Loads and Loads of Loading: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|''"Fortunately, the loading screens will give you plenty of time to calm down, make a cup of tea, and perhaps read that book you've been meaning to get into."''|'''[[Zero Punctuation|Yahtzee's]]''' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v{{=}}hi2xsKHKRUM&feature{{=}}g-vrec&context{{=}}G2690134RVAAAAAAAABA review] of ''[[Duke Nukem Forever]]''}}

 

 

* In ''[[EverQuest]]'', there were some people who were called "slow zoners." These slow zoners just took a great deal of time watching a "loading" screen. Sometimes, up to 4 minutes. If said slow zoner was also a dual clienter (playing 2 clients in same computer... perfectly legal if you owned both accounts) loading time could get up to 10 or 15 minutes, making this, maybe, the most extreme example.

** Especially enjoyable in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' if you are traveling on a ship. When you're done loading, the ship might already have left the harbor again... although in general, the game is rather easy on loading times, generally only requiring them for going from one continent to the other or into a instanced dungeon.

** ''[[Metroid: Other M]]'' is the first game in the series to actually pause the screen and say "LOADING". If you're playing casually, you may never see this—but if you're playing for speed, you'll see it a lot. Sometimes a load even takes place while you're wall-climbing, which may cause you to fall and get a loading screen for the ''previous'' room again...

** And then there's ''Metroid Prime Hunters'', which tried to use small empty hallways between rooms to disguise the loading, like the ''Symphony of the Night'' example above. [[Epic Fail|It does not work]], as you can often spend as much as 10 seconds standing at the door waiting for the damn thing to open, particularly if one of the other Hunters or Guardians are in the next room. Keep in mind this is on a ''DS cart''...

* In Spongebob Squarepants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman for the [[PlayStation 2]], there is a loading screen for just about everything. And god help you if you get the dreaded double loading with the first screen having Spongebob holding a hourglass and the second with bubbles slowly filling the screen, then you can finally start the next area/room. Made even worse if you enter the wrong room and have to go back, going through effectively four load screens for nothing.

 

* The PS3 version of ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'' seems to have a bad case of this.

** ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'' has designated loading areas, mostly in logical places (namely elevator rides), but if you are quick at the game and your computer isn't so fast you see a lot more Loading than portaling.

* ''Riven'', the second game in the ''Myst'' series, compounded its loading time frustrations by making you physically swap CDs whenever you went to a different island. Towards the end of the game this could result in you having to shuffle three CDs ''just to follow one fairly long path between two points''. Thankfully, this issue can be avoided on newer systems by ripping the CDs and tweaking the configuration files so that the game loads its resources from disk.

** There's also the DVD version that has everything on one disc, plus a nice making-of video.

* Speaking of [[Dance Dance Revolution]] (DDR)... [[Konami]] is notorious for insanely long boot times in their arcade games. System573-based games usually take 10+ minutes to boot up. When they switched DDR to [[PlayStation 2]]-based hardware, it only got worse -- ''Supernova'' can take up to half an hour. By comparison, ''[[Pump It Up]] Exceed 1'' takes... about 15 seconds.

** Konami's M2 arcade games suffer from slow CD loading, which is probably one reason why the console version of the M2 became [[Vaporware]].

 

 

=== [[Web Comics]] ===

* Parodied on ''[[The Way of the Metagamer]]'' with [http://wayofthemetagamer.thecomicseries.com/comics/pl/18721 this ridiculously slow loading bar].

* Parodied in ''[[Homestuck]]'' in regard to its Flash animations/games:

{{quote|[http://mspaintadventures.com/?s{{=}}6&p{{=}}003587 You spend the next twenty minutes staring at this image before you realize it's not a Flash file].}}

=== [[Web Original]] ===

* Stuart K. Reilly, a [[YouTube Poop|YouTube Pooper]], once attempted to upload a video onto [[YouTube]], but the processing took so long that he gave up, deleted the video he was attempting to upload, and as a form of retaliation or a way to vent his anger, uploaded [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4K1qKdjYtc this] (broken link) (Warning: contains sound amplification at the end). And then apparently deleted it.

{{quote|'''Strong Bad:'''' Is this cartoon seriously just all the loading screens?}}

* Flash cartoons/games in general almost always have "preloaders" that halt the play of the file until it has been fully downloaded. Preloaders that start the video before the loading is done based on the estimated connection speed, similar to the buffering that [[Internet Video|video player panes]] do, are theoretically possible but very rarely used.