How does your loading bar load?

[battlezoby]

When dropping down into someone else's game, my bar
ussually goes to about 97% really fast, than take a few
minutes, about several hundred times as long as
the initial progress, to load those last pixels.

Sometimes the last two pixels take as long as the last 15,
and the rest are rounding error.

[Lord Of War]

Originally posted by battlezoby:

How does your loading bar load?

I usually start with warm up plates 25kg x2, then add 15kg x2, followed with 10 x2 and final 5s x2. I like to keep my dwarf deadlift in shape.

[Sea Base]

Originally posted by Lord Of War:

Originally posted by battlezoby:

How does your loading bar load?

I usually start with warm up plates 25kg x2, then add 15kg x2, followed with 10 x2 and final 5s x2. I like to keep my dwarf deadlift in shape.

HR approves of maintaining good lifting technique, it reduces work place injuries from picking up all those chunks of minerals and gold.

[Chibbity]

It fills up, them the game loads.

[Zargothrax]

Loading bars have always been arbitrary, they can get a somewhat close approximation of how much data has actually been loaded but it's usually never accurate. Theoretically it's possible but there are simply too many factors to consider.

You ever see a loading bar go backwards before?

[Sokaku]

I suspect the first main chunk is relevant to your machine as you get the level seed from the host and your PC renders the cave generation. so if you have a beefy pooter, that first bit is quick, other players that have a couch-potato pooter take longer. The last "bit" that takes a while longer is your game synchronizing with the host. When dropping in the drop pod that will be rendering terrain destruction for the pod landing and syncing locations for spawned bugs. When you drop in via a reinforcement pod it will sync all terrain destruction, bugs, platforms etc. The more that has gone on and the more load the host's machine and network are under, the longer that final bit takes.

I suspect the bar going backwards occurring sometimes when dropping in a drop pod may be due to a validation step by the host where part of a terrain generation gets scrubbed and rebuilt so the same updated gen goes to the clients. If your local rendering/gen has passed that point it backtracks to reflect the remaining regeneration.

Even so there are "glitches" where actions taken by players over a small window of time may not be fully synchronized. (likely dependent on the host's connection speed) These can be "ghost" glyphids, bugs that are dead but rendered as alive until they despawn, mineral veins and such where the terrain is modified but some of the minerals still appear but are unminable.

[Jimmy Hunter]

Originally posted by Zargothrax:

You ever see a loading bar go backwards before?

In this game? All the time. Especially if loading into a mission that's already had some mining done to the cave. Drilldozer is a great example of causing this to happen.

[Lord-Knight Fandragon]

I love the backwards loading......

I often watch the loading bar of me and others joining me, go forward, then it goes backwards before finishing loading.

[76561199455560242]

I'm guessing the last bit is network related, which is impossible to actually estimate. The greatest minds have tried to make accurate loading bars and failed time and time again, most games don't even have a progress bar.

[Maximum stupidity]

what? It goes from left to right, I guess. But why this question?

[battlezoby]

Originally posted by Maximum stupidity:

what? It goes from left to right, I guess. But why this question?

Sorry, it was meant for more observant people. For example, but by no means limited to, Lord-Knight Fandragon who noticed that his goes right to left as well as left to right.

Originally posted by Lord-Knight Fandragon:

I love the backwards loading......

I often watch the loading bar of me and others joining me, go forward, then it goes backwards before finishing loading.

[battlezoby]

I just noticed my loading bar jump backwards for the first time.

Huge jump to left too... which is kind of hard to justify because I WAS PLAYING SOLO. If there was someone else, sure, there could be unexpected issues with other players connections or activity, but solo, there shouldn't any surprises.

[Sokaku]

Originally posted by battlezoby:

I just noticed my loading bar jump backwards for the first time.

Huge jump to left too... which is kind of hard to justify because I WAS PLAYING SOLO. If there was someone else, sure, there could be unexpected issues with other players connections or activity, but solo, there shouldn't any surprises.

Cave gen checks may have triggered a regeneration. My guess would be they run a generation then have specific checks for problematic generation issues and if these get flagged some varying degree of the cave gets regenerated.

if (cave_Is_Fubar) goto 10;

[Cor.]

Originally posted by Sokaku:

Originally posted by battlezoby:

I just noticed my loading bar jump backwards for the first time.

Huge jump to left too... which is kind of hard to justify because I WAS PLAYING SOLO. If there was someone else, sure, there could be unexpected issues with other players connections or activity, but solo, there shouldn't any surprises.

Cave gen checks may have triggered a regeneration. My guess would be they run a generation then have specific checks for problematic generation issues and if these get flagged some varying degree of the cave gets regenerated.

if (cave_Is_Fubar) goto 10;

Like cave gens, then mineral deposits created, then mutators, etc.

[battlezoby]

Originally posted by Sokaku:

if (cave_Is_Fubar) goto 10;

Of course, the right way to do it is to not move the solo loading bar to near the end before determining that the cave isn't fubar.

Update: Oh damn... I shouldn't have posted that. It may have been a Patent-able idea since obviously noone else thought of it.

[gary]

Generally when the game does that it indicates one of two things (in my experience):

1. There is a giant room somewhere on the map, or,
2. A person is joining the game and it's taking some time to sync the information between the clients

I've had times where both occurred at once and it took well over a minute for the map to load.