I don't have such a good PC, so I lose about 7 minutes more on loading screens than other runners on the leaderboard. Is there a way to make the loading screens shorter?

Well the thing would be making a Game Timer w/o loads, but you need to know codes and stuff like that for doing that. The other thing would be buying better CPU or RAM, that would make your loads much faster. Last thing would be making a "fake hdd" only for the game, but idk how to do that and if it would even help with loads.

From my experience, the biggest difference is HDD vs SSD. Your PC won't matter that much in such old game like Postal 2.

"Fake HDD" is called Ramdisk and you can download one here for free: https://www.softperfect.com/products/ramdisk/

The idea is to create a virtual hdd from your RAM, which you can then use as any storage until you disable it or restart your PC. You copy your game there and the game is basically loaded from one space of your RAM to another one, and since RAM is faster than any storage device, the speed boost is huge. Ramdisk also doesn't suffer from inconsistent speeds. EG: Loading time is always 5 seconds with Ramdisk and anything between 6-7 seconds with HDD or SSD.

I haven't tried it myself yet, but Postal 2 complete on Steam is 7.5 GBs, which is a problem if you have less than 12GB RAM. Paradise Lost is 2.8 GBs, so that's 4.7 GBs, which should be doable with 8GB RAM. You'll probably have to get a cracked steam version, though :)

Retail Postal 2 version is just 1.4 GBs, but that one has a really long loading screens and you can't skip the speeches Postal dude makes when he pisses a group.

Just try the RAMdisk, if that wont work you will probably have to buy SSD or HDD.

I downloaded the ramdisk, andmy loading screens are a few seconds shorter now. Thanks!

You're welcome ;)

I just did my first full run with ramdisk and overall my loading screens are about 2,5 minutes longer. Don't know why. Also, my submitted PB that I edited the patch of hasn't been verified yet.

Well you need to wait for the verify from mod kinda long, becouse they dont have time all day, and there are only 2 mods. And with the RAMdisk, if you restarted computer since installing RAMdisk, it may have removed the "Fake HDD". Check that, and if thats not the problem, try reinstalling it and moving the game there again. If that doesnt helps aswell, there is probably nothing to do with that. Tell me if thats one of the problems, if not im gonna try to help you.

QuarantineTarantula: Yeah, I'm sometimes lazy and it takes me couple days to verify. If I may suggest, please don't submit every improved run you do, especially if it's just a couple seconds faster and you know you can do better in future. It's an extra unnecessary work for mods.

The only thing I can think of about your ramdisk issue is that you don't have enough actual physical RAM and you substitute it with large pagefile on your physical HDD, which in the end makes your pc run even slower :) What is your PC?

Yeha or that what Ewil says :)

Also, didn't you say 2 days ago it helped you by a couple seconds? :)

Okay, from now on I'll just submit the runs that went really well.

And yeah, I tested Ramdisk on Monday and it worked there, but later in the game it started slowing down. =( I have a HP Pavilion 15-p262nd

Oh, you're speedrunning on laptop. According to specs, it only has 3GB RAM, so I'm pretty sure you ran out of physical memory, which was replaced by your pagefile stored on your HDD, so that's why it was actually slower with ramdisk.

And Btw. Ewil_ not looking for new Mods i guess? Just asking OpieOP

There's no need for new mods. Maybe if there's more runs.

Did some testing of loading times on different versions and got quite interesting results:

-all done on SSD -First time is Monday loading screen -Second time is after Monday errand list -The rest is transitioning between 2 zones

v1409 1.316 2.783 2.516 2.916 2.566 2.899 2.583 2.899

v1409 - lowest settings 1.733 2.933 2.516 2.516 2.133 2.549 2.133 2.499 2.133

v1413 2.333 3.900 3.600 3.550 3.566 3.516 3.550

v1413 - lowest settings 1.633 3.200 2.883 2.900 2.883 2.983 2.966 2.966 2.916

v1413 - lowest settings + RAMdisk 1.633 3.183 2.899 2.866 2.866 2.916 2.916 2.899

v5021 - lowest settings 1.849 4.049 3.499 3.933 3.416 3.983 3.533

Despite 1409 being fastest, it doesn't allow you to skip speeches after getting a group angry (eg: speech after leaving library), so it's not a good option. I think the main reason for 1413 being fastest is that it allows 640x480 resolution while 5021 only allows 1024x768 and higher. Interesting thing is that RAMdisk almost doesn't help at all, but it should still be faster. Seems like the bottleneck is my PC or the game optimization. Sadly 5021, which is the latest version on Steam, is quite slow. One second per one level transitition can make up to a minute in entire run.