Long loading

Development Programming & Scripting
1

Hi all!
After a little work on the game, it began to load for a very long time. Even in the editor.

Having sorted it out a bit, I realized that without a character the world loads quickly, so the point is in the character. I took all the assets from it with a test, and the load became faster, but all the same - long. Help find a mistake, what can it be?

  • too many assets? it’s more than 300 include clothes, weapon, accessories etc. Also all it packed to different arrays. Can common number of assets attach character with someway?
  • Is it materials? So, Each asset has material. In my case it 1k textures+N+G+S, no any setups., but i didn’t create material instances. Using materials without instances can be reason of long loading?

Edit: Long loading happen only with the first start. Next, if i stop the game and start again, the loading is quick. With long loading i mean 8-10 min. Quick - few seconds.

2

To my wonder, after i ckeck all characters bp - loading time come faster, from 10 min to 20 sec. So, i suppose all data from char’s bp hit to the buffer, and now loading properly.
Who has experience tuning the UE4 buffer, to make loading faster?:slight_smile:

3

Also i notice that blueprints that I didn’t open for about a month now open for 5 minutes. Even simple, like bp with static mesh inside… is it normal?

4

you probably have references to other classes in your character BP. blueprint loads all references and those references load their own references. reduce them.

when the overall performance is weak, long loading for a simple BP can be normal.

having too many sublevels can also increase loading time. but I think the main reason is having a complex net of references to other BPs which may force the engine to load the whole game at startup

5

“blueprint loads all references and those references load their own references. reduce them.”
I think thats it. ll problem in my save/load characters asset system. Now it look’s like “check all assets array and get one that character wear” → “save it” ->> “check all assets array and get one that inside save file” → “load it”. Heh, thats weird :slight_smile:
So, will it be correctly to use save file as transfer? Aka: “get reference to t’shirt which weared by character” → “save it” etc.? just to avoid any asset checking.

6

tell attachments to check their own situation themselves not on behalf of one single class. it can do a trick for now.

7

link checking partially helped, I found that the character creation level (which referred to the character bp) contained about 1000+ unnecessary materials and 5000+ maps (Maya production :slight_smile:
But anyway, i still don’t understand how to remove links to character =\
How i see that: Character has inventory → inventory refers to assets → assets refers to properties\meshes\materials\etc. and then next web of references. Realy don’t see the logical way to avoid this…

8

if I were you I would start a new project to practice inventory system only without any other gameplay feature. I think your project has become dirty and out of your control. if it is not a serious commercial project put it away and start a new one

9

thanks, man)) let it be plan C :slight_smile:
Anyway, i found main problem of long loading - this is an tons of assets. Now they are stores in arrays, inside character bp. Now I’m looking for where else they can be stored

10

KK, solved, that was my local problem)

Update: after script and garbage cleaning - there still was something wrong. The cause of the trouble was in Windows 10. After installing 7th all flies fast like bullet

11

the result will be the same as long as you store and load that array in a BP class.

I said before that you must want every entity to calculate and report and save its own situation.

or you must change the entire system.

you can use some code names to know what items are in inventory instead of using a reference to every item.