Load Game in Background

[minetech48]

TL;DR

Make the game load assets (mods, sprites, ect.) in the background.

What ?

Prioritize loading (and displaying) the main menu and essential assets first, before loading all the other game assets, and if you want to get into a world before the game has finished its loading, finish the game loading before loading the world. A game loading could be in a corner similar to when transferring a world for multiplayer. If this is something not everyone wants, it could be a setting in the options menu to enable background loading.

Possible loading screen replacement.

Untitled.png (3.84 MiB) Viewed 1762 times

Why ?

I suggest this because I feel that it could make the game feel smoother to launch, as you have one less loading screen to sit through. With just the menus loaded, you could still check/edit your settings/mods/savegames. All at a pretty low price of not being able to jump into your world instantly after the game loads the menu, but it's not like you have to wait any longer total.

[EnerJi]

+1

Might be an engine limitation or similar that prevents this, but if feasible it would be a nice addition.

[Ajedi32]

If this isn't feasible I'd at least like the ability to alt-tab out of the game during the load screen. Right now the game seems to be stuck full screen until the loading completes, and Factorio takes a surprisingly long time to load for a 2D game, even on an SSD.

[EnerJi]

If this isn't feasible I'd at least like the ability to alt-tab out of the game during the load screen. Right now the game seems to be stuck full screen until the loading completes, and Factorio takes a surprisingly long time to load for a 2D game, even on an SSD.

Interestingly, Factorio always loads in a window for me and I then maximize it when I'm ready to play. I don't remember whether it's always been this way. Perhaps there's a setting in the configuration which affects this? I play on macOS, FWIW.