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[Heimdall_Xtreme]

According to Beckett-King, before taking ownership of the graphics and controls, developers must develop a loading bar that moves smoothly and reflects the game’s actual load time. As it turned out, the creators of interactive entertainment do not do this for the benefit of the players themselves.

“Fun fact: Gamers don’t trust the smooth movement of the loading bar. Stuttering and pauses make the process more believable. I’ve worked on games for which we simulated this effect.– admitted the creator of John Wick Hex and Thomas Was Alone Mike Bithell.

Head of Croatian studio Under the Stairs Vladimir Bogdanić confessedwho added a loading screen to the game that she didn’t need and former Age of Empires developer Greg Street (Greg Street) rememberedas prescribed in the load scale code “Now go 20%”.

Game developers have never worked on a real load scale in their careers, for example the CEO of Tequila Works Raul Rubio Munarriz or co-founder of Vlambeer Rami Ismail. From Words The latter by corrupting the download progress “Almost Everyone Does It”.

Exception turned out to be Creators of Lemmings and the first GTA Mike Dailly: “I never faked [полоску загрузки]. On top of that, I’ve done my best, trying to make them as “right” and smoother as possible… Probably because I’ve always hated the Windows versions: they stay at 20% for ages and suddenly jump to 100 %..

As technology advances, download bars are becoming a thing of the past. Thanks to fast SSDs or features like DirectStorage, modern games don’t even have time to show the loading screen, let alone scale to it. There are fewer and fewer ways to fool gamers from developers.

Developers Have Revealed The Truth About Loading Bars In Games - They Are Almost Always Fake - Tech News Space

If you've ever thought that the in-game loading bar moves unnaturally erratically, then you're not alone: a similar thought was recently jokingly expressed

technewsspace.com

I had the suspicion, because it has happened to me that when loading to 100%, there are video games that still take time to load

 

[adamsapple]

Artificially adding load times up to 5 seconds.

Fucking no !

 

[chromhound]

Wasting my time with this bullshit

 

[ReBurn]

how do we cancel someone, asking for a friend

 

[newtypepilot]

Best loading screen.

Loading screens are definitely not fake during the ps1 era lol

 

[FoxMcChief]

My life is a lie.

 

[Mr.Phoenix]

Artificially adding load times up to 5 seconds.

Fucking no !

The real kicker is... until now, you probably thought the load was loading.

Everything about gaming really is smoke and mirrors.

 

[Hero of Spielberg]

Why in the ever living fuck would they do this? These people should go to The Hague for crimes against humanity.

 

[Raonak]

As a developer, i've had the opposite experience.

Making a stuttery loading bar is easy and actually realistic, because when you are running a process, you know how many steps you have, but you don't really know how long each step will take.

e.g.
20% = load character models
40% = load environment
60% = load music
80% = load additional information
100% = done
-except loading environment may take way longer than the rest.


Making a smooth loading bar requires extra work, because you either fake it, or use averaged load times to estimate how long each step takes.

 

[Aenima]

With this gen consoles SSD, i dont even remember the last game i saw with a loading bar.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Just have it be a black screen so players don't know if the game is loading or crashed, make them suffer.

...this story actually reminds me ATMs are perfectly capable of counting and giving you the money instantly, but the engineers purposefully make you wait because costumers would otherwise tend to be suspicious the machine "counted" wrong.

 

[Fuz]

You don't say.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Final Fantasy XVI had no fucks to give. It just sits at a black screen for 3-4 seconds until the next area is loaded.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

Kinda like how the “close door” button on most elevators does nothing, just gives you something to do while you wait

 

[Clear]

This is distorting the truth somewhat.

The reality is that its always a visual approximation so the player doesn't think the game has crashed.

There's no reason to over-engineer an accurate read-out, especially because the work involved in tracking that would slow down loading, and even then it would be a stuttery process depending on variables like data size being pulled-in, initialization time for said data, etc.

