For a long while now I've been using an entirely custom interface, and it obviously improves my gameplay a huge amount. However, recently I've noticed that my load times are getting longer and longer, and loading into the game world for the first time can take a huge amount of time, that it certainly never used to.
I cannot be sure, but I think that it is likely that at least one or more addons are contributing to this load time. I remember there used to be a mod called 'Warmup' that would track load times for all your addons, but the only version I managed to find it is outdated and doesn't seem to work any more.
Does anyone have a good way to track load in times for mods? I've found plenty of tools for checking memory usage and processor usage, but that's not really the problem - once I'm *in* game, the whole thing plays very smoothly, and I have plenty of memory so that's never an issue. It's just the load-in times that are annoying.
That said, if anyone else has any tips for how to go about optimizing your interface in terms of performance profiling, whether it's load times, memory usage, or whatever, I'd be interested to hear.
You may be able to speed up initial game load, model loading and zoning times by starting up Windows Media Player before you start WoW.
It would take about 30 seconds from clicking enter world to actually having the game load with another 5-6 seconds for models to load without WMP loaded, with WMP loaded it only took 8 seconds to enter world with models appearing instantly, no idea why it works, probably a funky bug with WoW.
It sounds more like it modifies Windows' scheduler or some other resource allocation mechanism, but I don't know for certain.
Seems that Blizzard are working on a fix anyhow.
From the tech support forums.
The draw times on those items are usually server-based but that seems a bit too long to be right. Try running Windows Media Player before starting up the game and see if it makes a difference.
LOL datth... you guys are officially suggesting WMP now? :P
When weird things occur and a fix is being implemented in a future patch, sure why not
If you're using Ace mods, I suggest using stand alone libraries to reduce the initial loading screen time.
Thanks, but I've been using Stand alones for months.
Malan, talking about damage meters storing data is a good point - I run recount, which (as far as I know) stores a pretty obscene amount of data. Is there a way as far as anyone knows for it to delete all data on shutdown, and so never load old data when I fire up WoW?
If you're using Ace mods, I suggest using stand alone libraries to reduce the initial loading screen time.
Could you elaborate?
Lately my mods have been causing me trouble, I believe. My framerate has been roughly halved, which I can live with... the real problem is that I think they're affecting my latency. I'd be content with the 300-400 ms range but lately it's been in the 700-800 ms range, which is really really bad. I've also encountered, for the first time, loading issues... where if I'm in a raid or even by the raid after I've been kicked, my game will not reliably load at all. These problems have only appeared recently, however, and a few of the mods I've just installed are:
Ora2
Grid (with some misc plugins)
Clique
Before that, I've had the standard Auctioneer, Titan, DBM, Omen mods. It also seems like there's a memory leak somewhere since the "increasing memory use" indicator is always significantly positive.
Any advice on what I could do to streamline these mods would be appreciated. A lot of them are what I'd consider essential and the non-essential ones have been disabled... I'm starting to become somewhat frustrated.
Install AddonLoader AddonLoader - WowAce Wiki (from files.wowace.com or via WAU) which delays loading of many popular addons until they are needed so they don't all load at 1st login.
The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.
Lately my mods have been causing me trouble, I believe. My framerate has been roughly halved, which I can live with... the real problem is that I think they're affecting my latency. I'd be content with the 300-400 ms range but lately it's been in the 700-800 ms range, which is really really bad. I've also encountered, for the first time, loading issues... where if I'm in a raid or even by the raid after I've been kicked, my game will not reliably load at all. These problems have only appeared recently, however, and a few of the mods I've just installed are:
Ora2
Grid (with some misc plugins)
Clique
Before that, I've had the standard Auctioneer, Titan, DBM, Omen mods. It also seems like there's a memory leak somewhere since the "increasing memory use" indicator is always significantly positive.
Any advice on what I could do to streamline these mods would be appreciated. A lot of them are what I'd consider essential and the non-essential ones have been disabled... I'm starting to become somewhat frustrated.
Addons will never increase your latency by that much, maybe you could see a tiny increase for things that have to do a lot of syncing but doubling it is pretty much impossible.
Loading times have been improved slightly for characters newly entering the world.
Seems like Blizzard is trying to improve things on their end, but if this fix is as effective as the nagle-disabling fix of 2.3.2, I wouldn't hold my breath.
For a long while now I've been using an entirely custom interface, and it obviously improves my gameplay a huge amount. However, recently I've noticed that my load times are getting longer and longer, and loading into the game world for the first time can take a huge amount of time, that it certainly never used to.
I cannot be sure, but I think that it is likely that at least one or more addons are contributing to this load time. I remember there used to be a mod called 'Warmup' that would track load times for all your addons, but the only version I managed to find it is outdated and doesn't seem to work any more.
Does anyone have a good way to track load in times for mods? I've found plenty of tools for checking memory usage and processor usage, but that's not really the problem - once I'm *in* game, the whole thing plays very smoothly, and I have plenty of memory so that's never an issue. It's just the load-in times that are annoying.
That said, if anyone else has any tips for how to go about optimizing your interface in terms of performance profiling, whether it's load times, memory usage, or whatever, I'd be interested to hear.
Try to delete the Cache folder . It helps to clean it sometimes.
Addons will never increase your latency by that much, maybe you could see a tiny increase for things that have to do a lot of syncing but doubling it is pretty much impossible.
