Thank you for that detailed report. I'll check on my copy on windows wether the load times are significantly longer for me too.

On the same pc, that is very weird.
there were some other reports of weird behaviour creeping up on various machines, ill forward this too.

The only thing i can think off right now you could try is running it in combatability mode.

Originally posted by Wrzlprnft:

... The only thing i can think off right now you could try is running it in combatability mode.

Thanks. Tried Vista compatibility, might be slightly better. A full test cycle, starting at the Main Menu, then Training, navigating to planet, landing, extracting ore, leaving planet, receiving next training task, going back to the menu, and finally quitting took 18 minutes. Performance while actively playing (space, planet) is normal, pure playing time about 5 minutes, loading training (until I started navigating the ship) 7 minutes, entering planet atmosphere 3 minutes. Time after leaving the planet 3 minutes (this went quicker than before), quitting less than a minute.
I was watching the task manager occasionally, RAM usage was 4 GB on average during most of the time, max almost 4.5 GB (caused by graphics requirements?), CPU usage and disk access didn't appear to stress the system. Also, the TLJH task was marked as "not responding" most of the (waiting) time.
In addition, I noticed that my whole system was slow for a couple of minutes after the TLJH task had stopped - OS post-processing, tidying up?
Please let me know if I you need more information from me.

Almost a year later: No change. Any chance that someone is investigating this problem, or has someone found a solution / workaround, to reduce the loading times (at least during actual gameplay - transitioning between ship and planet view in particular)?
This game and its players deserve better than to be dismissed and abandoned because of inacceptable loading times (even though chances are that these horrible loading times haven't been caused by a game update, but by an "environmental change").
After all, Daedalic is still selling the game - do something for your customers' money, guys!

Unfortunately the developer studio, Daedalic West, doesn't exist anymore.
As Daedalic's console port team ported it to the switch just fine, i assume no one else reported such horrible loading times to them.
Not much I can do about it in that case, really, and since hardly anyone posts here, i haven't come across any workarounds.

Originally posted by Wrzlprnft:

Unfortunately the developer studio, Daedalic West, doesn't exist anymore.
As Daedalic's console port team ported it to the switch just fine, i assume no one else reported such horrible loading times to them.
Not much I can do about it in that case, really, and since hardly anyone posts here, i haven't come across any workarounds.

Thanks for replying - I understand your situation.
As you have experienced the change in loading times yourself: Do you have any guess what might have caused it? A Windows or a driver update perhaps? And do you know or have any reason to think that the GOG version might be better in this respect (or: how likely is it that the lag was introduced by a change in the way Steam communicates with the game or vice versa)?

PS: Is there a description of the settings of the config file?

If i had to guess I'd say a graphics driver thing, but just because it seems to be a rather specific issue.
I haven't been on windows for a while now, but the install i have is a fresh one. Perhaps I can find the time to test that out.
As far as I recall, there is no official game specific description, but many of those settings seem to be unreal engine defaults.

Originally posted by Wrzlprnft:

If i had to guess I'd say a graphics driver thing ...

Hm, I updated my graphics drivers to the (still) most recent version around March 2020. I started this thread in July 2020, not so long after the update - which means there might be a connection. I could probably try to go back to the previous version, but I'm a bit reluctant to do this because it might impact other things I do on this PC.
My graphics card is an integrated Intel 630 HD. I'm aware that it's not listed among those compatible with the game, but the loading times were ok before 2020 (I couldn't tell you when exactly I last played the game with acceptable loading times), and apart from the loading times the game has always performed excellently (and still does today during normal game-play without loading - unfortunately, there is loading involved whenever I switch between ship and space or planet, which is quite often).

I guess you don't have any information regarding potential differences between the Steam and the GOG version (which was released in 2017, too)? Though unlikely, the game communicates differently with Steam and with GOG (for example, the Steam version contains a Steam API), and this may (in theory at least) lead to different beaviour.

Update:
I had a look at the graphics drivers of the second PC I mentioned in my first post, an Intel 520, and the drivers haven't been updated since 2017. The game has the same long loading times on this PC (and runs fine otherwise).

Just to clarify one thing:
I couldn't really verify longer loading times when you first posted about an issue, my machine is rather beefy compared to yours, so it wasn't more than a hunch, really.
I now checked back on a clean windows install on my machine as well as a CPU upgrade: from the main menu clicking continue into the game takes 2-3 seconds. so.... i can't really test anything anymore.

I did try to google around, but nothing i stumbled across really goes anywhere ever since you posted that update that you have the issue on a second machine.

