When there will be only one loading sequence in games?

[Duralux for Durabux]

If there is one thing that no one supports is to wait. Everytime, there is a loading screen , and it's a huge amount of time lost.I wonder how many time of my life i have lost in those god damn loading screens.
enter a new area -> loading screen
Fast travel -> loading screen
Everything -> loading screen
Witcher 3 is the only game that reduces loading times the maximum they could as far as i remember. Bethesda is the worst exemple in this section.
Imagine a game with only 1 short loading time and other loadings are instantenous. No time lost , full time used on the game.

 

[Arbiter]

If there is one thing that no one supports is to wait. Everytime, there is a loading screen , and it's a huge amount of time lost.I wonder how many time of my life i have lost in those god damn loading screens.
enter a new area -> loading screen
Fast travel -> loading screen
Everything -> loading screen
Witcher 3 is the only game that reduces loading times the maximum they could as far as i remember. Bethesda is the worst exemple in this section.
Imagine a game with only 1 short loading time and other loadings are instantenous. No time lost , full time used on the game.

That's how properly implemented open world games work - assets are streamed in the background as you traverse the world. Loading screens are only required when you start the game or "teleport" to a new area, e.g. use fast travel.

We will eventually reach a phase when there will not be any noticeable improvement in graphics and it will be difficult to justify increasing installation sizes of games.

We will probably never reach a phase when developers start caring about optimization again. Quality of education is decreasing everywhere. In 90's developers could use primitive tools to built games running well on meagre hardware of that era and with reasonably few bugs. Nowadays developers are struggling to implement basic features like save games even with off the self engines at their disposals.

 

[Butter]

Have you played the Thief games?

 

[Bester]

PS5's architecture gets rid of loading times. So, the answer is very soon.

 

[Falksi]

This is one of the reasons I still play games from the 8 & 16-bit eras. No load, no faff.

 

[Norfleet]

Loading screens are the result of the game failing to predict what the player is going to need next, before the player needs it. Most games just plain don't try. Fast travel, however, would be a very hard one to predict because the player could potentially end up anywhere at the drop of a hat that way. If the game were able to accurately predict what the player was going to need next, though, those resources would have been loaded BEFORE the player actually needs them and thus be ready to go.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Loading screens in the ol' days used to give me a dopamine shot. Nowadays they just accelerate my aging process.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Dungeon Siege

 

[DraQ]

Let's see...
TES games (at least the ones I played for any amount of time - Daggerfall, Morrowind, Skyrim - note: I am suppressing my Oblivion memories as we speak) do pretty good job minimizing loading.
Yes, they technically have loading screens, but they only happen very briefly when entering cells or traveling large distances in unpredictable directions (fast travel). Or (especially in Morrowind where you COULD do some mental stuff) when outrunning game's streaming of content (for example when using Icarian Flight scrolls).

Frontier Elite 2 (1993) didn't have any loading screens despite giving you entire galaxy to explore, pulling no punches in regards to scale AND running on a fucking toaster.

Procedural generation games (like Frontier and Daggerfall) tend to do a better job at that as they have to pull less data from slow storage media.

Anyway, the gain from loading screens is that you don't need your entire game to fit in your memory AND you don't need to provide hard guarantees regarding where player might be next.
So, my guess is post-singularity infomorph era - even if there are loading screens game could just suspend you until it loads.

 

[Baron Dupek]

I can smell someone played too much Beth's garbage...

Anyway - FROM Software King's Field&Shadow Tower& Souls games fit the bill? KF and ShT were PS1 titles.
They made some sacrifices - mind numbing slow movement speed, limited AI (with exception of bosses, maybe), short line of sight etc.

 

[MapMan]

Nu-God of War has 0 loading screens (besides the initial game load) but that is only possible because the game is really linear and areas are streamed in during lengthy in-engine cutscenes. With things such as teleportation or fast travel it's pretty much impossible to avoid loading screens unless everything is in memory, which won't happen any time soon. Nonetheless, loading screens can be cleverly hidden - e.g. when you trigger a fast travel, a teleportation animation can play, with the world around you dissolving and then a different location materialising. Things like that have been widely used in space games where you jump from one location to another, where you are temporarily in a worm hole or something like that, when loading finishes you get out on the other end at your destination.

 

[DraQ]

Procedural generation games (like Frontier and Daggerfall) tend to do a better job at that as they have to pull less data from slow storage media.

Actually, Daggerfall is entirely pre-generated.

But is it actually stored or just generated from fixed seed?

 

[DraQ]

They made some sacrifices - mind numbing slow movement speed, limited AI (with exception of bosses, maybe).

Looks so worth it.

 

[Duralux for Durabux]

I had skyrim on PS3 (yeah shame on me ), and it was atrocious, the game took forever to load a basic house or Whiterun. Does it take that much memory to have everything in memory ? If there is a developer who can share his knowledges about this, it will be cool.
Morrowind has many loading times but they are very very short but there nonetheless.

