Smooth Loading Screens

[IMPROVED] Minecraft’s Loading Screen FREEZING issue.

When you launch Minecraft or load a large modpack, the loading screen can stop moving long enough to make you think the game has crashed. Minecraft may still be working internally, but the animation and loading bar cannot update.

Smooth Loading reduces several causes of these pauses and gives the loading screen more opportunities to draw while the work continues.

Current version: 0.1.6-alpha.1

THE ISSUE:

In simple terms, loading work can block the same thread that draws the loading screen. The game continues processing that work, but the animation remains frozen because the thread has no opportunity to draw another frame.

THE SOLUTION:

This mod tackles the problem in 3 ways:

1) I reduced repeated font work. Instead of repeatedly scanning font providers and retrieving the same glyph information, the mod preserves font priority and appearance while using more efficient selection and temporary caching. Version 0.1.6 also reuses identical ordered character lists across font variants instead of rebuilding them. This preserves the ordering used for obfuscated text too.

2) Minecraft can finish an entire batch of queued loading tasks before drawing again. This mod adds an 8 ms budget, checked between completed tasks, allowing another frame before continuing the remaining queue. One really expensive task can still exceed that budget, but giving the animation a chance to move is better than nothing xD.

3) Datapack, registry and recipe preparation can run for long stretches without regular drawing. This mod adds drawing checkpoints between completed pieces of work during world preparation and supported loading stages. Required preparation still completes normally, with game and graphics work kept on their required threads.

Individual mod callbacks, graphics driver work and JVM pauses can still cause stalls. This mod reduces freezing, it cannot guarantee uninterrupted animation.

Performance Improvements

Measured in Tensura World of Monsters, my own modpack, on Minecraft 1.21.1 / NeoForge 21.1.250.

Earlier responsiveness measurements:

These are earlier observed display-gap measurements, separate from the 0.1.6 comparison below. They are not guarantees for every launch or modpack.

New in 0.1.6 — compared with 0.1.5:

These are medians from six separate launches, three per version, using the same 182 JAR Tensura snapshot and test settings.

A separate 185 JAR combination with ModernFix, EMI, QuickIndex and Modern UI’s text engine disabled measured 20.18% less font-application time and 33.59% fewer allocated bytes. It did not establish a total startup improvement.

Allocated bytes measure cumulative Java object allocation during that phase. They do not measure peak RAM usage or gameplay FPS.

Glyph Provider Lookup Reduction

0.1.6 font application capture recorded:

These are counters from one capture, not a before/after comparison against unmodified Minecraft.

The existing glyph cache already provided these lookup savings in 0.1.5. The additional 0.1.6 improvement comes from avoiding repeated character list construction while preserving the same font selection results.

Compatibility and Resolved Issues

The following versions were retested on NeoForge 1.21.1:

Compatibility does not guarantee a performance gain in every workload. The small themed test reused no unions, allocated approximately 1.147 MB more during font application and showed no overall startup gain.

When using TMRV, remove the actual JEI mod and check that your JEI addons accept TMRV’s advertised API version. Smooth Loading does not bypass another mod’s dependency requirements.

Supported Versions

Minecraft: 1.20.1, 1.21.1, 1.21.11, 26.1.2, 26.2 and 26.3.

Loaders: Fabric, NeoForge and Forge 18 separate runtime JARs.

Side: Client only. Install one JAR matching your Minecraft version and loader.

All 18 profiles passed their build, algorithm and declared client checks. The measured Tensura performance figures above apply specifically to NeoForge 1.21.1, the other profiles have not received equivalent modpack performance measurements.

License

Pixelated Industries Mods License.