Topic: Improve installation and tribe loading on mechanical HDD

hessenfarmer Joined: 2014-12-11, 23:16 Posts: 807 One Elder of Players Location: Bavaria	Posted at: 2019-11-18, 20:46 Hi everytime I install a new development version it takes a long time to write all the PNG files to the HDD. Same when loading the tribes only in different direction. So I want to suggest saving all graphics in compressed folders and decompress them at loading the tribes as decompressing is less time consuming then writing so small files to big disks. Top Quote

teppo Joined: 2012-01-30, 09:42 Posts: 363 Tribe Member	Posted at: 2019-11-23, 19:13 hessenfarmer wrote: Hi everytime I install a new development version it takes a long time to write all the PNG files to the HDD. Same when loading the tribes only in different direction. Does it really take long to load? Widelands loads on demand => not everything at single spot. Installing on traditional hdd is slow, and could be irritating. So I want to suggest saving all graphics in compressed folders and decompress them at loading the tribes as decompressing is less time consuming then writing so small files to big disks. PNG files are already compressed, recompressing probably only slows down. Some uncompressed container format would speed up disk operations (on rotational devices, which are becoming less common), at the expense of cluttering more code and possibly few new bugs in. This could also reduce disk space consumption a little. I have thought of making the replay a single file instead of two (the wgf is written instantly, and wrpl afterwards, probably doable) but that probably remains on todo list forever. Top Quote

hessenfarmer Joined: 2014-12-11, 23:16 Posts: 807 One Elder of Players Location: Bavaria	Posted at: 2019-11-24, 21:20 teppo wrote: hessenfarmer wrote: Hi everytime I install a new development version it takes a long time to write all the PNG files to the HDD. Same when loading the tribes only in different direction. Does it really take long to load? Widelands loads on demand => not everything at single spot. Installing on traditional hdd is slow, and could be irritating. that is neither my experience nor could I find lazy loading in the code. especially the thousands of small .png for the graphics are loaded completely for all tribes in the beginning of each game so the problem increased with frisians and will further increase with amazons. I already suggested to just load the files of the tribes chosen in the game. However I'd deem loading the graphics in containers more efficient and appropriate. if the container is compressed or not will not make much difference as even on my slowest machine disk operation is far slower than decompression of files. (I can see this in the installation routine). So I want to suggest saving all graphics in compressed folders and decompress them at loading the tribes as decompressing is less time consuming then writing so small files to big disks. PNG files are already compressed, recompressing probably only slows down. Some uncompressed container format would speed up disk operations (on rotational devices, which are becoming less common), at the expense of cluttering more code and possibly few new bugs in. This could also reduce disk space consumption a little. From my perspective it is just having a zip algorithm in the code of game loading. But I would enjoy any container which reduces the amount of files and speed up discoperation. And mechanical discs are still very common in my eyes. I have thought of making the replay a single file instead of two (the wgf is written instantly, and wrpl afterwards, probably doable) but that probably remains on todo list forever. Top Quote