It really throws me for a loop that the issue didn't exist at some point, yet happens on two machines... like, the game hasn't been updated in years with anything that should affect load times, but it also cannot be a system issue if it happens on two machines.

Which also makes the "your system is unfortunately below min spec" or something also totally null and void, yet i can't find anything else.

ill just plop a list here, but ...shrug... none seem reasonable:

• do the loading screen animation (those blinking circles) move fast or slow (as in, does only the loading take time, or does the game in total slow down to a crawl)
  
• check RAM speeds
  
• check anti virus (there was some internet connection stuff for survey things in the game for a very brief time, perhaps that got it set on some sort of blocklist)
  
• reinstall steam (it does do some runtime stuff, and you should be able to keep the installed games on a client reinstall)
  
• test the various graphics settings, perhaps higher ones perform better (i doubt it, but at this point...)
  
• admin mode?
  
• is there any other program experiencing anything similar in terms of loading times?
  
• is there any common denominator on those two PC's: same MoBo with same Bios, RAM cycle speed, anything that could cause issues on both?
  
• i don't know how tech savy you are, but you could try and see how much it struggles with linux on the very same machine, be it via a live USB media or a super small install. steam should be able to run it out of the box via proton, and that could perhaps help to identify whether it is a hardware/driver/software issue...
  
• does the start up sequence take long before or after the daedalic intro sequence/video?
  
• have you tried to disable steam cloud saves for the game? thatr shouldn't do syncing during the game and therefore not do anything, but who knows.
  
• fullscreen vs native?
  
• reinstall any audio drivers

except one thing that could make sense, but i deem rather super-duper unlikely: if you have those GPUs, i assume your CPUs do not have that much room to spare, either.
There were security issues somewhere in the correct timeframe on hardware level with Spectre[en.wikipedia.org] and Meltdown. Those have been mitigated, but some of the steps might have limited the performance of said CPUs in some unforseen way, e.g. when a game tries to do fancy stuff, but not in a normal way. I just deem that unlikely, because most performance issues should be widely noticeable over more things than just a game, and shouldn't only affect load times... but those mitigation effects are basically random for puny end users like me.

Thanks for your efforts - highly appreciated! I'll go through your comments and tipps, but this will take a while.

My personal guess is GPU (Intel 630 / 520 on the two PCs), but this doesn't answer the question what has changed in the first half of 2020 - which must be something system-, not game-related. My guess is that the GPU is the bottleneck (usage beyond 4GB during the loading process, much less afterwards, according to task manager, with 8 GB RAM in total and an integrated GPU on both PCs). There is at least one game in my Steam portfolio which behaves similarly - I'll check.
Cloud saving is disabled, the outbound data transfer issue was resolved before my performance problems started (and it had kicked in before the main menu was displayed), and I tried all compatibility settings I can think of (including admin mode). Linux I have no experience with.

I'll post again when I'm through with your list.

Yeah, with that stuff it won't run great. I am more curious now whether we can A) help you at least mitigate the issue and b) find out why it changed in the first place. Not sure if we can even reach those points even...

Loading times are much improved, all of a sudden (on both PCs)!
The time from launching to main menu was and is 1-2 minutes - fine. Starting the tutorial (or the main game) took about 7 minutes, sometimes more. And transitioning between ship and planet or vice versa took another 7 minutes or more each, every single time.
Today the 7 minutes went down to about 2 minutes! Don't ask me why.
No new drivers, no new firmware (BIOS, ...). In the meantime, there were Windows and Steam (system software) updates, that's all I'm aware of. I guess it was a recent Windows update, but who knows? Task manager shows GPU usage of 3.8 GB max now (used to be 4.6 GB max), which keeps the game running now (a lot of the previous 7 minutes it was on "no response").
The game itself, in space, on the ship and on a planet, is and has been performing well.
Loading times of 1-2 minutes are not perfect, but acceptable, given my hardware. It may well be that these were the old loading times (pre-2020).

I'll see how it goes and report back. Thanks for your help!

Huh.

Well, good news is that it is probably a software related issue (perhaps related to the GPU)
Bad news: i still have no idea how to pinpoint (and prevent it from happening again)

Anyway. If you can play it, nice! My list is just a thing of guesses, no need to work through that if it's an windows/steam update thing

Originally posted by lonetrav:

... There is at least one game in my Steam portfolio which behaves similarly - I'll check. ...

I remembered the other game: It's Dead Monarchy (and to a lesser degree Kingdoms).
I didn't have much time to play and test over the weekend, but will compare Long Journey Home and Dead Monarchy over the next cople of days.