Yea, I guess it might have been my connection recently, though it did seem to vary between whether I was on a character using mods or not. Oh well.
In any case, the framerate issue is definitely there, though I've made some strides in that regard.
I just remember that pre-TBC, someone made a mod that cut down on loading times drastically, I guess the idea was that it made the client ignore combat data that was coming in while you were loading... this seems to be the major reason for load issues, I think. But I forgot its name and I kinda doubt it's still important to have for TBC. But maybe there are other mods that serve the same purpose - reducing loading times.
Yea, I guess it might have been my connection recently, though it did seem to vary between whether I was on a character using mods or not. Oh well.
In any case, the framerate issue is definitely there, though I've made some strides in that regard.
I just remember that pre-TBC, someone made a mod that cut down on loading times drastically, I guess the idea was that it made the client ignore combat data that was coming in while you were loading... this seems to be the major reason for load issues, I think. But I forgot its name and I kinda doubt it's still important to have for TBC. But maybe there are other mods that serve the same purpose - reducing loading times.
It's been a while so I can't recall the exacts, but there was a list of events that fired while you were zoning into an instance things like bag slots and so on, what the mod did was unregister all of them when you started to zone out, then registered them once you finished zoning which lead to a speed up. This was then added into the game in around 2.0.0-2.0.3.
Malan, talking about damage meters storing data is a good point - I run recount, which (as far as I know) stores a pretty obscene amount of data. Is there a way as far as anyone knows for it to delete all data on shutdown, and so never load old data when I fire up WoW?
I haven't used Recount for awhile (stopped when it started doing sync, it was obscene how much it was sending per second) but I recall it has an option to auto clear data every day/hour/week or something like that. I use Assessment now which only saves the last 3 combat records unless you manually save one.
My framerate on raids has been completely axed for a while now and for the life of me I can't figure out what's the matter. I've seen the WMP thing suggested before, but I thought that was only relevant for load time issues, so I'll try that tonight. Other than that, I've even tried running completely bare, but it didn't seem to make a noticeable impact. This issue has also persisted across three versions of Ati (X1800) drivers and one fresh windows reinstall. Right now I'm forced to run WoW at its most crappiest settings to get any acceptable performance on raids, while this computer (AMD64 3800/2GB) was originally bought to run wow at high framerates (used to cap my 60 V-Sync) with all settings up. It seems that between fall 2006 and now things have gone horribly wrong somewhere.
I guess my question is if this is a problem for anyone else and/or if anyone has any bright ideas that I might have missed. I hope this isn't taking things too far off-topic, since this doesn't necessarily have to do with my interface, but I still believe it is relevant.
I haven't used Recount for awhile (stopped when it started doing sync, it was obscene how much it was sending per second) but I recall it has an option to auto clear data every day/hour/week or something like that. I use Assessment now which only saves the last 3 combat records unless you manually save one.
You can set it to even lower clear times, I have mine set to nuke data over 30 minutes old.
Delete backup copies that you may have made of your addons or WTF folders while updating/testing mods. Also look for a _downloads directory in your Addons folder that the ace updater may have made.
WoW parses through every. single. file. in its directory, regardless of directory name or filename, and if you have a lot of duplicate folders, it will substantially slow down the startup process.
This may or may not have been what you meant, though, apologies if it's not.
I have been attempting to convert over to lib's but I have no idea which ones to use. I also have been updating my addons WITH Externals and seems to be fine for now. I haven't noticed a huge difference in load times.
I have been attempting to convert over to lib's but I have no idea which ones to use. I also have been updating my addons WITH Externals and seems to be fine for now. I haven't noticed a huge difference in load times.
There's an option in WAU to automatically download any dependencies. Turn it on, then update all your mods without externals (you'll have to explicitly state it, and you may as change the default behavior, too). Note that you'll have to install all the recommendations. For some reason it grabbed FuBar as a dependency of one of my mods (no idea which one), I tried removing it (not a fan) and things got borked. Reinstalled it and disabled it from WoW, and everything worked.
Also, good to know it parses every file. Gonna have to do some cleanup.
Delete backup copies that you may have made of your addons or WTF folders while updating/testing mods. Also look for a _downloads directory in your Addons folder that the ace updater may have made.
WoW parses through every. single. file. in its directory, regardless of directory name or filename, and if you have a lot of duplicate folders, it will substantially slow down the startup process.
This may or may not have been what you meant, though, apologies if it's not.
When you say it parses regardless of filename, does this include extension? Will having a lot of compressed archive files in my interface/addons directory slow loading considerably?
When you say it parses regardless of filename, does this include extension? Will having a lot of compressed archive files in my interface/addons directory slow loading considerably?
Yes and yes. Every file in your WoW directory that is not absolutely required (including things like screenshots) adds a very small amount of time to startup, and it can become significant if you have a lot of crap there as most people will.
Yes and yes. Every file in your WoW directory that is not absolutely required (including things like screenshots) adds a very small amount of time to startup, and it can become significant if you have a lot of crap there as most people will.
Right, time for a cleanup then. My addon directory has subdirectories within subdirectories within subdirectories, including several complete backups of my addon folder. This could well explain some of the slow loading times I've been experiencing.
01/08/08, 11:09 AM
. It helps to clean it sometimes.
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