How to reduce loading times?

[Twain]

I've been working on a renpy game but reloading it for bug/play testing is taking longer and longer as the game increases in size to the point where it becomes a time drain. I've got a lot of scripts, images, composites etc.

Are there tricks or certain ways of doing things which can help reduce (re)loading times? Or at least prevent the increase of loading times as much as possible?

[PyTom]

How many script files do you have? Having multiple small script files should be faster than one big one.

[Twain]

Thanks for replying.

It currently has about 150 scripts . Most of them far below 100 KB in file size. I use those to store composites of images etc . Eight of them are about 1 MB in size (but their rpyc versions sometimes 2 MB)

Would chopping those bigger scripts into smaller ones have any noticeable impact?
Is there an optimum size? Or maybe a way to load a script when the need arises in game instead of all at once in the beginning?

[PyTom]

Hm... Are you trying to do anything that hits the disk as part of the image load? I'd be really interested in seeing what you're doing - since it strikes me that having scripts that long leaves for quite a bit of opportunity for the init code to be very slow.

[Twain]

I'm afraid I'm not really sure what you mean by "hits the disk as part of the image load?", but I don't think I'm doing something especially strange.

I wouldn't mind sending you a private message with a link to the scripts etc on a "for your eyes only"- basis. Just some general "good practice" guidance tips is the most I was hoping for, but of course I'd be thrilled for you to take a look at the scripts. Still, I understand if my "for your eyes only" caveat is a deal breaker. I'd like to add any sort of lesson learned(or things to avoid) to this post for others to learn from, but I'd like for the scripts themselves not to go public.

[PyTom]

While I don't sign NDAs, I'm happy to treat games sent to me as confidential. (I'd need the full game, since I'd want to see if there are other data files that are causing this problem.)

[Twain]

That's fine and certainly more than I could ever hope for when starting this thread. I sent you a pm with a link to the full game. Thanks again.

[PyTom]

Try hitting "Force recompile" in the launcher. That sped things up quite a bit for me. It still takes ~5 seconds, but most of that is just pulling things off disk.

[Twain]

Thanks for taking the time to give it a look. I'm sorry to say I was dumb enough to forget the files I sent you weren't made in the latest version of Renpy so I think the first time you tried to load it, it was unnecessarily slow and the forced recompile simply set things straight again. I didn't experience a faster loading time neither after a forced recompile(with the older Renpy version), nor after updating to the latest version of Renpy and doing another forced recompile. The opposite actually. The older Renpy version seems to be faster at loading. But those five seconds you mentioned are looking awfully good, so I'm guessing it's time for me to start thinking about getting some better hardware.