How Can I Load Graal Faster?
 

Every time I click to get on graal it takes about 2 minutes to load up the first window. How can I get this to load up faster? BTW I have a 1.3GHz processor speed so I don't really think thats the problem.

RAM disk! ;)

have you defragmented your hard drive lately?

How do I make a "RAM disk! ;)"

And no I don't think I have

Make sure you defrag your drive at least once a month. Also, use ScanDisk to check for any errors. Make sure you run AdAware and SpyBot S&D to make sure you don't have any malware running in the background. If all else fails, use HiJackThis and post it in an appropriate forum here, or better yet, post them on the Delteria Tech Boards. Make sure you ask nicely. :)

He means buy install/upgrade to more 'RAM'
You probably have a small amount which can be upgraded fairly easily.

If you don't want to spend alot of money on RAM and you might not have some good American monies like me, you should think about a 512mb stick of Samsung DDR400 PC3200

Few good RAM. Not some Kingston or OCZ but it is still good. ;)
You can find it here or www.newegg.com probably.

Err...I got a recently formatted hard-drive, a 3.4ghz processor and like a gig of pc3200 400mhz RAM and I have the same problem o_O

I guess the simpliest thing is to make a small FAT32 partition and move the Graal files there. There is a problem with the startup of Graal because NTFS (the default windows XP/2000 file system) is really slow. Graal is scanning the subfolders for easily finding files, NTFS doesn't like that because it's indexing the files somehow. In the next Graal version I will try to speed that up, although it's not simple. The only ways to fix that right now is to install Graal on a FAT32 partition, or install it in a NTFS partition that doesn't have a lot of files.

Or you can just start it, and then after it starts once it starts faster later then all the sudden it starts instantly. But after you resart your comp it goes BLEH again. This problem started happening to me after I realized that I have a LOT of files on my graal thingy.

I took the advice and mine only takes 3 seconds to load now, when it used to be about a minute.

Actually, I meant to set up a RAM disk/drive. It's basically an amount of the system RAM that's set aside and assigned a drive letter to be accessed similar to the way a hard disk drive is -- only it's a lot faster since the files are stored in the fast memory rather than on a slow hard drive. A lot of these also use the FAT32 file system.

Might not be a typical solution, but it would almost certainly make loading the game and some other things a lot quicker.

Some problems:
- Might not have enough RAM to spare for this.
If 'cutting it close', you might want to just try a bare minimum Graal installation, and uncheck the option to "Save downloaded images (to \levels\webgifs)" if your internet connection is better than through a dial-up modem.

- Files that are put onto the RAM disk will be lost when restarting the computer etc.
This can be worked around by using a program that will save and restore (or at least restore) them if needed when Windows is started.

But this isn't really meant to be stable, especially if you actually want to keep your PM history and so on. Normally RAM disks are used for temporary space.
For example: You could also use a RAM disk for temporary internet files for your browser etc. -- makes loading web sites a lot quicker if you have a fast connection.

It's easy to find more information about setting one up if you're interested.

There are also quite a few 'tweaks' that will make the NTFS faster, but I suppose I'll hold back on that for now.

My problem arrises from having between all the folders in just /levels/ a hair under 30,000 files to load. Perhaps I'll try moving it to a FAT32 based partition and see if it improves, but I'd also like to hear these 'tweaks' Ibonic is talking about. :)

I better HD makes things open faster. Try a raptor.

I don't think that would make a marked increase in loading speed, perhaps not even noticable, because some of us having these problems load everything else quite quickly.

The problem is graal having to scan the folders with so many objects and aparently NTFS slows that process down a lot.

How do I make a seperate FAT32 partition? and EVERYONE!: simpliest is the new word

If you're referring to the Western Digital Raptor drives, I'm guessing (just according to the CPU, which seems a bit outdated) that his motherboard doesn't support SATA--and if that's the case, he'd also have to get an addon SATA controller card. And it really wouldn't make such a big difference with this problem anyway. But they are decent drives, I have some in striped RAID configurations.


I haven't actually had this problem myself, but I think the way Graal is scanning for the files must not be optimized very well at all if it takes minutes, and if other things aren't very slow like this.


Stefan, I'm quite confident I could help with improving the speed on NTFS if you contact me.

PowerQuest Partition Magic

http://www.powerquest.com/

Well right now no one found a solution for that, and I have have searched for that several years.

I would leave you die trying to solve your problems after that silly joke. :\

A solution to spliting the HD into partitions or making Graal faster?

Just the way Graal is coded makes it slow right?

Partition Magic is satan. :(

Who said it was a joke? I'm gonna start using it at school so, nyah! >_<

I have a 7200rpm Seagate Barracuda 200gb and graal still takes a while to load. I just have too many files :[

I agree.. with Shaman_King ... what's a FAT32 partition? you makin fun of me? ):<

I know what a FAT32 partition is, its just that I dont know how to split the hard drive once its partitioned (usually when you install your OS).

Uhhh huh....?

Ok I have added an option to Graal v2 to cache the folder contents in a text file, next time Graal is started it doesn't to scan for the files again. If you move/add files to your Graal folder manually then you will need to delete the cache-file or disable the option, but for people that just play it improves the startup speed a lot on NTFS.
So the startup time will be much smaller when the next Graal v2 version is released.

well, the more times you open it, it will load faster, and if ya shutdown ure pc that it will take 2 min again

mine takes 23 seconds

I thought everything goes into v3?

Release it now baby http://img105.exs.cx/img105/3043/winky.gif

Yes will try to find time to work on it soon

Will you opensource Delphi-Graal once it is no longer supported?

Is that a question or a joke?

Not like it is of any use by then... ?