Hi, I started a new project, with 2 maps (menu and game), I packaged the project only for testing using .pak and defined to package only both maps, then packaged for win64, when finished, I rebooted my PC, double clicked the game icon and… 30 seconds watching a black screen with my cursor over it, after that long time it finally started my menu map.
Considering both maps have little or no content and the game level is just the first person example map, the content library does have a lot of content but I haven’t done anything yet as I started this new project today, why does it takes 30 seconds for UE4 packaged games to launch? In fact I thought the game might have crashed because I could see this full black screen and just hover over it, until it suddenly started, then I tried again, exited, rebooted, and the same 30 second black screen. I though it might have been a binaries issue, but i tried on 2 different PC´s, and it was the same issue.
Your project is small 30 sec is fast mine is like 1-2 min of blackscreen… in standalone mode, sometime it take like 5 min to load the game. i aren’t figured out yet what im gonna do with this but i think a workaround to try is to load your game in a blank map with just a picture to show something before loading your game. Im not sure if its gonna work but you can give it a try. if its not working maybe with c++ it can be achieved. let me know if it work… if not im gonna try to get this done this week.
Right-click on the maps and check out the size viewer. If you have any referenced assets that are multiple hundred MBs, try to remove those references or ideally, streamline the referenced assets.
If there are no referenced assets that are large, then I’m not sure what the problem could be. It’s usually about 5 seconds for my game to load, straight into a level with a LOT of static meshes, textures and other things. Standalone takes a little under 30 seconds, but there is still room for optimization on my part.
thanks Brahoule, indeed, my first map it´,s an empty level with a simple image and menus
What happens, is that when i launch my packaged project for Win64, and click the icon of the “game” and this 30 seconds black screen finishes doing anything… what it loads first is my main menu map, wich only has a background dark picture and a UI with menus, it is not a hudge map to take 30 seconds to load, but also that level BP has almost nothing… then after pressing in the UI “play” that´s when it loads the game map, wich is as heavy as an example map LOL, it really has nothing either and it loads faster than the time the game takes to launch… so waiting 30 seconds with a black screen for the first menu map its weird, because my menu map has simple stuff, there is no landscapes or anything heavy, just a UI with simple buttons,
While i´m waiting in this starting 30 second black screen, i can see my cursor and move it with ease, wich means, this is a UE problem, maybe something to do with engine binaries, not a “loading” situation, because when you are really loading, cursors freeze a bit, they never move with ease during real loadings of heavy maps.
There is no optimization to apply to empty maps, this starting black screen behaves more like an issue than a “loading” process.
I quick way to diagnose that would be to hit ~ and type in loadlevel (your level name) to see if it’s actually loading or if it’s just stalling out and then defaulting your level.
The fun thing about UE though is that any hard references to an object load the entire object, so if your menu has any references to player characters or anything like that, those are all loaded with the menu.
The best way to verify whether you have any rogue references is to use the size viewer. Reference Viewer also works, but Size viewer gives you an idea of which assets are taking the longest to load.
If you have any hard references or casts, replace those with interface calls so you don’t have to load the object in question.
There is no problem with the engine… my game opens to menu on screen in 0.5 seconds.
What you actually want to do here is not randomly guessing but just run the build with load time insights enabled and see what’s happening.
ok here the result of my research; https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/…ing/index.html
Look for "Using the Event Driven Loader (EDL) and the Asynchronous Loading Thread (ALT)"
When activated, ALT doubles loading speed.
For most projects, the EDL will cut load times in half.
LOL… I don’t think anybody here is randomly guessing… All i see is a new UE user who seek a bit of help. The “build with load time insights enabled” setting doesn’t even exist in UE. If your game load in 0.5sec its because you’ve done some settings in UE that you don’t remember apparently. Just start a fresh 3rd person template compile it and open it… it gonna take few second to load and not 0.5sec like your magic version of UE.
Event Driven Loader Enabled has already a check mark in my project by default, or did you mean i should uncheck it, then check Async Thread Enable, before packaging?