Making it smoothly update is simply a matter of making the display/counter "chase" the total progress. As in, the bar moves 1 unit per update until it hits the current amount done. Especially if you add in some acceleration on the chase increment it look even nicer!

 

[adamsapple]

Kinda like how the “close door” button on most elevators does nothing, just gives you something to do while you wait

 

[March Climber]

We're in the SSD generation now so it no longer matters.

 

[NoLootBoxDev]

I will say loading screens are needed. The first game I made (pixel art) used them because if not it looked like it was "stuck/stop responding" when you clicked start, or go to the next level. Sometimes it would load in 2 seconds, others could take 5-7 seconds. I see what they do that this way, at least it makes sense for me.

 

[killatopak]

They made it so you can read the lore and details on loading screens lol

 

[Fafalada]

I had the suspicion, because it has happened to me that when loading to 100%, there are video games that still take time to load

That's not what 'fake' means.

Most loading bars (or other progress indicators) are real - they're just not based on time, because 'time it takes to load something' is not known in advance. So the erratic behaviours you see are a result of chosen metric being a poor approximation for actual(time) progress of the load.
Eg: most commonly(simply) the indicator is based on something like 'number of items/files/assets loaded / total number to load' - that's why you get these massive jumps (some items are loading much faster than others).

There's no reason to over-engineer an accurate read-out, especially because the work involved in tracking that would slow down loading, and even then it would be a stuttery process depending on variables like data size being pulled-in, initialization time for said data, etc.

Accurate readout would require recording the load-times of everything in advance - it wouldn't really slow anything down at runtime, but generating that data would be cumbersome and error-prone to maintain, and as you say - there's no good reason to spend so much time engineering such a solution since 'standard' everyone's gotten used to is either a spin-wheel animation or an inaccurate progress bar - it doesn't matter if it's in a game, business application, kitchen appliance, phone, car or anything else.

Making it smoothly update is simply a matter of making the display/counter "chase" the total progress. As in, the bar moves 1 unit per update until it hits the current amount done. Especially if you add in some acceleration on the chase increment it look even nicer!

That is faking it though, even if it looks nicer than usual implementations ;P

 

[LegendOfKage]

reticulating splines

 

[mopspear]

I haven't the slightest idea how to code a loading bar but the biggest game I've made so far was 30mb so not exactly necessary.

 

[Kataploom]

The real kicker is... until now, you probably thought the load was loading.

Everything about gaming really is smoke and mirrors.

It's fun how you say it because that's how I explain it to some friends, sometimes adding "it's all tricks and how you fool players into thinking the thing on screen is actually happening"

 

[Razvedka]

Why in the ever living fuck would they do this? These people should go to The Hague for crimes against humanity.

UX.

 

[Hero of Spielberg]

UX.

Artificial wait times has to be the shittest UX choice I’ve ever heard of

 

[M.W.]

Just have a continuous "walk through gap" animation.

 

[ShadowLag]

This is distorting the truth somewhat.

The reality is that its always a visual approximation so the player doesn't think the game has crashed.

There's no reason to over-engineer an accurate read-out, especially because the work involved in tracking that would slow down loading, and even then it would be a stuttery process depending on variables like data size being pulled-in, initialization time for said data, etc.

Making it smoothly update is simply a matter of making the display/counter "chase" the total progress. As in, the bar moves 1 unit per update until it hits the current amount done. Especially if you add in some acceleration on the chase increment it look even nicer!

The bolded text is the most important here! The major console platforms actually require your game to include some kind of animating indicator after a specific duration of "nothing happening" so that players know the game hasn't frozen or crashed. Your game will actually fail certification and not be released unless you include this.

Loading bars themselves are definitely not going to be able to tell a player how long the process will actually take, either - the best they can do is let you know how many chunks of the loading task are done. I personally prefer the spinning circle in the corner approach with no progress indicator.

 

[trikster40]

One game, I’m thinking HFW on PS5 maybe? Devs said they added load time for the tips, can’t remember which game for certain.

 

[Raonak]

Just have a continuous "walk through gap" animation.

