SC2Mapster

Has anyone tested this online? which of them lags more? unit walls or doodad walls?
im using a wall model with 1x1 footprint that blocks missiles..

im gonna need around 2000 of them on my map..

@xxxDisturbedxxx: Go

hey, units lag more you can check out my map "The Rising Dead". All houses were units on one of my earlier versions which caused definitly more lag than doodads do now.

i would use doodads for everything except if the blocking has to be dynamic. doodad's footprints and pathing stay after their death which is a major drawback.

nevertheless it also depends on the model itself. high poly models cause serious trouble, as units or doodads. so only use simple models

around how many units did you have on your last versions? buildings and other units included?

@xxxDisturbedxxx: Go

I've had more then that as walls and it didn't lag for me. Albeit I was using squares with a single diffuse. But if there not moving I doubt this is an issue. From what I know the 1000 unit lag issue which yes is certainly caused by rendering but is more from pathing like from point A to B. So in your case I think walls are good. Otherwise I'm in the same boat as you.

i also had trees and sandback around the city. never counted them but around 2k would be a good guess i think. without houses about the half and i had a major improvement replacing them with doodads of the same model.

i always play on lowest settings and after i have changed the game run smoother.

In my map i have approximately 3,500 trees that are units doesnt seem to impact the gameplay to much havent fully tested it out yet on BattleNet though.

i usually have all my settings on medium or low and it seems to work nice

Always choose doodads over units. Units are very performance intensive because a lot of stuff needs to be calculated for them in the background.

The only issue with doodads over units is now you can shoot through them. As far as I know there isn't a way around that.

Quote from JacktheArcher: Go

The only issue with doodads over units is now you can shoot through them. As far as I know there isn't a way around that.

You would be able to shoot through units, too. But I think you mean that you can't create collision detections for colliding projectiles?

The attacking over something can be fixed with a huge construct out of validators making sure that distance and pathing distance is nearly equal (Credits for Bibendus for coming up with that in his hivekeeper map). That fixed the problem that half of the monsters in my dungeons streamed towards you when one monster had vision of your hero.

I'm using 100% units for my dungeons. I've approx 2k units on the map, but 4-5k can appear at once, too, but not permanently.
More than 9k units will kill all performance. Try to keep the unit count as low as possible.

@Ahli634: Go

Yea thats what I meant ... Can you be more specific with what the validator s do? I have to use units for an entire city so this might help.

Quote from JacktheArcher: Go

@Ahli634: Go

Yea thats what I meant ... Can you be more specific with what the validator s do? I have to use units for an entire city so this might help.

You check, if the distance is comparable to the pathing distance (=pathing costs).

You create bricks like this:

DISTANCE 2 to 3:
Distance(caster unit, target point) > 2 AND
Distance(caster unit, target point) <= 3 AND 
PathingDistance(caster unit, target point) <= 4

General rule how to create a brick:

DISTANCE n to n+1:
Distance(caster unit, target point) > n AND
Distance(caster unit, target point) <= n+1 AND 
PathingDistance(caster unit, target point) <= n+2

Then you combine a lot of these bricks for all ranges that you want to support with an OR. After that we can use this combine validator wherever needed.

Weapons are like abilities: they use the validators in their first effect.

In my diablo map I'm currently using 48 validators in total just for this weapon distancepathingDistance effect.
In my map it's totally worth it... else I would need to trigger the whole AI of the monsters... I might do that one day for a few monsters, but not now.

Thanks for the replies, ill try to play with the pathing distance validator.. hope it works for me...

@Ahli634: Go

So In the end I create a single validator for every range? Also how does it know what to collide with?

Unit Wall Doodad is just plain model with Event Element.

doodads are less intensive then units because they store less informations and have no AI, however if you are going to place doodads by trigger be careful because path blocking is not added with them :|
Doodads pathing is calculated only if they are pre-placed in your map terrain.

I had this issue with Hive Keeper and I was forced to use units instead