Loading screens when entering the player house?

I have never engaged with the housing system.

It’s not my thing, so i don’t have any screenshots or videos for it :smiley:

But i remember when walking in and choosing which room to view it was no loading screen

Yeah in a game designed for a housing system that is only 6 years old.

If WoW was released today it would probably have the Delve style load in. As it is they are making this work in a 20 year old system.

But delves are not really like that , and yet they are not breaking immersion . From my observance it is pretty obvious that you are entering an another “instance” when entering a delve . And since delves are not static but have various combinations , they can not really be preloaded the same way than an another zone could be , unless you are preloading like 5 different delves whenever you come close to it and then only when you enter a one you get to see it , and I really do not think that this is the case . It would simply be a badly optimized way to do it .

With that said , since delves are a unique instance just as how dungeons are , they still load almost seamlessly , even though you are loading many assets . And I really do not think that they are preloaded all the time

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With Delves, this is what happens: When you approach the entrance, and even if you click on the portal and input the Tier, nothing is yet loaded. Once you click to Enter, the game first creates the grey portal behind you that blocks you from the rest of the world. Then it unloads the rest of the world and maintains in memory just the small part between the 2 grey portals. Then it loads the Delve geometry and assets for the specific story. And then it despawns the grey portal in front of you.

A very similar mechanic takes place when going from Dornogal through the Coreway to The Ringing Deeps. While flying in the coreway, first it unloads the Isle of Dorn from memory, then it loads The Ringing Deeps. If the game detects that it has not completed loading the zone before you reach a critical point in the Coreway (right before the path opens up), it forces a loading screen.

I have a slow PC and I can recreate the above at will.

-=EDIT=-
Someone else here on the forums made a very nice comparison with theaters, where they would drop down the giant curtains, turn off the lights and have just some actors in front of them to entertain the audience or continue the script, while simultaneously the staff replace assets behind the curtains to a new “environment”, and then bring up the curtains and turn the lights back on with the actors who remained on-stage continuing as if nothing happened to give a sense of continuity.

-=2nd EDIT=-
The first time I remember any game using this technique is back in Sonic 3 for the Mega Drive / Genesis. Whereas in Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 there was a loading screen between acts, in Sonic 3, once Sonic reached the panel at the end of the stage and the score was tallied, the game would start unloading the 1st Act and load the 2nd Act while letting the player move freely in just the space of 1 screen. In order to cover the fact that loading needed some time, they animated moving letters that said “Angel Island Act 2” (or something like that, it’s been many years since I last played it). And a few seconds later, the player was in Act 2.

But loading different zones required more loading time due to needing to load a lot more art as well since different zones didn’t use the same assets, and the entire screen was going black in those intersessions.

Are they actually ? It would mean that we are loading multiple variations of the same delve just because we entered a zone . I do not think that that is the case since that would be just bad optimization and would impact performance even to those who have never engaged with the system

If this is indeed true then my main premise of the post is apparently false

I wanted to respond with this to the other comment , but I suppose that it is relevant here as well . Now my question is would the housing assets take any longer to load than the entire delve ? Of course it would be a bit tricky to make the transition good enough since in delves when you enter it the grey portal “moves” behind you , and in housing you can not have those tunnels . And if you had like 10k assets in your house it would take a while

The main reason why I think that this would be an issue , at least for me , is because I am a heavy addon user , and especially the big ones that skin the ui like elvui make it a bit longer . A way to prevent this is to make different types of reloads , if they do not exist already . Again it would be a bit selfish of me to expect them to make an another “/reload for world assets but not the ui ones” option just for me , but since they are likely going through these posts from time to time looking for ideas , this was just what I thought

Yep .it is also kind of loading but different one

Loading interiors are so 2000, please lets not

Name 1 game that had dynamic and saved interiors that doesn’t have a loading screen.

Ima name a hundred with one name - minecraft

I hadn’t even noticed Delves don’t have one! I haven’t played many but you pass through like a misty curtain? So is the objection to loading screens that it’s not as smooth?

Eh, that’d mean that the entire housing area needs to live in your pc’s memory for as long as you play the game. Want to get to 64 GB memory requirement for just WoW? That’s how you get there.

Nope, that whole game is the world.
Not the same thing at all.

The absolute worst recent prominent example i can think of is hogwarts legacy, but even there the transition between the outdoors and indoors is almost kind of seamless.

In HL can you pick up a cup and put it down somewhere else and the game remember that placement for the rest of your playthrough?

Also HP is a single player game. So again Not the same thing.

Why would you be doing that?

I think a loading screen is fine, but yeah doing it in the Delves way would be nice, I suppose. Maybe there’s currently some technical limitation as to why they can’t do that.

There is a very big difference between something like TES, where you can actually pick up a cup and place it somewhere else, and midnight housing, where there you move an object via a redactor/build mode, not via physical force in the game.

Look, you can narrow down the games, i am allowed to compare wow with, indefinitely,and always say, that i cant compare wow with that game or this game.
but eventually you have to at least allow me to compare WOW with WOW, right? At least i am allowed to compare WoW with WoW?

So if you look at Krazhan, when we come there, we have to load in, but there is an entire gigantic raid inside. So because i will be inside for an hour or more, it makes sense that there is a loading screen, since you only actually load in/out once an hour.

If you look at stormwind, or garrison, or any other hub with buildings, you dont have much to do in the buildings, you go inside for a minute or two, then you go outside. It does not make sense gameplay-wise to have a loading screen.

What is the point of doing neighbourhoods, if you have a loading screen and even if there is massive world pvp raid outside of your house in the neighbourhood, inside of your house you dont know there is a carnage out there? this just breaks immersion

No, i certainly support people, who say do loading into the plot of land, not into the interior.
Leave the interior exterior transition seemless
Only load when stepping into houses grounds, if you absolutely must

You think players are not going to be spending hours in thier homes?

No, based on info so far it will be a run in run out 5 min max thing.
But not even going into that discussion. Even if you think people will hang in their homes a lot
you can agree a lot of people will make like balconies or outside tables and everything, right?
imagine them having to load in and out to just sit on the chair outside?

For you and some others. I personally will be spending all my down time/time in queues fashoning a home for my characters.
Many, many other players will do the same.

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Yeah, fine, as you wish, but you still have to agree people will want to sit on a chair outside.
Now imagine havign to go through a loading out screen to sit on a chair or like use a balcony

I used to do this in Skyrim, and on the 100th time
ITS PAINFUL