Hi I am developing an Space Shooter, and am in the stage where i make my Startup Menu and so on. Now i want to know, what is better : 1. Loading all Data at the beginning of the Game or 2. Loading everything at the beginning of an Mission. Lars

You should try to minimize the amount of time the player has to wait for the game to load. Why not create a thread that loads the game data while the player is in the start menu?

For some reason I find myself more annoyed with games that take a long time loading before the startmenu appears, than with games that load before each mission. It may have something to do with the fact that it is more common to load before the mission and not before the startmenu.

I think its better to have the game load up real fast, but have the mission load up slightly slower. I guess this is because people like to anticipate the action (usually this is before a mission in any game starts), and the longer the wait there (not that waiting forever is a good thing), will build up their anticipation, while waiting for the game to load while staring at Windows insn''t too good
also, i think that many people get their first impressions on a game the first time they load it and what they see once it starts. if it takes almost no time to load at the beginning, then thats their first impression and they have that "zero-loadtime" mindset from there on out!

Besides from just what the user sees it also depends on how large your levels or missions are if they are so large they wiegh down ram and slow the computer then load them individually, if the levels are small and there arent too many of them then loading at the begining isnt a bad thing as long as its not like a 3 min wait
Just my opinion

Thanks all

I think i go with short starting time, and try to load some Things in an extra Thread when at Main Screen.

Lars

You should load the mission data at the beginning of a mission because so you could implement the possibility to load other missions when you''re in the startup menu.

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GA

hi

Yes of course the Mission Data itself can only be loaded, when it is clear what should be there, but there are so many Objects, that appear in every mission, like textures for explosions and so on.

Lars

I think you should use a loading screen with some cool graphics when the game starts and load global game data there.

/Pelle

it depends...i would rather wait an extra few secoonds on mission start then negotiate a choppy menu system. how long of a loading time are we talking here? like a minute?

for a small game a minute seems lie a LONG time...

At the Moment the loading time isn''t that long, when i load all Objects, that i modeled yet, then it takes about 15 Seconds, but there are coming more

Lars