Factorio

Factorio

63 ratings
How to speed up "Loading Sprites" when game boots up
By Big Grease
Loading times when booting up Factorio is normally around 30 seconds for many people, more or less.

But some unfortunate souls like me have to endure an excrutiating 1 minute, 2 minutes, maybe 3 minutes or more of loading. (Mine was 2.7 minutes.)

This simple guide shows you how to drastically reduce the time needed when loading sprites, which takes up the vast majority of the loading time. I managed to get my loading time down to a mere 1 minute. Not perfect, but a huge improvement!
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How to improve Loading Sprites on game startup
Hold CTRL + ALT then click on Settings.

You will now see a new thingamajing in the settings at the bottom of the panels called The rest.

This has special options that people normally should not fiddle with unless they know what they are doing. Some of these could lead to unpleasant side effects.

Now, click of The rest option. Then navigate to cache-sprite-atlas.

Check the box next to it, and Loading Sprites will load in a few seconds instead of potentially minutes.


IMPORTANT: Once enabled, the game will load slowly on startup one time. Afterwards the game will load significantly faster.

If the game is modified by for example being updated or modified (changed or probably updated installed mods), the game will load slowly one time, but consecutively it will load fast again.
How it works and caveats
Normally the game loads every single one of the sprites one after the other. This takes some time.

However, when cache-sprite-atlas is enabled, the game instead when loading puts all those sprites into a package.

Once the package is complete, consecutive startups will load sprites at a massively improved speed.

The package will however need to be remade every time the game is updated or modified by mods.

Even though this option is incredibly amazing, the developers did decide not have it in the normal settings menu and enabled by default. This essentially means that cache-sprite-atlas has some downside big enough to warrant it not being shown normally.

...But what is the worst that could happen? My save file getting corrupted? LOL. They would not even have included it in the game if it was that big of a risk.

So if you already have comfy, fast loading times then you could abstain from enabling cache_sprite_atlas. But I'm not stopping you if you want to go from fast to fastest.
The unknowns
If you find any downsides, bugs etc with enabling cache-sprite-atlas or addtional information about how it functions I would like you to mention it in the comments for me to add to this guide.

Additionally, you could tell me what specs your computer has, how long your loading times were, and how much they improved once cache-sprite-atlas was enabled.

My specs:

Processor: Intel Core i5-6400
Memory(Ram): DDR4 8GB
Graphics: Nvidia Geforce Gtx1060 6GB

Loading times before cache-sprite-atlas: 3 minutes.
Loading times after cache-sprite-atlas: 1 minutes.
Additional tricks
Defragmenting the disc (If it is not an ssd) your game is installed on can speed up loading times a bit for some people.
12 Comments
Akahoshi 23 Aug @ 6:22pm 
30 Seconds to 5
W guide
Brambor 24 May @ 3:13am 
A caveat is obviously it takes more storage as it duplicates all texture assets.
unfunf22 18 May @ 4:47am 
@Powinator Thanks i hope you have fun, now that it loads faster. would you mind telling me how slow it was before and how fast it is now? have you installed many mods?
Powinator 17 May @ 11:31am 
From minutes to seconds, I also enabled the checks suggested by unfunf22.
Cimorene 17 Nov, 2024 @ 8:21pm 
il come bck nd wrd thi! (the key to the left of d nd the key to the left of tht re broken on my computer)
Cimorene 12 Nov, 2024 @ 9:00pm 
WOW
YunggGravy 30 Oct, 2024 @ 8:04pm 
Which I could reward you twice my friend. Excellent guide. My PC nows loads the game in less than 3 seconds. It used to be around 10-20 seconds. This confirms your tip benefits higher end machines as well, which is rare my friend. Cheers! :cozybethesda:
unfunf22 29 Oct, 2024 @ 7:05am 
cache-sprite-atlas and compress-atlas-sprite-cache and cache-prototype-data are the most speed giving tweaks you can additionally turn on.
the 2 options are under the grafics section, the last option is almost in the first segment of the hidden options. optionally you can search them there is a search button in the top window.
WolfieFyrelyte 27 Oct, 2024 @ 9:51pm 
for me it took 2 mins down to 15 seconds thank you for the tip
Big Grease  [author] 27 Oct, 2024 @ 12:22am 
Getting it down from 2 min to 30 sec is an even bigger improvement than I had! Seems it varies a bit from machine to machine. Glad I could to help! :cozyspaceengineersc: