Something interesting I noticed when I purchased the GOG version of painkiller was that the load times were much longer then the DVD version. Yes it is true that turning off the V-sync does reduce the loadtimes, but what’s interesting is that the DVD version and the Steam versions don’t seem to really be affected, but the V-sync being turned on. I would really prefer just to use the GOG version of this game opposed to the other version since the GOG version doesn’t have DRM. Therefore, I’m asking anyone to please investigate this and help figure out why this is and if it can be fixed (The GOG version running just as well as the Steam and DVD version)

Many thanks in advance and I will assist as best I can, please get back to me.

Interesting. I also experienced the long loading times but I was sure it's tied to hardware problems. There's one level where I experienced particularly long loading times, it's the first bossfight against the Necrogiant - and this fight also features some graphics corruption on my system. Gotta check whether my CD release behaves differently.

And no, I'm not making a mistake here: the Polish version of the original Painkiller was actually released on 2 CDs featuring low resolution cutscenes. :P

Wow it's been a while since I've come here. Anyway I know what is causing it and it's actually an outdated engine file. The steam version and the DVD/CD version do not have this problem.

Have you tried just swapping the files or will this introduce copy protection which would make the GOG release unplayable?

Well the file is the main game engine and is about 4 gigs in size. I think you can swap it though. In fact I think that's how I figured out what file it was.

If it's that big it can't really be the engine file (no engine in the world is that big). A file of this size has to be the game's content including all levels, visuals and audio. However, this could be a plausible explanation. If the content is compressed differently in GOG's version (probably an attempt to make the game smaller than it is in case of all other releases) it's most likely that it takes more time to load it into the system memory resulting in the long loading times for each level. Can't say for sure, though, until I've compared the different versions myself.

Sorry, its' hard to say it's been a while since I checked. All I can remember is that the file was the biggest and therefore probably the largest chunk of the game.

I decided to revive this post since I don't want people to forget about it. I'd really like it if the GOG version of this game was patched so that it ran as fast as the DVD version :P

If the retail DVD version has been patched, it is probably best to find any info and forward it on to GOG support so that they can look at it and maybe use it to get the latest patch included in their digital distribution version.

They both have the same patch but for some strange reason the DVD version loads much faster.

And that's with vsync turned on or off? I've read that turning on vsync causes slow load times, but with it turned off you get some physics issues. Something to do with framerate being used for calculations, as older games tended to do.

Yes turning off the vsync does reduce load times but in the DVD venison the load times are still faster, and are unaffected by the vsync.

So, the DVD version will load faster with vsync on then the gog version with it off.

What about the Steam version? How do the load times compare to that one?

Sorry for the late reply. The steam version loads as fast as the DVD version I believe.