Prefab Perofrmance Improvement?

**psychoph** · May 8th, '03, 08:52 AM

I haven't used Prefabs yet, but I am on the road to creating them for my upcoming campaign.

I was wondering if anyone had noticed if it is better to make one huge prefab or several small ones.

I am designing powers to be used to create ships and I am wondering if I should separate out shields, weapons, and other stuff so that HD will perform better, or if it doesn't really matter whether I have one big prefab.

I do notice that the character I am working with now which has about 20+ powers for different weapons is kind of slow, meaning 10+ seconds when I copy any single power. The program also puts me at the bottom of the list of powers every time I paste a power. This is even if the power was copied and pasted in the middle of the list.

This isn’t really a huge issue since other programs do the same thing.

**Monolith** · May 8th, '03, 09:06 AM

I made the same type of prefabs. I broke them down into 6 groups (Power Systems, Propulsion Systems, etc) and that seemed to work really well. It also makes creating the prefabs much simpler. That way you do not have to wait for the system to cycle through every power every time you save, open, copy, or paste.

**Kaeto** · May 8th, '03, 02:00 PM

Ever since update 1.39 I have had a problem with the prefabs not loading right and all of the ones that i had loaded have gone away.

And 1.40 has the same problem.

***Simon*** · May 8th, '03, 02:07 PM

Originally posted by Kaeto
Ever since update 1.39 I have had a problem with the prefabs not loading right and all of the ones that i had loaded have gone away.

And 1.40 has the same problem.

FIrst I've heard of it. It generally helps for fixing bugs if you report them when you find them.

What exactly is happening? Prefabs are loading fine whenever I try them (both during runtime and on load, restoring any prefabs loaded in previously).

***Simon*** · May 8th, '03, 02:09 PM

Originally posted by Kaeto
Ever since update 1.39 I have had a problem with the prefabs not loading right and all of the ones that i had loaded have gone away.

And 1.40 has the same problem.

One bug which has been reported is with Charges on existing characters causing errors during load. HD has recently started implementing the rule that Continuing can only be added onto Charges which are placed on Constant Powers. There is a bug in the current version that will cause an error if it encounters Continuing on a non-Constant Power.

If you have a Power construct like this in your prefabs, then that is likely the cause of the issue. It will be fixed in the update which is going out tomorrow....the Continuing Adder will be removed from the Charges Modifier for any non-Constant Powers.

**Kaeto** · May 8th, '03, 02:11 PM

I get the error message on startup. "An error occurred while loading the prefab.
Please try again.

Error Message: null"

And no characters open

***Simon*** · May 8th, '03, 02:18 PM

Originally posted by Kaeto
I get the error message on startup. "An error occurred while loading the prefab.
Please try again.

Error Message: null

Well...it's the same "type" of error that the Charges issue (mentioned above)...but without seeing the trace.log from when the issue occurred, I can't really say for sure.

**Kaeto** · May 8th, '03, 02:23 PM

Thanks I'll wait and see if that update tomorrow fixes it and let you know when I can send you the trace log if it fixes it. right now I can't do so since 'm on a Mac and can't transfer over from my pc right now. ( my zip drive is S****** up)

**Monolith** · May 8th, '03, 02:34 PM

I had not noticed it before, but when I bring up HD 1.40 and click on new, all my Prefabs do not come up in the Tabs. When I look at Unload Prefabs it shows that they are all available, but when I click the Prefab tab under Powers, for example, nothing is showing as available. But this only happens when I bring up HD with a character still open. If I start a new character they are available again.

***Simon*** · May 8th, '03, 02:37 PM

Originally posted by Monolith
I had not noticed it before, but when I bring up HD 1.40 and click on new, all my Prefabs do not come up in the Tabs. When I look at Unload Prefabs it shows that they are all available, but when I click the Prefab tab under Powers, for example, nothing is showing as available. But this only happens when I bring up HD with a character still open. If I start a new character they are available again.

Dumb question: Are you sure that the Prefabs that you have loaded contain items for the tabs that you are checking? If they don't, then there won't be any entries on those tabs.

The only reason I ask is that when I start up HD, all previously loaded prefabs are re-loaded. If I then create a new character and check the Prefab tabs, they are populated as appropriate.

**Monolith** · May 8th, '03, 02:41 PM

Originally posted by dsimon
Dumb question: Are you sure that the Prefabs that you have loaded contain items for the tabs that you are checking? If they don't, then there won't be any entries on those tabs.

Yes. I have worked up 6 Star Hero ship prefabs and have been entering the ships from TE into HD. When I am getting read to finish, I always start a new vehicle, name it and save it, then exit the program. That way when I load HD the next time to continue the unfinished ship is always ready for me to start on. These power prefabs are always loaded, but when the program loads with the unfinished ship the prefabs are not showing up on any of my tabs (I have powers, skills, and disads in the same prefabs).

When I click new, it brings up a new template and all those prefabs are listed as available for the new character, but they are not available for the character which loaded with the program.