Dahenjo on 27/9/2016 at 14:51
Quote Posted by ticky
I'm not an IT guy but it looks like NDL is scanning the whole FM directory at startup, or loads more info right at startup instead of doing it when you click on a mission. This could partly explain the fact that I never experienced any problem like this even with GarretLoader.
Just curious, have you done the 'Scan All FMs' (from the right-click menu in table)? That could take 5-10+ minutes depending on your system & number of FMs, but then with that data retained you might have less delay otherwise.
czyys on 27/9/2016 at 15:12
Quote Posted by Dahenjo
Just curious, have you done the 'Scan All FMs' (from the right-click menu in table)? That could take 5-10+ minutes depending on your system & number of FMs, but then with that data retained you might have less delay otherwise.
I don't think it has anything to do with scanning the FMs, I tested it with FM folder empty as well. Besides 'Scan All FMs' takes ~30 seconds for my number of FMs so NDL definitely doesn't do this at the start.
R Soul on 27/9/2016 at 16:49
I can confirm that it doesn't scan FMs when it loads. It gets a list of files and some standard file data, but it doesn't open up archives and get any FM info. It gets as much info as it can from NewDarkLoader.ini, and whatever is found gets displayed in the table. If you select an FM, it only scans the FM if there are missing data (FM name, release date etc). Once all data are in the ini file, no more scanning happens unless the user selects re-scan or scan all.
Selecting an FM will always make it extract the readme file. If you don't have 7zip installed and referenced in Setup, it'll use another way of extracting the file, which may be slower than using 7zG.exe.
I have to go now, but I'll give this some more thought and see if I have any other ideas.
R Soul on 27/9/2016 at 23:21
I've made a couple of tweaks that
may improve performance, but I can't be sure since I don't get these problems:
1.3.5:
(
http://www.mediafire.com/file/p2tbaup3yzy2ujx/NewDarkLoader1.3.5.zip)
I've also added info on a previously undocumented feature: mission authors can generate their own fm.ini files, just like in FMSel.
ticky on 28/9/2016 at 04:33
Quote Posted by R Soul
I've made a couple of tweaks that
may improve performance, but I can't be sure since I don't get these problems:
1.3.5:
(
http://www.mediafire.com/file/p2tbaup3yzy2ujx/NewDarkLoader1.3.5.zip)
I've also added info on a previously undocumented feature: mission authors can generate their own fm.ini files, just like in FMSel.
Thank you, will try.
Amazing news: I have changed nothing on my pc, but 1.3.3. loaded 3 seconds for the first time in the last two days. Maybe it's about the condition or the temperature of the HDD.
czyys on 28/9/2016 at 08:22
No changes for me. But I've found this interesting article: (
http://geekswithblogs.net/akraus1/archive/2015/08/25/166493.aspx) Why Is The First Start Of An Application Slow?
It's mostly about testing so I'm not sure how helpful it would be to you, R Soul. The only solution I got from it is to make the application execute less code on startup :p
Looking at what additional tasks NDL performs compared to FMsel and Darkloader, and how are they less reasource heavy would be a good start, if you're even interested in going that far because ~10 seconds is really only a minor inconvenience.
ticky, your fast start was most probably some kind of warm start, I recommed reading this article to you as well.
R Soul on 29/9/2016 at 00:40
I had at that page but it's a lot to take in in one go. I made a few changes to the code.
Is this any quicker?
(
http://www.mediafire.com/file/ppccjljylfsx62y/NewDarkLoader1.3.5Test.zip)
Besides the FM table code, the GUI requires a lot of work, but I like my GUI. If there's no improvement with the above, here's something else. A while ago ffox was having a problem with the GUI, and eventually I tried a simplified version, which uses fewer things at a cost of less flexibility. Here is that version if you want to try it:
(
http://www.mediafire.com/download/iuix70iyc6v4o8m/NewDarkLoader_Size3.zip)
This was from version 1.0 so it will be missing a lot of improvements, but it could suggest something for me to look in to if it's any faster than the official versions.
edit: updated the above 'test' link because it was crashing when new FMs were added (error due to null value, now fixed).
R Soul on 1/10/2016 at 00:14
I've been rewriting the FM table functions after doing some research that suggested the original way could cause performance problems. This affected a lot of the other features but I'm well on the way to getting them working properly with the new way of doing things. Because the program isn't 100% functional I'm not posting a download link, but if anyone wants to have a try, let me know and I'll send it via PM.
The time consuming parts have been done (scanning dirs, filling the table), so a test will be valid.
R Soul on 6/10/2016 at 16:58
Bump.
Can other users say what sort of performance you're getting? I'd like to know if the recently reported long startup times are experienced by lots of people who have been too polite to say anything, or if it's just a few people.
Gooberslot on 7/10/2016 at 00:56
Could you add a progress bar or some other indication that something is happening when uninstalling a FM? I went to uninstall a large FM and wound up uninstalling and then immediately reinstalling because I thought the program had missed my first click.
