Seven years after its release, GTA Online is still a popular and wildly profitable game thanks to the consistent flow of new content. Rockstar Games, the developer, and publisher of GTA, has not been able to reduce the infamously long load times of the game. Recently, an enterprising developer by the name of t0st finally identified the causes of why GTA Online takes so long to load, even on devices with quick processors and storage. The solutions provided by the developer cut down load times by 70%. The good news is that load times will soon be permanently reduced for GTA Online players, but this was also a surprise for Rockstar.
What causes these lengthy loading times?Â
While opening the Task Manager on your computer, the CPU usage spikes dramatically after the one-minute mark, but storage and network usage are almost non-existent. It suggests that the system’s technicalities are at play rather than Rockstar’s servers or data that are read from a drive. Two significant causes exist, and they can be resolved using various debugging tools and programming.
According to the developer, the first issue is that the game reads a text file containing a list of all the purchasable items. After each of the 63,000 items, it began a new count of all the characters in the 10MB text file. The amount of CPU time lost by performing this count 63,000 times is considerable compared to just performing it once.
Secondly, the game creates a hash of each item. It is a calculated fingerprint that uniquely identifies it from all the item data that is read. The game compares the hash value of the item being stored against the hash value of every stored-other item each time an item from the list is stored. It is done 63,000 times in total.
This process does not take a long time at first. But as more items successfully load into the game, the check becomes slower and slower. It consumes a significant amount of time. It is essentially useless because the list is empty, to begin with, and the loaded file has no duplicates. The game performs this to ensure zero duplicate items in the final list.
How to cut GTA loading time by 70%?
The developer created a code that replaced some of the game’s functions to fix the problems. It is a simple cache to address the item’s problem reading that returns the same value whenever Rockstar’s code requests the length. In this process, the calculations are not performed again and again. It reduces the unnecessary work required for the check from 63,000 times to just one.
The second solution is even simpler. Since it is unnecessary to look for duplicate items, the code inserts the new item without performing any hash check. As a result, none of the checks need to be performed, allowing the CPU to complete the task quickly.
Both fixes make GTA online load much more quickly, nearly cutting down 70% of the load time. The load time is shorter, with just one minute and 50 seconds when the item loading fix is used.
Final thoughts
You can download the source code and test the fix on your own if you are an expert gaming programmer with the necessary equipment. Be aware that altering game functions in this way while the game is active constitutes classic hacking behavior, so proceed with caution to avoid receiving a lifetime ban. Your best option is to wait for Rockstar to fix the subsequent GTA patch. The fixes should be worth investigating for gamers that use consoles or PCs with older AMD processors, given how simple it is and how much time it saves.
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