SC2Mapster

Hi,

I went back to one of my bigger projects maps, but found a problem i don't think was as big before. Lagg. I don't think its caused by units, since once i've been in the game for 5 min, controling a lot of units is fine. Its the handling the editor thats the problem. Every time i remove or add a doodad, the editor lagg/thinks for about 4 sec. When i test the map, it needs about 3-10 min. to start up. (loading 178 mb) it says. My map is max size, and has approx 5500 doodads(+150 pre created units, that aren't important). This is a rather big problem for me, since good terraining is crucial in my eyes. So is it due to the number of doodads?Or is it maybe a certain kind of doodad that causes this? The map is cut up into a lot of segments, so players will only see a certain part of a time, and never go back to the old part. So i thought of maybe of something that "deactivates" the doodads around the map, and keeps those in a certain region "on". I don't know if this is possible. I just know that start up has to happen faster. Editor lagg is also not very nice.

Thanks

Is the start up problem only on the first start or on every startup? Blizzard recently added the streaming functionality to sc2 (I don't see why), and that causes the game to take an insanely long time to start up the first time, but it only needs to do the streaming check or whatever it is once (Unless you close the game again)

As for doodads - 5+k Is ok I think. I'm no terrainer, but I think 5-6k was considered a sort of reasonable limit. Mozared will probably pop in here sometime soon and answer that.
Still, shaving off some doodads could still be a good idea. Scale up some trees/rocks to take up more space, etc.

If you place alot of small doodads in 1 area, especially animated ones it will lag horrendously for weak computers.

Sometimes just deleting like 5 doodads can reduce the lag massively. It's best to experiement yourself, delete certain ones/sections/areas and find which are the main causes.

@Fullachain: Go

Animated like trees? What about lights? I mean those 'small blue light' etc. ones. Got atleast 200 of those.

@DrSuperEvil: Go

Pretty sure, since i haven't really started on that.

All my maps have 9999 doodads. Its not the doodad lagg mate. Unless they are animated and clogged up in one space. Check your map initialization trigger to see if its long. Long triggers do make the game lag.

Also if you have periodic events that are stacked up, its could bring the maps lag up a notch. Check this.

I've had to review my thoughts on doodads and performance a couple of times lately. My original rule of thumb was always 'at most 2000 doodads per person' which still works pretty well for me (so a max of 12.000 doodads for 12 people, which sounds like a lot but works for an epicly sized RPG with multiple zones). I've heard people complain with as low as 3000 doodads, though. It seems both doodad placement/type impact the FPS of your map as much as your PC does. Because of this I find it hard to give you a new estimate past my original one.

What I can say for sure however, is that one should keep the following three things in mind:

1) The more doodads you put in one spot, the more your FPS will drop at that spot. 200 doodads is a really low amount if spead out over an entire map, but not if they're all in the same 15X15 area.

2) Moving and especially lighting-using doodads specifically seem to cause a nasty lag really really quickly. Think the Protoss floor decals, omnilights and anything glowing. PC's generally don't get along well with loading a lot of lighting-related stuff.

3) Floor decals (the TERRAN ones that don't glow) are efficient as fuck because they're really just small areas of textures. If your map has 15.000 doodads and 10.000 of those are decals, your lag's likely not a doodad issue. The same goes for doodads like 'ground props'.

@Lamarq: Go

More like stuff with gas/smoke pipes and machines with animations. Place lots of these and you'll get alot of lag.

Also side note, if you zoom the camera out on your map gets much worse :)

I did indeed have many doodads with light(+omnilights) and moving doodads. (still 0 triggers though) I've reduced the stacked omnilights somewhat.

Is there anyway of deactivating moving/lighting doodads after a while, when they aren't needed anymore? Or a 'pause' setting even maybe?

thanks

@Lamarq: Go

Triggers, I think? You can use them to stop the doodads from playing animations and such once a specific event occurs.