It is not by chance that there is a status bar on the loading screens, in fact, its speed is much less in line with reality than we think.
“You can dodge attacks by pressing the B button. Don’t forget, the HP potion increases your life.” – we can read such and similar very useful advice on the loading screens of the games, while we wait for the end of the loading bar to jump into the fun.
One of the biggest promises of the Xbox Series-PS5 generation was to eliminate them, but today it has become absolutely clear that super-fast SSDs, enormous computing capacity, and loading screens will definitely be with us for a long time. One of the reasons for this is that the newer games will be more demanding in proportion to the technological development, so even if the initial struggle with the loading speed of the old games is in vain, the flexing will only last until the release of the latest AAA game.
But it’s not just the disappearance of loading screens that is a big lie. Because what was revealed, the frequently appearing charging bar, which the players watch with greedy eyes and salted behinds, is also a big scam. At least this is what the game developers claim, who revealed the huge secret on Twitter, that the progress of the charging bar does not actually show the actual loading, and in fact, they do not even try to indicate it at all.
A conscious lie?
I have never worked in a game that didn’t sport a fake loading bar. Real ones induce anxiety. Maybe that’s why I dislike’em so much & always push for smooth streaming or, when reality punches you in the face, a splash screen with an ouroboros-like (usually rotating) loading icon.
— 🐲Raúl Rubio Munárriz (@don_raul) June 29, 2023
Several developers have revealed that in the vast majority of cases the loading bars do not reflect the true state of the game loading, but they have a very good excuse for that.
On the one hand, most focus tests have shown that players are less frustrated when they don’t see the real charge, so they prefer to artificially slow it down, stop it, or sometimes put huge jumps in it – e.g. 20% suddenly becomes 60%. They are all programmed separately, thus masking the real conditions.
Another reason could be that modern consoles and PCs load the game at lightning speed, so fast that the engine under the hood is simply not ready to display the models and details. This should be imagined just like what happened with The Witcher 3 when the Xbox Series X and PS5 were released in 2020: the machines loaded the game’s files so quickly that, due to the slowness of the REDengine, the player could actually see behind the scenes. Because of this, CD Projekt RED had to release an update that generated a “fake” loading screen, as the machines were in vain unpacking the necessary data faster when the game engine was running slower.
On #Xbox Series X, even without optimization, fast travel in The Witcher 3 is FAST. pic.twitter.com/mc4vEBjVd6
— Xbox News (@_XboxNews) November 2, 2020
But there are also games in which you have to press a button separately after the loading is complete. In such cases, they can usually even slow down the loading due to some creative decision, during which they try to convey something important or a narrative addition. A good example of this is the Metro series, in which Artyom talks about his experiences on the loading screen between levels, which is important because we never hear him speak during the game (which also has creative reasons).
For example, one developer said in a Twitter chat that in one of their games they slowed down the full load specifically to show players all sorts of tips and tricks about minigames, because they just skipped them in-game. An example of this Ghost of Tsushima, in which the game reloaded so quickly after each death that players would not have had time to read the developers’ suggestions, so the loading screen was deliberately extended.
But there are also cases where they use artificially slowed-down loading lanes, such as loading screens, just for the psychological effect, as they can create the feeling of a big and serious game. It’s not a joke, really, but it’s much more interesting than that, according to the focus tests, the trick absolutely works.
Then there are game geniuses like the new God of War games that don’t have a single loading screen at all. For similar creative reasons, the Santa Monica team decided to cover up the embankments, or rather build them into the game, for which they had two solutions. One is embankments covered with walk-through videos, and the other is fast travel with the branches of the World Tree, so you could travel between the locations using gates and a kind of lobby-like space.
So it’s good to know that what you see on the loading screen is often a big lie.
What is T-pose and why do characters always stand like this in games?
2023-07-03 18:40:13
#Shock #loading #bar #loading #screens #huge #scam
