User fixes GTA5 Online loading times (~70% reduction)

[HLJ]

I found this read rather interesting:
How I cut GTA Online loading times by 70% (nee.lv)

"GTA Online. Infamous for its slow loading times. Having picked up the game again to finish some of the newer heists I was shocked (/s) to discover that it still loads just as slow as the day it was released 7 years ago.

It was time. Time to get to the bottom of this."

"
tl;dr

• There’s a single thread CPU bottleneck while starting up GTA Online
• It turns out GTA struggles to parse a 10MB JSON file
• The JSON parser itself is poorly built / naive and
• After parsing there’s a slow item de-duplication routine"

 

[Shortbread]

I found this read rather interesting:
How I cut GTA Online loading times by 70% (nee.lv)

"GTA Online. Infamous for its slow loading times. Having picked up the game again to finish some of the newer heists I was shocked (/s) to discover that it still loads just as slow as the day it was released 7 years ago.

It was time. Time to get to the bottom of this."

"
tl;dr

• There’s a single thread CPU bottleneck while starting up GTA Online
• It turns out GTA struggles to parse a 10MB JSON file
• The JSON parser itself is poorly built / naive and
• After parsing there’s a slow item de-duplication routine"

I believe R* is implementing a version of his patch and rewarding him $10,000 under their bug-finding program.

 

[BRiT]

His latest update from the link in the first post:

----------------------------------
#Update 2021-03-16
R* released the update! Downloaded it and got my first run results - same hardware, same measurement - from R* logo to fully online.

Fully fixed! t0st approves!

Thanks again for all the coffees, and thanks to R* for taking the time to look into this and the generous bounty!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

At first I was ready to blast R* for technical laziness (still not great) but then reading about how they enthusiastically and promptly not only implemented the fix, but also rewarded the person that came up with a fix ... I have to take my hats off to them, both R* and the person that fixed it.

Regards,
SB

 

[manux]

Well, 2 minutes load time to play sounds still awfully slow. It's like "fixed".

 

[Gerry]

At first I was ready to blast R* for technical laziness (still not great) but then reading about how they enthusiastically and promptly not only implemented the fix, but also rewarded the person that came up with a fix ... I have to take my hats off to them, both R* and the person that fixed it.

Regards,
SB

Whilst true, it is amazing how even a developer the size of Rockstar can't be arsed with this stuff without having a big push from an enthusiast. I guess they're like any software firm in any industry, where developers are normally too busy writing new stuff to bother fixing old stuff.

 

[Rootax]

Whilst true, it is amazing how even a developer the size of Rockstar can't be arsed with this stuff without having a big push from an enthusiast. I guess they're like any software firm in any industry, where developers are normally too busy writing new stuff to bother fixing old stuff.

GTA Online is making a killing, they didn't need to waste time on that (from a $$ perspective. It's Rockstar we're talking about. I'm surprised they didn't monetize this fix as a in game purchase ). Now they turn this in a good PR move with the 10k to the independent dev, it's a win win I guess.

 

[zed]

2 mins to parse a 10mb json file! And this is the improved time?
Sounds like it can be further improved by a lot

 

[nhighnote]

GTA Online is a huge success; they didn't need to waste time on it (in terms of money). We're talking about Rockstar here. I'm surprised they didn't make this patch available as an in-app purchase eek. Now they can turn this into a good PR move by giving the independent developer $10,000, so it's a win-win situation.

 

[nhighnote]

While this is true, it's amazing how a developer the size of Rockstar can't be arsed with this stuff without a big push from an enthusiast. I suppose they're like any other software company in any industry, where developers are usually too busy writing new code to bother fixing old code.