GZDoom takes longer to load up

[Koris95]

I recently replaced GZDoom 4.10.0 with 4.11.0. It now takes a bit longer to load up. Approx. 8 seconds longer. (Yes, I know that's not much, so sue me xD).

In an effort to troubleshoot this problem, I made 2 separate folders of the 2 versions without any additions (except the Doom 2 IWAD obviously) and it does in fact only occur with 4.11.0. I'm not running any PWADs, only vanilla Doom 2.

I have not made any changes to the PC or the drivers between versions.

I'm not sure if there is any other helpful information I can post. Thanks in advance

[Ihavequestions]

Weird. On my system, all versions including the very latest 4.11.1 take the same amount of time to load up (Doom 2 title screen and music appear), with no differences between versions.

[Rachael]

This is one of those cases where I think the only clues we'll find into the problem will be the system specs, both hardware and OS.

[Koris95]

I'm running it on a Windows 10 Pro Version 21H1 (OS Build 19043.1165)
Intel Core i7-9700k
8GB RAMs
GIGABYTE Motherboard
Nvidia GeForce 1080 GPU

[Ihavequestions]

From my observations, RAM usage is actually slightly lower with 4.11 than with 4.10, so it can't be due to lack of RAM.

[Koris95]

For testing purposes, I tried an arbitrary old version (4.5) and it seems that it has the same problem although the load-up time was slightly less (Approx. 6 Seconds)

[Rachael]

Win10 + 8 GB RAM - I think this is the culprit.

Either one of those by itself is not the issue, but Win10 is a huge RAM hog unless you "debloat" the everliving fuck out of it. (Before you ask, Win11 isn't any better, it's actually worse)

Unfortunately GZDoom *has* increased in its memory requirements - this is something we cannot help, as new features get added to the engine on a weekly-to-monthly basis.

This will cause a significant more thrashing to the paging file, as the system will be unable to handle two memory hogs at once, and the only way it can cope is to provide a much slower backing store to the already starved available system RAM.

At this point - you have 4 options - 1) Live with it (I know, it sucks, and I'm sorry), 2) Debloat your Windows to see if it helps (be very careful doing this, it's easy to remove things that may become necessary later on), 3) Stick to older versions of GZDoom, or 4) see if you can either quit background applications (i.e. Firefox/Discord/Telegram/etc) or offload them to an older system while you are playing. Also - turn off Microsoft Edge running in the background.

You can also try using the OpenGL ES backend, even though your GPU is significantly newer, to see if it itself helps with GZDoom's overall RAM usage. (It uses less shaders, so this may help)

[Bob Beaky]

Just popping in to say I have the same issue. I'm using Windows 10 Pro with an i511600k, 32 gig RAM and a 12gig 1080ti and I run GZDoom from my WD Black SSD. I never had the problem before 4.10.0 either.

[Kappes Buur]

I'm running it on a Windows 10 Pro Version 21H1 (OS Build 19043.1165)
Intel Core i7-9700k
8GB RAMs
GIGABYTE Motherboard
Nvidia GeForce 1080 GPU

My PC specs

---

I ran


all opened the same in the blink of an eye (maybe a second but certainly not 8 seconds)
from the time that I clicked on Play GZDoom

Maybe adding an extra 8 GB would improve your load time.

[Ihavequestions]

all opened the same in the blink of an eye (maybe a second but certainly not 8 seconds)
from the time that I clicked on Play GZDoom

You should measure the time from starting the exe till the music starts playing and the menu becomes available.

[Kappes Buur]

You should measure the time from starting the exe till the music starts playing and the menu becomes available.

Okay, I did that,
from clicking the shortcut to when the game starts with MAP01 and the music playing, it is about equal again at perhaps 2.5 seconds. And that includes having to move the cursor to the appropriate clickable areas.

Thus I surmise that loading times are dependent on a number of related factors to the computer system itself and how much baggage has been accumulated in the background for the operating system to deal with.

[Professor Hastig]

I have no problems either, even with a large music mod I autoload, overall startup time is less than 3 seconds.

To help us out, does it specifically hang at a certain message in the startup window?^Also, what render backend are you using? For me the startup time of Vulkan is a bit higher than OpenGL, for example.

[Ihavequestions]

Okay, I did that,

No, you didn't; you started the map.

Anyway, your description gives valuable insight into GZDoom's quirks as its startup time doesn't seem to be related to actual system speed, amount of RAM, or anything specific, really. The game's startup window may be hanging for a few seconds, and this seems to be related to some driver issue or the way the game accesses specific hardware (sound hardware perhaps?) rather than the hardware's speed.

[yum13241]

Win10 + 8 GB RAM - I think this is the culprit.

Either one of those by itself is not the issue, but Win10 is a huge RAM hog unless you "debloat" the everliving fuck out of it. (Before you ask, Win11 isn't any better, it's actually worse)

Unfortunately GZDoom *has* increased in its memory requirements - this is something we cannot help, as new features get added to the engine on a weekly-to-monthly basis.

This will cause a significant more thrashing to the paging file, as the system will be unable to handle two memory hogs at once, and the only way it can cope is to provide a much slower backing store to the already starved available system RAM.

At this point - you have 4 options - 1) Live with it (I know, it sucks, and I'm sorry), 2) Debloat your Windows to see if it helps (be very careful doing this, it's easy to remove things that may become necessary later on), 3) Stick to older versions of GZDoom, or 4) see if you can either quit background applications (i.e. Firefox/Discord/Telegram/etc) or offload them to an older system while you are playing. Also - turn off Microsoft Edge running in the background.

You can also try using the OpenGL ES backend, even though your GPU is significantly newer, to see if it itself helps with GZDoom's overall RAM usage. (It uses less shaders, so this may help)

If you're going to wipe your system, you might as well use the Tiny11 builder which uses a GENUINE Microsoft ISO. If you're willing to use Linux, that's also an option. The hardest part is installing it and learning basic command line skills.

Also, maybe try updating your graphics driver.