Most of the time these aren't even loading anything, they're just used for breaking up chunks of the game, usually to make a battle arena you can't escape from til the battle is over.
Because you don't want enemies to follow you into traversal areas where they can't navigate or would get stuck in geometry. And to avoid you going out of enemy range and cheesing the enemy through ranged attacks and such.

It's usually more immersive than adding a red barrier or something like that.

 

[DryvBy]

Wasting my time with this bullshit

I can't see Smokey and not want to watch Friday.

 

[Apocryphon]

At least they aren’t ads.

 

[CamHostage]

Artificially adding load times up to 5 seconds.

Fucking no !

That one, I don't understand (if the level loaded so fast, you would just do a fade-in or do sound over black or use some other visual or audio effect if the pacing felt better with a slight pause; cutting to a load bar for 5 full seconds is purposeless.)

None of the rest of these, however, is about faking the loading. Games load. They just don't load in smooth, predictable chunks that you can show in a graphical indicator.

 

[Robb]

we literally added a loading screen and added a 5s pause because we wanted a nice transition even though the game loads the level instantly

How is adding a static loading screen a “nice transition”?

 

[Soodanim]

At least give PC players a way to disable unnecessary shit if nothing else. I'd prefer realistic over faked, but it's inconsequential. The real issue is the false wait mentioned. That's cunty behaviour.

 

[acm2000]

Let's be honest, Anyone with half a braincell already knew this

 

[VulcanRaven]

I like the long loading screen when strarting The Last of Us.

 

[midnightAI]

I have written loaders before that do this.

A half decent way of doing it is you have a table of all of the file sizes, then you time the loading of a specific file. Once you have done that you know the approximate speed of the drive and because you know that you can then calculate the time it takes to load the rest of your files so you can present a smooth loading bar. (If it loads quicker than expected just transition out the loading bar)

Like people have said, it's just a visual so you know it's still loading. It's actually better than a jumpy bar based on number of files rather than amount of data loaded as you can see how much time (approx) is left until it's finished loading, a file counting loader gives no indication as to how long it will take to load

 

[UnNamed]

At least they aren’t ads.

 

[ZoukGalaxy]

Loading bars are almost always bullshit, fake, or stupidly coded: stuck at 10% for a crazy amount of time then suddenly jump to 70% then immediately jump again to 100% and still loading and waiting.
That's not a loading bar, but a jumping rabbit useless bar.

Fuck you stupid devs.

 

[midnightAI]

Loading bars are almost always bullshit, fake, or stupidly coded: stuck at 10% for a crazy amount of time then suddenly jump to 70% then immediately jump again to 100% and still loading and waiting.
That's not a loading bar, but a jumping rabbit useless bar.

Fuck you stupid devs.

Err, that's not a fake bar most likely, here they are talking about smooth bars being fake, which they are.

 

[GymWolf]

No shit.gif

 

[ZoukGalaxy]

Err, that's not a fake bar most likely

You're right, in this case that's a poorly coded loading bar unable to give a accurate loading time/visual information. Still loading at 100% make not sense at all.

 

[midnightAI]

You're right, in this case that's a poorly coded loading bar unable to give a accurate loading time information. Still loading at 100% make not sense at all.

Correct, but still better than most lazy spinning icon loaders we get these days, at least with a jumpy loader you can mostly see it is still loading.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Almost always fake based on a couple of tweets from 2 developers?

 

[SJRB]

 

[RoadHazard]

Almost always fake based on a couple of tweets from 2 developers?

Yeah, these are two indie devs (I think) who think they know how every company in the world does game development. There are much better explanations in this thread.

 

[Heisenberg007]

What loading bar?

 

[Sub_Level]

Hey now, Wipeout XL is based.

 

[Hudo]

At least they aren’t ads.

DON'T GIVE THEM ANY IDEAS!

 

[Lucifers Beard]

I really liked the Quake 3 loading screen. Shows you it loading all the weapons and power ups and even shows some of the file names it’s loading (from what I remember).

FFXVI load screens are the best for me though…