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Old 08-10-2010, 05:30 PM
Zapron Zapron is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Anton Levy Smithery
Posts: 6
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Sure I'll try to explain it as simply as possible.

When you render a model or scene for the first time your graphics card has to go through a bunch of instructions and perform calculations to make that appear on your screen.

Rather than make your graphics card start from scratch every time you load a zone the game saves those calculations into a cache for later use. That way the next time you load the same zone instead of doing the work over again it just pulls that information from the cache. This is why you will have longer load times the first time you enter a zone and then shorter load times on return visits.

This is really useful, but there is a drawback. Sometimes these cache files are saved for a long time without being refreshed. In the case of the Kingshead crash Disney made an update to the zone that caused some things to change (like the door and the docks). On some computers this cache file might still contain the information from weeks ago, before Kingshead was changed. When your computer tries to use instructions that expect old assets, but your game files contain the new assets you end up with a problem. This can result in the crash, or other issues like falling through the docks or not being able to go through the door.



For anyone who is afraid about deleting the cache. It's actually natural for the game cache to be deleted. Each time a new version of the game comes out that changes something (like Kingshead) it is supposed to overwrite your existing cache, but sometimes it doesn't. Remember that the cache doesn't even exist in the game files until you load things for the first time, so the game is made to be able to build the cache again. The only downside to deleting your cache is that you will have longer load times when you visit zones for the first time after deleting it. Just make sure that you don't delete other files that are not part of the cache.

I hope this helps.