[0.13.4] Extremely slow startup on Linux 64 bit

[thuejk]

Factorio is extremely slow to start for me. It says "loading sprites" for literally ~10 minutes.

I have a Q9300 CPU and 8GB RAM, which should be enough. Only slightly dicy thing is Radeon HD 4830, but I don't see how that should matter for the upstart.

This has been the same for me on previous versions.

[Rseding91]

Try turning the VRAM usage to low in the config.

[hoho]

Any chance your HDD might be the problem? Not so much that it's slow but it is battling with error correction trying to read stuff. Things like that tend to happen with older HDDs.


How's the computer load during the period sprites are loaded? Anything interesting going on with CPU/disk IO loads?

[thuejk]

@Rseding91 That made the loading much faster (and 2-3 minutes now), though it is obviously still very slow in absolute terms.

@hoho I have a fast well-tested SSD, and everything else seems to work very well. Factorio is using moderate amounts of CPU and RAM while loading slowly. But the graphics seem to freeze intermittantly, indicating the graphics card related stuff is the problem.

[Rseding91]

@Rseding91 That made the loading much faster (and 2-3 minutes now), though it is obviously still very slow in absolute terms.

@hoho I have a fast well-tested SSD, and everything else seems to work very well. Factorio is using moderate amounts of CPU and RAM while loading slowly. But the graphics seem to freeze intermittantly, indicating the graphics card related stuff is the problem.

You need a better graphics card if you want it to not be slow

512 MB VRAM is the *minimum* requirements for Factorio. You really want something with 2-4 GB.

[thuejk]

I thought it was a 2D game! With very few textures. This computer runs e.g. Minecraft perfectly fine.

[Zeblote]

I thought it was a 2D game! With very few textures. This computer runs e.g. Minecraft perfectly fine.

This is a 2d game, with A LOT of textures. High quality sprite animations require massive amounts of vram.

[hoho]

With very few textures.

Not very many of them, sure, but at rather high resolution.

This computer runs e.g. Minecraft perfectly fine.

Default Minecraft textures are 16x16 pixels. Average 3x3 tile building in Factorio is around 100x130 pixels or roughly 50x more pixels.

Assembly machine #1 has 792x408 pixel tilesheet for all the animation frames, that's around 1262x more than a single minecraft texture. Stuff that has overlays (e.g beacon) uses even more textures

I wouldn't be surprised if Factorio in full 3D with animated models instead of animated tiles would take far less memory than it does at the moment.

[Zeblote]

I wouldn't be surprised if Factorio in full 3D with animated models instead of animated tiles would take far less memory than it does at the moment.

And it would look cooler

[thuejk]

Assembly machine #1 has 792x408 pixel tilesheet for all the animation frames

Ah. That would explain it. Do you know if they have considered including a version at 1/4 size for low-VRAM machines? That would obviously reduce quality (though not too much I would assume), but should cut video memory usage dramatically.

[DaveMcW]

Do you know if they have considered including a version at 1/4 size for low-VRAM machines? That would obviously reduce quality (though not too much I would assume), but should cut video memory usage dramatically.

That's exactly what VRAM usage = low does.

[hoho]

I wouldn't be surprised if Factorio in full 3D with animated models instead of animated tiles would take far less memory than it does at the moment.

And it would look cooler

I'm not sure if it would, really. It certainly wouldn't be possible to have tens of thousands of objects on screen running at 60UPS/FPS on as low-end machines as it does at the moment.