Gaming Theoretically speaking, if BotW had been developed properly how short would the loading times be?

[Saiyan Lusitano]

The idea behind using cartridges is that it would diminish loading times yet that's not what we've seen with the current Switch games, but to be fair, what has been released so far were ports.

What do the tech savvys here say?

I'm really excited for Mario Odyssey and can't imagine how good it'll be on the Switch!

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

The idea behind using cartridges is that it would diminish loading times yet that's not what we've seen with the current Switch games, but to be fair, what has been released so far were ports.

What do the tech savvys here say?

I'm really excited for Mario Odyssey and can't imagine how good it'll be on the Switch!

Well a question for you, has anyone actually downloaded that game instead of buying the cart? Then is possible to maybe compare loading times to cart vs download like wii u Disc vs download?

 

[DeslotlCL]

Well a question for you, has anyone actually downloaded that game instead of buying the cart? Then is possible to maybe compare loading times to cart vs download like wii u Disc vs download?

I think gamexplain did and they made it clear that the game running from nand has faster loading times than the cartridge version.

 

[PewnyPL]

Well a question for you, has anyone actually downloaded that game instead of buying the cart? Then is possible to maybe compare loading times to cart vs download like wii u Disc vs download?

A comparison has been done already:
While the internal memory being the fastest is not surprising, the fact that game carts are the slowest (below SD cards) is... weird.

 

[Saiyan Lusitano]

I think gamexplain did and they made it clear that the game running from nand has faster loading times than the cartridge version.

That has been shown but between internal storage vs cart vs micro SD, there wasn't really much difference. Only ever sightly faster-ish.

 

[duffmmann]

I've never minded the BOTW Switch loading times. They could probably be shorter, but they by no means become a bother to me.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Well now we know, Lol.

But i don't think carts was supposed to reduce loading times, i think it was just a way to play games on mobile system, cause using disc would been bad idea for mobile system, just like any other nintendo mobile system?

But those expensive carts, people would probably just stock up on SD cards and use downloads, unless they not as confident and want to resell games.

 

[linuxares]

To be perfectly honest, I don't think it would be much faster than it is now. It's all a limit how fast the transfer from the cartridge is.
They could maybe compressed it harder, but I think it's already as compressed as it can be.

 

[ShadowOne333]

You have to take into consideration that these are no longer the N64 times.
We are now talking about loading several GBs of data in a few seconds, and the read/write speeds of the current SDs is not that fast unless you are using a Class 10 SD.
For the actual Switch cartridges, I'm not sure, but I am leaning towards the fact that they ported the Wii U version to the Switch, which might be the reason why it is not that well optimized for the Switch and to make extensive use of the cartridge advantages over disks.

 

[orcid]

For me the loading times felt very short. Also there are only loading times after dying and fast travel.

 

[Kioku]

To be perfectly honest, I don't think it would be much faster than it is now. It's all a limit how fast the transfer from the cartridge is.
They could maybe compressed it harder, but I think it's already as compressed as it can be.

If it were better optimized for the switch, loading times would be a bit better. Streamlined texture and resolution loading would be less strenuous.

 

[Risingdawn]

Good grief, I remember the good ol days when games took 30mins to load from a tape, then crashed, then took another 30 mins to load again, then 4 mins to finish level 1, then 10 mins to load level 2, then crashed.. oh and only came in 5 colours, 4 of which were neon purple.

They don't make em like that anymore..
..and all this was fields.

 

[Enteking]

It is not only pure loading but also calculation and extraction / world building. The game has decide which assets to lead and where to place them in the 3D world. The weak CPU of the switch does not really help here, this may be the reason why the Wii-U version loads faster.

 

[spotanjo3]

I've never minded the BOTW Switch loading times. They could probably be shorter, but they by no means become a bother to me.

Positive attitude!!!

Negative attitude!!

 

[FAST6191]

"developing properly" is a hard to qualify term.

One might argue that should the loading times be within tolerated levels then the job was done. Or if you prefer elegant programming is cool and all but the question more becomes "does it do what the client wants?".

Or are we going into http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html country?

Back to the first part then the question might become what could be done with the compiler of the time with C/C++ and the libraries at hand, I will even assume we have largely kicked assembly to the curb . We would also have to wonder if something could be sacrificed as far as texture streaming, though we also have to wonder what goes for maybe making prebaked texture calculations at the cost of some kind.
On the client thing again then if the game has to pull from a single asset pool and behave near identically for two different codebases then what goes with that? Did the switch version suddenly having to be a thing cause if not a split then a refocus of the codebase?

I don't doubt for a moment that it was a barely optimised slapdash port from devs that did not know the architecture so well (there might have been an ARM expert or three, maybe also whatever flavour of opengl the switch likes) on a compiler that may be sort of suitable for task/somewhat optimised (the shield had been around for a while after all, don't know if I want to contemplate compiler intrinsics for it), pending analysis of the binary though I am not sure what more I can say. I could possibly infer some things from the wii u version but and I might be able to do some kind of cycle throughput/power analysis on the switch but anything really good will need debug and binary analysis for switch games.

 

[duffmmann]

Positive attitude!!!

Negative attitude!!

I don't even think its so much a positive attitude type of thing. Its just me looking at the game realistically. Breath of the Wild packs a lot of content with a huge overworld, I expect there to be some load times when you do fast travel or enter a shrine/dungeon outside of the overworld map. And the load times we have are incredibly reasonable to me. Never am I sitting there yelling at the screen, "Come on!" The load times aren't nearly long enough for me to develop that kind of attitude. But make no mistake, other games in the past with far longer loading times have brought about that kind of attitude from me.

 

[slingblade1170]

Isn't breath of the wild loading screens like 10 seconds or less?

 

[LichbannMejolaro]

I don't know, if there is one thing that it didn't bother me on BOTW was the loading times.

Comparing with other console games like Dark Souls 3 or Bloodborne, the difference is ridiculous.

 

[Saiyan Lusitano]

Isn't breath of the wild loading screens like 10 seconds or less?

It depends on the environment so the loading time comparison videos on YouTube aren't absolutely accurate.

 

[slingblade1170]

It depends on the environment so the loading time comparison videos on YouTube aren't absolutely accurate.

I wasn't talking about comparison video I just meant from playtime. I haven't timed them but I noticed the startup screen takes a little longer but fast travel loading is like 10 seconds or so which i find completely fine.