Quote
However, <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> still demands a score of seconds to load the next world�s background.
You are making a technical mistake by imagining the diametrical opposite of the situation to be the case.
To scroll the background smoothly, the desktop virtual resolution must be redefined to hold ALL the background of that world. There is no possible compromise here.

No problems there. I believe they use a tile based system so that they can reuse graphics and save space.

Quote
In that way, by the time you advance in your direction of motion the characters have been already generated and you do not feel any jerky performance.

I have no qualms with the performance of the creatures of creatures. I have a problem that my game already starts behaving jerkilly when I encounter a type of character that I haven't seen for a while (e.g. Travelling from Orc lands to the Cursed Abbey) The game jerks while it loads the animations and sounds for the undead creatures as each unique type appears. The jerk isn't much, only a quater of a second, perhaps. But if they were being loaded from disc, the disc would have to speed up, track to where the data was, and then copy it at a rate far slower than my hard-drive already can.

Quote
Everything the program needs within a world MUST be in RAM.

Wrong. Everything you can see and hear must be in RAM. The rest can can be omitted until it is required.

Quote
This also includes the cross-worlds database of information that keeps up with the development of the character, the quests achieved and all the kills database which you may brows at will any time.

That's true. The quest log isn't a memory issue because at it's largest I doubt it would be pushing 1Mb of text.

Quote
Even the conversations are in RAM.

Again, only as required. When it loads a character such as the statue in Nericon's garden, any other features it are loaded along with it. The actual speech often isn't loaded, but streamed directly from which ever drive it's on.

Quote
But you may not even see the open-ground map while you are in a dungeon under that map as such is considered to be another world even though it is resident for fast swapping of maps by reassigning the origin pointer of that map.

I think that Divine Divinity has two maps loaded simultaniously, the main map and the underground. When you move from main map to main map, the program loads the other two maps that apply to the new area you're in.

Quote
I asked you to take my word for it but I can see that you are still struggling and arguing.

No, I don't see why I should take your word as gospel. This is an open forum where people can discuss and debate things.

Quote
Believe me, RAM is the bottle neck of game performance within a world.
Data streaming from hard-disks or from DVDs makes no difference when the data-stream demands a transfer rate lower than both.

You are right that data-stream rates are fine, but access time between the two is a great difference and was my point from the beginning. To access a file on a disc takes about 3 or 4 seconds. To access the same file on a hard drive is almost instantanious.

Quote
What you experience in <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> as a delay is nothing else than the huge background map loading time, AND the huge data that accompanies each world.

I don't mind the big load between maps as I can see the importance of that. It's the loading times within a map, and especially during travel that I don't want.

Quote
Because you need to know about roofs that fade in and out and every single item that you can manipulate within that world such as doors, chests, hatches, wells, etcetera.
Those are called graphic overlays and they occupy the ancient and well known sprite space.

No game designer may gamble by keeping that data on a hard disk as quality tests shall disqualify the design instantly.

Yet that is one of the key components of almost every business database in the world. Databases aren't stored in memory because they are too big.

Quote
Does your favourite movie star look sexier than usual when you run a movie from hard disk rather than from the DVD? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

Yes, because when I stream data from a disc, it comes in buffered bursts (much to my annoyance) and shuts down between reads. I have frequent pauses during the movie which I don't get if I copy the movie to the hard drive. And besides, I prefer watch them in the living room on a TV.

Quote
Now the issue becomes whether playing the game from a DVD directly is cheaper or not.
Read the list of merits please.
1- It saves wasted space on your hard disk for valuable data you wish to save.
2- It saves you the clumsy operation of swapping disks or the pop up window of please insert the second, third, and fourth CD.
3- You do not even need an installation procedure but rather a registration and configuration procedure done once, and every time you load your DVD inside the drive, automatically you are on and playing your game.

All very true and positive. However, for me:
1- Hard drive space is not an issue as I only play a few games at a time.
2- Swapping discs is only required during installation, but then, I'm all for DVD anyway.
3- Installation happens once and that's it.

The other problem with not installing the game is that it makes patching very difficult. When Larian released the patch to fix all of the quests, that modified files that, by your proposed idea, would be loaded from the disc. It's very difficult to alter a disc! Hard drives have always been a far more flexable method of data storage and manipulation, beaten only by Flash-RAM (which still has poor capacity (I think)).

I'm not saying that running the game from disc won't work, but these issues all apply and have to be considered.

Have Fun!