Our publisher, in it's infinite wisdom, decided to schedule a press event right before our alpha date, and then moved back our alpha date. So I was stuck at work all weekend trying to optimize the asset streaming.
A few things I've noticed:
1. Clever loading schemes (e.g. radius based preloading with different distances for various asset types) don't seem to work as well as stupid schemes (e.g. drop everything into a bucket, when you're close to the bucket load the whole bucket).
2. The next game I write will have the following scheme: define a region in the editor, associate objects with the region. If you're close enough to the region, load the whole region. Let the artists and designers load balance the map.
3. No matter how optimal your loading scheme is, having the music system thrash the DVD pretty much screws you over.
Ah well... hopefully we won't be skewered too badly by the press.
Posted by matt at July 12, 2004 10:40 AM