I can smell someone played too much Beth's garbage...

Anyway - FROM Software King's Field&Shadow Tower& Souls games fit the bill? They made some sacrifices - mind numbing slow movement speed, limited AI (with exception of bosses, maybe).

Bloodborne's(and Dark souls too even on PC) loading times are more than one(for Dark souls 3 mostly because of fast travel) and are very long even with the patch.
Pillars of eternity's loading times take forever too even on PC.

 

[Arbiter]

Have you played the Thief games?

Thief does have a loading screen, at least when playing NewDark with HD texture pack. The loading times in the original version are not noticeable on modern hardware as the game was designed for 32 MB of RAM - that amount is next to nothing nowadays, even without an SSD.

 

[JarlFrank]

lengthy in-engine cutscenes

Those are even worse than loading screens.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

what's a 'loading screen'?
get an nvme ssd you plebs

 

[Arbiter]

lengthy in-engine cutscenes

Those are even worse than loading screens.

It gets worse: unskippable logos when starting a game.

 

[Butter]

Have you played the Thief games?

Thief does have a loading screen, at least when playing NewDark with HD texture pack. The loading times in the original version are not noticeable on modern hardware as the game was designed for 32 MB of RAM - that amount is next to nothing nowadays, even without an SSD.

I don't see why modern games can't learn a thing or two from Thief. You have huge levels like The Mage Towers with no loading screens whatsoever, and the cost is just low poly graphics.

 

[Arbiter]

Have you played the Thief games?

Thief does have a loading screen, at least when playing NewDark with HD texture pack. The loading times in the original version are not noticeable on modern hardware as the game was designed for 32 MB of RAM - that amount is next to nothing nowadays, even without an SSD.

I don't see why modern games can't learn a thing or two from Thief. You have huge levels like The Mage Towers with no loading screens whatsoever, and the cost is just low poly graphics.

Graphics sell games, hence emphasis on high res textures and detailed models. Albo declining skills of developers.

 

[Butter]

Have you played the Thief games?

Thief does have a loading screen, at least when playing NewDark with HD texture pack. The loading times in the original version are not noticeable on modern hardware as the game was designed for 32 MB of RAM - that amount is next to nothing nowadays, even without an SSD.

I don't see why modern games can't learn a thing or two from Thief. You have huge levels like The Mage Towers with no loading screens whatsoever, and the cost is just low poly graphics.

Graphics sell games, hence emphasis on high res textures and detailed models. Albo declining skills of developers.

It'd be a gambit, but I'd love to see AAA devs say "fuck photorealism, we can save millions of dollars and make something that stands out from all the other AAA games and performs beautifully, even on consoles".

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Have you played the Thief games?

Thief does have a loading screen, at least when playing NewDark with HD texture pack. The loading times in the original version are not noticeable on modern hardware as the game was designed for 32 MB of RAM - that amount is next to nothing nowadays, even without an SSD.

I don't see why modern games can't learn a thing or two from Thief. You have huge levels like The Mage Towers with no loading screens whatsoever, and the cost is just low poly graphics.

Graphics sell games, hence emphasis on high res textures and detailed models. Albo declining skills of developers.

It'd be a gambit, but I'd love to see AAA devs say "fuck photorealism, we can save millions of dollars and make something that stands out from all the other AAA games and performs beautifully, even on consoles".

There's plenty of non-photo realistic AAA games. Maybe you've heard of this game called "Fortnite"? I've heard it has a few players.

 

[Butter]

Have you played the Thief games?

Thief does have a loading screen, at least when playing NewDark with HD texture pack. The loading times in the original version are not noticeable on modern hardware as the game was designed for 32 MB of RAM - that amount is next to nothing nowadays, even without an SSD.

I don't see why modern games can't learn a thing or two from Thief. You have huge levels like The Mage Towers with no loading screens whatsoever, and the cost is just low poly graphics.

Graphics sell games, hence emphasis on high res textures and detailed models. Albo declining skills of developers.

It'd be a gambit, but I'd love to see AAA devs say "fuck photorealism, we can save millions of dollars and make something that stands out from all the other AAA games and performs beautifully, even on consoles".

There's plenty of non-photo realistic AAA games. Maybe you've heard of this game called "Fortnite"? I've heard it has a few players.

I don't know what that is. I was thinking about the usual suspects who release the same game year after year.

 

[Tacgnol]

Aside from a couple of games, I haven't found loading times noticeable since the advent of SSDs.

 

[cvv]

Afaik Gothic 3 was the first open world RPG without a single loading screen. From the first second in the game you could go absolutely anywhere in the world, with zero loading. Not even fast travel used loading screens, the game only kindda froze for two seconds. Plus the graphics looked better than Skyrim that came out 5 years later.

The only small downside was only like 70% of the game was actually finished.