reducing loading times

[bhauth]

KSP takes a long time to load. Especially with mods installed. I got the impression that loading 3d models of parts is the main problem. Other games seem to load 3d data much more efficiently, so I thought I'd look into it.

It seems 3d data in mods comes in .dae (COLLADA) files. That's a slow interchange format, but it's apparently converted to .mu files when KSP is run, to improve loading times later. But loading times are still quite slow.

.mu is Squad's format, and they asked people not to create a .mu decompiler/converter. Why? (Well, I know why, I just don't think it's a good reason.)

So the problem seems to be the .mu format and/or code. Maybe it would be faster to use BinaryFormatter:

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/64317/is-there-possible-to-save-scene-gameobject-data-on.html

Even using JSON might be faster:

http://whydoidoit.com/unityserializer/

Bitmaps are stored in .mbm (MultiBitMap) files. Zipping a 1.1mb .mbm file gave a 86kb file. CPUs are faster than HDs now so some simple compression seems worthwhile. This might save some bandwidth and make loading faster.

Edited April 28, 2014 by bhauth

[bhauth]

So...nobody seems to have anything to say about this, so it'll get pushed way down before any devs see it.

[FenrirWolf]

There's only so much to say about it really. As far as I'm aware, part loading and the like is something that will be optimized later on in the game's dev cycle.

[GusTurbo]

This sounds potentially promising. Unfortunately I have no expertise in this area, so I can't really comment on the merits.

[hab136]

Copy your KSP to a RAM disk (so zero loading time) and then launch it. It's about the same speed, especially if you already have an SSD.

Reading the disk is not the problem; interpreting the files is. Making the files HARDER to interpret is not going to speed things up.