Why don't games load while a video sequence is playing?

Energize · 18 May 2007 at 02:11

One thing I've always wondered about pc games, is why the next level of a game isn't being loaded in the background when a cutscene is being played? It just seems like a complete waste of time to have the video play through and then spend ages waiting for the next level to load. Espically on games like warhammer mok where it takes an age to load.

Energize · 18 May 2007 at 02:39

All they need to do is assign the video a higher priority than the loading sequence. I can watch videos on my single core pc with no stutter whatsoever when encoding videos in the background.

Energize · 18 May 2007 at 19:16

silversurfer said:
Multi thread is still new, maybe in a couple o years

You don't need to use 2 threads though.

Energize · 18 May 2007 at 19:35

Caustic said:
Several reasons:

1) It is more work. It could take a fair bit of effort and the gain is small.
2) If the user skips the video, it adds difficulty.
3) Playing a video will often stress a lower spec PC quite heavily.
4) Hard disks are much more efficient when data is read in order, jumping around kills speed and so if you were to load whilst a video is playing, it would take much longger. After all, even FMV is copied to the HD upon installation.

Interestingly, Vista goes one more and allows users in supported games to install the game whilst playing it.

If you were playing an fmv though it could be cached to the ram first. I'm not an expert but it can't be that difficult to have an fmv playing and loading a level in the background. I mean I can play a dvd-video from the hdd and do encoding in the background so it doesn't need some uber powerful pc.