Half-Life uses very small BSPs for a start, also, the intial HL loading screen is not that fast (ie. the one after you first start it up). Subsequently all models are retained in memory for faster use I believe.
With SAVE and LOAD for DBO objects this should be faster. Object creation is definately faster in Patch 4. IanM is also working on a plugin DLL which allows you to load objects into memblocks whilst still running your DBP program at normal speed (or close to) - So you could be loading models and so on during the menu screens.
Also, what is your system specification, how many models are you loading? My test BSPs all seem to load pretty quickly.
Current Project: Retro Compo. Entry.
