Looking for infos regarding long loading times with modded games

[Kenneth]

We've recieved some reports regarding very long loading times (30+ minutes) for (heavily) modded games and we're currently investigating these reports, but we're lacking concrete reproduction info.

Everyone who is experiencing this or experienced it in the past please post your full mod list, hardware specs (CPU, Memory, HDD/SSD, OS) and your logfile (see this thread on how to get your logfile: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=513.0) in this thread.
Any other like potential leads are very well appreciated aswell!

Please enable "Verbose logging" in the settings before you post your logfile. With this setting enabled there will be additional profiling information for us to analyze. See the attached screenshot on how to enable verbose logging (enable both marked settings).

Please also make sure that you have "Run in background" enabled or keep the game window in focus while its loading. If this option is disabled and you're not having rimworld in the foreground while loading the loading process will stop entirely until you bring it into focus again.
See this post for more info: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=47478.msg449091#msg449091

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[Canute]

My longest loading time allways was with the Hardcore SK modpack. But never around 30 min.
But i could imagine with old hardware could can get this.
But this modpack don't got released for 1.0 yet, latest version was for B18.
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=12996.0

[Symile]

Having almost entirely played only with mods, I can say my load times are in order when I actually have the game in focus.
Load times tend to be 30 minutes, just cause I keep doing stuff on the side, and forget the game is inactive.

My actual load time comes down to about 7 minutes at the most, and that's with plenty of mods installed, about 50 or so last time I checked.

General Specs:
Windows 10
Intel i5-2500k
AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
16 GB of Ram

[sidfu]

for hardcore sk mod pack on the development 1.0 build  current load times on a 4ghz quad core is around 7 min. some people have around 30+ min long times
it doesn't seem to be related to cpu speed as some people said their computers are 4ghz also. but us modders know the long load times are due to the game taking ages to read the xml.

a rough rundown of my load times over past few updated
this all with same computer
a16 2-3min
a17 3-4min a bit more mods than a16
a18 5-10min. amount of mod is actually half what a17 was
1.0 7-15min. even less mods now than b18 and still longer load times for the amount of mods.

the load times got higher as more of my mods are now xml based over dll based.

intel I7-6700k 4ghz
64gb of ram
windows 10
geforce 1080 8gb founders edition vid card

[Ashnal]

I've had this issue while trying to cook up my perfect mod cocktail. I have a bad tendency to grab a lot of small tweak mods and only a few content mods to ensure no overlap. I've also been working on my own mod which is in here as well.

That said, I'm at 282 mods, you can find the list in the modlist.txt

This set of mods takes ~20 minutes to load to the main menu.

CPU: i7 6700k @ 4.5 GHz
RAM: 32 GB DDR4 @ 3000 MHz
SSD: Samsung  850 EVO 1TB
OS: Windows 10

EDIT: I had Run in background enabled for this, and the game was in the background while I was browsing the internet. Also, I'll have to look at that network adapter disable fix. I have 8 network adapters between Ethernet, WiFi, VPNs, and WMware.

EDIT 2: Re-loaded with verbose logging. Forgot to time it, but it felt similarly long. Only changed my loaded mods a little bit.

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[Mehni]

One dumb thing:

When the game is disallowed to run in background, that also means it's disallowed to load in background.

Perceived load times may be improved by allowing the game to start up in the background, but not actually play.

[Mark4102]

Just checked. Took me 13 minutes to load with 207 mods.

Ryzen 5 2600 @ 3.9ghz
MSI GTX 970 4 gb
16 gb ddr4 3200mhz
Windows 10

[chardog]

Here's a lead if you haven't heard it yet: some people report shorter load times after disabling their internet and putting steam in offline mode.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/6gntfg/how_to_vastly_improve_load_times/
I've heard some theories that it has to do with unity pinging network adapters for each mod file. Whatever the case, it does seem to have a measurable difference.

[Kenneth]

Thanks to every reporter so far!
Please, when you are posting reports attach your logfile so we can see your modlist and potential leads to why it loads so slowly for you.

I've tested Hardcore SK development branch on my dev machine but it loads within a bit less than 5 minutes for me (i7-4790, 16gb ram and SSD).

As Meni mentioned, disabling the game to run in background will cause the loading process to stop aswell when in background.
To everyone having issues with this, please try enabling "Run in background" and retest your loading times (A screenshot where to find this option in the settings is attached).

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[Canute]

Or maybe "Run at background" only start to work once the game is loaded and a safegame is loaded.
I allready made this suggestion at B18 :-)

[greyfade]

I haven't been seeing tens of minutes (if I were, I'd trim the hell out of my mod list), closer to 1-2 minutes, but:

I did notice a significant 2-3x load delay after adding only two mods to the other 38: Humanoid Alien Races 2.0 and one race mod.

Freshly-created log with nothing very interesting in it attached.

Core i5-6600
GTX 970 4GB
32GB DDR4
Linux

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[Ratys]

I don't have access to my install right now, so, no logs, sorry.

This problem might not be RimWorld-specific, but, rather, Unity-specific: Kerbal Space Program seems to exhibit identical behavior, and, apparently, people have found a workaround. I tried this trick with RimWorld, and it seemed to help somewhat - but, being lazy and in a "just let me play already" kind of mood, I haven't clocked it. Others reported mixed success.

EDIT: that seems to be the wrong thread, and I can't find the right one. The fix was to put Steam in offline mode and disable all network adapters.

[Ressing]

ooooo now this is something I've had issues with since I FIRST started playing back in A14. Always had 30+ minute start up time, mods or not. And I used two computers to play, my desktop and my laptop which is brand new.

Only laptop specs thou since thats what I use the most to play.

CPU: AMD E-300 APU with Radeon HD Graphics 1.30 GHz
RAM: 4 GB
HDD: a pos preinstalled 296 GB hard drive
OS: Windows 10

Logfile attached! Hopefully this info helps because I LOVE this game but the load times kill me. I can walk off and cook a turkey before its done loading.

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[notfood]

Kenneth, investigate caching the patched XML. This one works for me to cut 2-3 minutes from my load of 7-10 minutes.

https://gist.github.com/notfood/893b31b1a32b2043d8def1dbbc177a91

[Zaltys]

Oh man, if I only had 20 minute load times... My modlist takes 70 minutes to load at the moment. I am running about 240 mods, though.

Recently upgraded from Windows 7 64-bit to Windows 10, and flashed the newest bios version (after not doing that in two years). Clean install on a new drive. No noticeable difference in the load time. Moving the game from HDD to SSD didn't seem to do much either.

MB: Z170 Pro Gaming
CPU: i3 6100 @ 3.70Ghz
RAM: 16 GB, DDR4
GPU: Geforce GTX 750 Ti 2Gb

Yeah, I know that the CPU/GPU are getting old. Still good for the genres that I mainly care about (RPGs, strategy).

Of the mods that I have, the ones that take noticeably long to load are the race mods, and SF Grim Reality. The latter is just a bunch of patches to the vanilla thoughts.

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