Factorio Forums

Loading the game can take a very long time on slow (my) machine . So I belive it might be a good idea to load the game while you are in the menus and hide this loading time.
That's all, thanks for reading

But you would need to load the menu screen and that would still require a loading screen

without the screen you would still need to wait for loading, then you would be blind to the progress.
it wouldn't be any faster.

then you would be blind to the progress.

Loading bars are not new tech. They can be displayed anywhere at any time.

it wouldn't be any faster.

Yes it would, especially for new players. It takes time to navigate a menu, and that time can be done in parallel with loading the core assets. In fact this goes above and beyond most games that do all the heavy loading after the player clicks "new game".

Some obstacles need to be overcome first. If the player changes mods or settings and has to restart then the current loading progress would have to be safely aborted and started anew. That part may be tricky. There may be menu assets that are tied in with the main game, such as gui buttons. Loading a tiny portion of assets that are shared in game may also be tricky. There are also menu assets that tie into mods such as mod settings, and those must be immediately processed before being available in the gui. So yes, there are a few tricks to overcome before the game menu can be instant.

A modern day shortcut that many games use is to make a "game loader". Load up Fallout, or Starcraft, or nearly any fancy modern game. There is a little screen on the desktop and you click "play" to open the full game. A game loader is great for changing any game setting that requires restarting the game, so it'd be perfect for enabling mods and screen settings. It can not change settings that require files to be processed, so that's why a loader doesn't tweak mods or cheats or anything like that.

starting Factorio there is no menu. there is only a load screen which runs at 3-4 FPS.

I only find it to be noticeable while modding. The Sprite Atlas makes this process a lot quicker but generally you load the game once, maybe a second time to install some mods you downloaded in-game, then play for 7-8 hours.