Does anybody have any other ideas on getting the game to load faster?
The first thing to do is to turn off the game's main Intro Movie by going to:
'Options/Cinematic/Show Opening Cinematic' and unchecking the checkbox.
But the StarDock, IronClad, and Sins Logo movies still play. These are probably playing at the same time the game is loading in the background, and not slowing it up too much on faster computers. But on slower computers it seems it would help speed up the load time to skip these movies.
(Recommended) Turning off the 'ShowIntroMovies' Flag:
Open your 'user.setting' file from this folder:
C:\Documents and Settings\your username\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Setting
and change the line:
ShowIntroMovies TRUE
to
ShowIntroMovies FALSE
The game will skip the Logo 'Movies', but will instead display a static graphic logo for each of these three logos. This may be a little faster.
(Not Recommended) Renameing the Movie Files so the game skips them:
I have tried renaming the movies in the movies folder so the game will just skip them. I just renamed the StartDockLogo.bik, IronCladLogo.bik, and GameLogo.bik to have an extension of .Bikxxx. Now the game does not see these and skips these movies.
For me, the game skips these movies and just displayes the game's starfield background image while loading. It seems to hang on this screen and the Game Menu does not appear until I click on the screen once or twice. So I do not recommend this option. But if want to try it, test this and see how it works for you. It may be faster, but you may need to click the screen to get the UI to show up. Kind of annoying and again, I don't recommend this.
If somebody figures out a better way, please post here.
Snacko