Asset Decode Was 83% of Boot. Parallelizing Textures Bought 5.6%.

A boot profile named the dominant phase; the first fix found the bulk of it was model decoding, not textures.

Core Finding:A phase-stamped boot trace of the game found asset decode and registration took 2.333 s of a 2.805 s boot (83.2%). We planned a parallel decode with strictly serial registration to keep handle numbering and logs byte-identical. The first version warmed texture decode only and cut that phase by 5.6%, because model loaders turned out to be about 66% of it.

Asset decode and register

83.2%

Asset decode and register: 2.333 s = 83.2% of a 2.805 s boot.

First fix, texture decode only

-5.6%

Planned target: decode phase under 0.5 s. First version (texture decode only, byte-identical): -5.6%. Model loaders: about 66% of the decode phase, not yet parallelized.

Headless twin, asset decode

99.1%

Headless twin: asset decode 2.257 s = 99.1% of its boot. The windowed and headless figures agree within about 3%, pointing to CPU decode rather than device interaction.

GPU backend init

11.4%

GPU backend init: 0.320 s (11.4%). Audio device open: 0.141 s (5.0%).

Empirical Findings Table

Phase-stamped boot trace and the first parallel-decode fix

Telemetry Metric	Measured Value	Context & Observability
Asset decode and register	83.2%	Asset decode and register: 2.333 s = 83.2% of a 2.805 s boot.
First fix, texture decode only	-5.6%	Planned target: decode phase under 0.5 s. First version (texture decode only, byte-identical): -5.6%. Model loaders: about 66% of the decode phase, not yet parallelized.
Headless twin, asset decode	99.1%	Headless twin: asset decode 2.257 s = 99.1% of its boot. The windowed and headless figures agree within about 3%, pointing to CPU decode rather than device interaction.
GPU backend init	11.4%	GPU backend init: 0.320 s (11.4%). Audio device open: 0.141 s (5.0%).
Independent decode bundles	35-40	About 35-40 independent decode bundles ran on one thread.

Engineering Action Directives

Measuring the boot by phase before touching it identified one phase as the clear target. Measuring inside that phase would have shown earlier that model decoding, not texture decoding, was the larger share.
Parallel decode with serial, order-preserving registration looks like a workable shape when handle numbers and logs are part of observable identity, but this run only validated it for textures.

Methodology Boundaries & Limits

Single trace on one development machine with a warm cache; cold-cache and low-end hardware boots were not measured.
The after-fix boot table was flagged in the source as not admissible (the machine was not quiet and another default had changed), so a clean before/after boot comparison is still owed.
The plan header also cites an earlier audit figure of 88% of boot from a different measurement; this article uses the 83.2% traced figure.