via task manager.

This is a link to a dxdiag that i was asked to run in another thread
https://www.sendspace.com/file/n0st6x

[SXX]

As I expected you have AMD graphics card. There was several problems with slowing down UI by Steam when player using AMD hardware. So please check those workarounds:
1 - Try to run game without "Steam Community Overlay":
Right click the game in your Library -> Select Properties -> On the General tab, uncheck the box next to Enable Steam Community In-Game

2 - Try to run it using standalone launcher:
https://store.uberent.com/download/pa

3 - If game load still taking more than 30 seconds try to press F5. UI will be reload and if this stuck related to UI problem you'll get into the game/

Please let me know if this will help to decrease loading time.

[BlueCharisma]

Ok thanks, though i'm not sure if this is related to the update the other day as this is the first day since that update, but half the games i try to start are now ending in unresponsive process that has to be ended. I'll try without the steam overlay and then with the stand alone launcher as that will take a while to download the whole game again.

[BlueCharisma]

I tried starting 2 games and both had over 1 min load times, one was much worse than the other though the worse one had the same symptoms that happened right before it crashed earlier today so maybe those random start crashes that started after the update are done. I'm trying to the stand alone lancher next, though it did seem to freeze half way through install and i had to restart the computer, but then the lancher actually started up though i hit verify first to get it to download the actual game.

[SXX]

New update introduced massive UI changes so it's might freeze for a bit on game startup, but it's never take more than 20 seconds for me. E.g when you actually start game it's load parts of UI (about 20-25 different pieces) and spawn 20 new processes so it's can take a while.

Still 1 minute+ it's really too much and should not happen.

[BlueCharisma]

did the update have any performance changes? I just actually played through a map and got some freezing near the end which i never had a problem with before with probably 10 times the number of troops i had in this map.

[SXX]

Update have to improve performance and UI responsiveness, but for some players it's lead to more problem because UI started to use more RAM and CPU power. So it's worth to check total RAM usage because even if PA.exe only use 4-5GB there also 25-30 UI processes that can use 1GB in total (some players reported more).

Though this can be actually related to Steam version because there was problems with bad performance on Steam+AMD GPU before.

[BlueCharisma]

I just realized that very well could have happened because of hard drive delays from downloading the game through the standalone lancher at the same time, as i just had some massive ui delays once i ended the game as well. And that cleared up after it finished downloading, so i'll try a game now on there and let you know if the load times are the same.

[SXX]

Game only using HDD on startup and most likely all UI files already cached in memory when you actively play it. So it's not likely issue.

[BlueCharisma]

similar load times using stand alone lancher, and the load times were the same in steam if i turned the graphics setting to low, didn't mess with any settings in stand alone lancher version yet.

[SXX]

Thanks for testing. Let's see if there more players appear with similar issues so I can gather some data.

Just to make sure. You don't use any UI mods, correct?

[BlueCharisma]

Honestly i was unaware there were mods yet till i saw the release notes that said to turn off mods for the recent release lol. Game is completely vanilla in both steam and stand alone lancher version. Not sure if it matters but i have only launched games from galatic war.

[BlueCharisma]

Not sure if this is related but i just played a game through the steam lancher, and the game stopped responding and windows gave me an error about running out of ram but pa was only using 2 gigs and i had over 3 gigs free for use. Also not sure if this is normal but the stand alone lancher just sitting there is using 25% or more of my cpu which seems a bit excessive for a simple launcher.