Caching games

geeza · 8 Apr 2006 at 15:56

Is it possible to cache most or all of a level of a game before playing into the moemory so that no jerkyness appears?

iBot · 8 Apr 2006 at 16:20

depends on the game.

ut2k4 has this feature.

geiger · 8 Apr 2006 at 16:58

If you have enough memory you could create a virtual ramdrive I think, copy the entire game there and it should fly

geeza · 8 Apr 2006 at 17:29

geiger said:
If you have enough memory you could create a virtual ramdrive I think, copy the entire game there and it should fly

thanks, how do you do this?

oxygene · 8 Apr 2006 at 17:41

yah I am interested too. I got 2gb ram and I know a few games that could fit on half that and not need more then the other gb

dirtydog · 8 Apr 2006 at 18:12

AFAIK if you have lots of RAM, Windows will automatically cache the game in the RAM once it's been loaded the first time.

geeza · 8 Apr 2006 at 18:34

dirtydog said:
AFAIK if you have lots of RAM, Windows will automatically cache the game in the RAM once it's been loaded the first time.

thats the problem. the first time its ran is the time when you are playing the game. its not as fun the second time around after you die due to a game lag

eg a tournament i was in playing track mania sunrise (on old computer) i was almost over the finish line for gold on second to last track and it froze for about 2 seconds. when it was normal again I was off the track in the water not being able to get onto the track. at which point I almost threw my monitor out the window and bashed my keyboard several times!

oxygene · 8 Apr 2006 at 19:02

there should be some way to do this though. something simple like copying an entire game to ram, or even better like on UT2k4, having all the maps and skins on the ram disk to kill loading times

Drum · 8 Apr 2006 at 23:08

Have a look here I think this is what your after

geeza · 9 Apr 2006 at 00:40

Drum said:
Have a look here I think this is what your after

thanks but, 'Virtual Hard Drive supports up to 900MB of RAM' and the unlimieted amount of system ram is for server version only

Energize · 9 Apr 2006 at 05:20

Drum said:
Have a look here I think this is what your after

Shame it doesnt work, kept saying there was no enough memory avalible to create a 100mb ram drive when there was 800mb free.

vanandjuanunited · 9 Apr 2006 at 07:09

http://www.jsifaq.com/subA/tip0000/rh0020.htm

Try this one. Had played with the idea before but never got roud to it.

dirtydog · 9 Apr 2006 at 08:18

A ram drive will only be any good if you leave your computer on all the time. Otherwise you'll need to install the game entirely every time you want to play it. Is waiting a few minutes for that to happen, really worth it just to avoid a few minor pauses in game? You'd need a very large amount of RAM as well, if it was a large install size.

oxygene · 9 Apr 2006 at 11:25

for me its not a case of game jerkyness as a case of loading times between maps on fps, rts whatever

geeza · 9 Apr 2006 at 11:47

dirtydog said:
Is waiting a few minutes for that to happen, really worth it just to avoid a few minor pauses in game?

not sure if it will happen with my new computer but like i said before

a tournament i was in playing track mania sunrise (on old computer) i was almost over the finish line for gold on second to last track and it froze for about 2 seconds. when it was normal again I was off the track in the water not being able to get onto the track.

so yes, sometimes it is worth it. how much memory is 'lots' i have 2gb and it would be nice to right click the folder of install and set something on the lines of 'use *xxxxx* amount of system memory for this program. Of course its not possible with the likes of fear, oblivion etc as they are over 4gb!

dirtydog · 9 Apr 2006 at 12:08

I meant more than 2gig

UT2004 for example takes about 3-4GB just for the default install, so you'd need 5-6GB to install it on a ramdisk.

For anyone who doesn't leave their machine on 24/7 it's a total non-starter for fairly obvious reasons anyway.

(actually isn't the max memory that Windows XP 32-bit can handle, 4GB anyway)

Energize · 9 Apr 2006 at 16:59

dirtydog said:
A ram drive will only be any good if you leave your computer on all the time. Otherwise you'll need to install the game entirely every time you want to play it. Is waiting a few minutes for that to happen, really worth it just to avoid a few minor pauses in game? You'd need a very large amount of RAM as well, if it was a large install size.

For RTS games yes it is worth it.

HangTime · 10 Apr 2006 at 20:33

dirtydog said:
A ram drive will only be any good if you leave your computer on all the time. Otherwise you'll need to install the game entirely every time you want to play it. Is waiting a few minutes for that to happen, really worth it just to avoid a few minor pauses in game? You'd need a very large amount of RAM as well, if it was a large install size.

This was my response the last time the issue was discussed. Sure, you can get nice nippy load times by running games from a RAMdrive, but you probably waste more time than that installing/copying the game into that drive everytime you boot up your PC.

That said, where older, smaller games (from the 90s) are concerned, it could be worthwhile. I used to do it with Quakeworld for example, which you could strip down small enough to fit onto a 32meg RAMdisk once all the singleplayer content and unneccesary files etc were removed.

Trouble is, if you decide to do any save games, demo recording, screenshots etc, you a) need the extra space on your ramdisk for them; and b) You need to remember to copy them out of the directory onto your HD before shutting down your PC and losing the data!

All-in-all, it's more trouble than it's worth IMO. I certainly wouldn't be considering going down this route if I only had 2gig of RAM.

There are some games which let you allocate certain amounts of memory to different things, such as com_hunkmeg/soundmegs in Quake3, and some other option in the Unreal engine. I'm not sure how effective they are though as only certain elements get cached I believe.

geeza · 10 Apr 2006 at 22:31

^ yeh its not really worth the time but if it took a minute or so to cache say the alpha labs on doom 3 it would be ok.

HangTime · 10 Apr 2006 at 22:39

^I'd imagine that part of the problem is down to large texture sizes now too. So even if you could cache an entire set of levels into system RAM, that wouldn't mean to say that you would be free of stuttering when using a graphics card with only 256meg of onboard memory.