DEVELOPMENT - Precaching Changes.

Ragetank · December 5, 2019

Hello Imperial Gaming,

You may see the below text in your chat when the server changes map/restarts and ask what? and why?

For a bit of background, precaching models is required so that the server can load player models before they are required. If we didn't do this the server would have a hiccup every time a new player model is spawned. Previously the server precached all of these models as the server started. This would increase the servers total startup time to over 10 minutes. Precaching these models during startup has also proven to make the startups less stable.

Now we precache the models after the server has fully initialized which provides the following benefits.

Pros:

- Server startup time lowered to 4 minutes from 10 minutes
- Server startup stability increased
- Clients can connect while the server is still precaching
- Clients can interact with the server while it is still precaching

Cons:

- The server will have hiccups every time a precache happens (The length of the hiccup depends on how complicated the model is)

A final note, the reason why I've made the server print this in the chat box is so players know when and why the server is lagging. Once this becomes common knowledge I will remove it from chat and just print in the console. Please refrain from spamming "Why is the server lagging?" because the above changes are why and it only lasts for a short while. In the end its for the better of everyone playing on the server.