Long black pause prior to match - loading issue?

This is a fairly hard one to answer without seeing the project for myself.  But let's try and see what we can find .

• Is this delay only on your custom project and not on vanilla UFE?

• Is the delay also present when using Start Game Immediately option in Global Config? If no, then this would mean it's not the characters/stage that's causing the issue, could be one of the select screens.

• Have you made any modifications to default scripts?  I see you've done something to ControlsScript, which is probably the most likely offender here as you've noticed.  Any other changes to it?

• Do your characters have large move sets?  This is probably the only thing I can think of, outside of modding, that could cause such a delay.

• Have you done any isolation tests?  i.e.: load with your stage, but use default UFE characters; load with default UFE stage and your characters; both with/without start immediately option…

Essentially, I'm trying to figure out what could be causing the delay.  I'm hoping it's not something specific to your machine (running out to hdd ), since I've never noticed any lag issues on my projects.

Since it does look like it stuffs the camera, I would revert your UFE.StartGame back to default, and wherever it's called send a fadeTime of 0.  You'll get the same effect and shouldn't have any issues.

As for the other stuff, it's strange both you and your boss have had these delay issues since the start.  I would say your UFE is messed up at a guess, since that's not how it's supposed to behave.

Lets test a new clean vanilla build.  Start a new Unity project, go to Asset Store and re-download UFE and import the package.  If you still get the delays with this vanilla version, then the problem must be your computer.

What is the specs of your machine, btw?  And what version of Unity are you running?

Oh, you're building to mobile.  That makes a big difference.

Let me try building to iOS.  It's been on my to do list for a few days now, so it's about time I tackled it .  I'm in +11 GMT, so hopefully you'll see something by the time you get up (I'm assuming you're in a US timezone).

I've done a few tests with vanilla UFE on iOS (iPhone 4, running iOS5.1.1).

The very first time it built to the device, the load time was 20 seconds or so.  But every other time since, it's been between 3-7 seconds.  I thought I saw an improvement when I turned stripping level to full, but my results aren't consistent (I can get 3 second load times without any stripping).

Now, keep in mind my testing is with default project and no touch screen controls.  So I can't actually play the game once it's loaded, just tap on character select and menu options.

If your results are similar to this (for your game, not a vanilla build), then I would say this is just how UFE performs on mobiles for now. 

The long load time on first build is something I've seen in my non-UFE mobile projects too.  It usually only happens early on in development (and only just on the first install of a clean build), before I had any real optimisation to the scenes (just a loading scene, which is highly recommended for all mobile titles).

Another thing you'll want to look into, if you're not already doing it, is draw call reduction.  This will definitely help keep fps smooth during gameplay, but I'm not sure how much it will help your black screen load problem (I suspect maybe just a little).  The base game with Mike and Kyle fighting is about 220 draw calls.

To test this, I also added a mobile friendly character (copied Kyle's character file), and changed the stage's shader to be mobile friendly.  I saw a dramatic improvement in draw calls just from that alone, but it was still around 30 average.  The biggest contributor to draw calls (aside from having many texture's per character) is OnGUI().  In the editor, just disabling all UI items you will see nearly all other draw calls drop suddenly.  But of course, you'll have no life bars or text notifications.  So you'll need to come up with your own solution (or use convert them to NGUI).