About how big should I make maps?

[Colonello]

Hello everyone, recently I've ran in to the question of "how big should my maps be?" Currently all my exterior maps are 100x100 tiles. Is this too big? Will it cause lag if too many players are on the map? If this is the case is there any way to split the map in to 25x25 segments?

[Diefool]

100x100 tiles will cause lag in the editor even if you are editing from localhost (the same system the server is running on)

I don't think anything over 50x50 is wise, even that is pushing it to the max if there are a lot of players, animations, npcs, etc on the map.

As for splitting the maps I know no other method outside of reconstructing them manually into 4x4 (16) different maps and connecting them with Map Links in the map properties. (or to modify your editor to do this automatically… which may be feasible if you have already created a LOT of maps already.... if not, I would just manually reconstruct)

[Irij47]

Does the engine render the entire map or only whats visible? In my C# engine, I have it to render only what is visible and I can make enormous maps without lag.

[Diefool]

The larger maps cause lag (locally and communication wise) so I'm going to assume it does load the entire map into memory. If it didn't the bigger maps would not function any differently than the smaller ones.

Sorry I haven't looked over the source enough yet to give a proper answer right now. I'm kind of new to this, just stating what I have noticed through trial and error

[SkywardRiver]

I've had maps 80x80 with 10-15 players on that map at a time with little to zero lag on a decent machine. 100x100 may be pushing it, but 80x80 worked fine on my engine, though I optimized a bit.

[Diefool]

@'SkywardRiver':

> I've had maps 80x80 with 10-15 players on that map at a time with little to zero lag on a decent machine. 100x100 may be pushing it, but 80x80 worked fine on my engine, though I optimized a bit.

How was map editing? Did it lag insanely on tile placement? This was the issue that bugged me the most.

[Mohenjo Daro]

I don't go about 50x50 maps, personally, much more than that and it's too big for me and will cause a bit of lag

[Growlith1223]

There's also the issue that Eclipse doesn't know how to fragment the map data to help with that lag. simple fix but i would stay around 50x50 and below unless you plan on doing what i said, which is to send the initial parts of the map then send the rest as fragments of the actual map

[Joyce]

@'Growlith1223':

> There's also the issue that Eclipse doesn't know how to fragment the map data to help with that lag. simple fix but i would stay around 50x50 and below unless you plan on doing what i said, which is to send the initial parts of the map then send the rest as fragments of the actual map

I don't think latency or framerate issues stem from this at all, it's mostly just initial load time that is affected by this. Rendering the entire map instead of the visible bits as well as looping through every single tile on the map several times in a single cycle are the culprits here, not the method of distribution.

[Agoraphobic]

Labyrinth Hearts was done in 30x30 and seemed to be the sweet spot for me.

[Chief]

@'Joyce':

> @'Growlith1223':
>
> > There's also the issue that Eclipse doesn't know how to fragment the map data to help with that lag. simple fix but i would stay around 50x50 and below unless you plan on doing what i said, which is to send the initial parts of the map then send the rest as fragments of the actual map
>
> I don't think latency or framerate issues stem from this at all, it's mostly just initial load time that is affected by this. Rendering the entire map instead of the visible bits as well as looping through every single tile on the map several times in a single cycle are the culprits here, not the method of distribution.

Is this serious? Why would they not have prerenderd all static tiles per layer and then just did a single paint of it instead of painting every single tile (apparently multiple times) per cycle? That's a bit ridiculous.

[Joyce]

@'Chief':

> … snip
>
> this serious? Why would they not have prerenderd all static tiles per layer and then just did a single paint of it instead of painting every single tile (apparently multiple times) per cycle? That's a bit ridiculous.

Some engines are a little more efficient in rendering the maps and render the viewport only, but they still do this for every tile rather than rendering the layer (and its animated variations) to an image (or chunks of images, should they get too big) and just displaying these.

[Colonello]

@'SkywardRiver':

> I've had maps 80x80 with 10-15 players on that map at a time with little to zero lag on a decent machine. 100x100 may be pushing it, but 80x80 worked fine on my engine, though I optimized a bit.

If your engine was any similar to the Skywyre one you made then I should be fine because that's the one I'm using.

Also thank you everyone for your replies so far. Unless I can find something or someone who can split the maps I'll have to leave them as they are seeing as how I have quite a few maps this size.

[BeNjO]

My main 'problem' is the size of the map file. Sending it to the client and the user have poor internet it would seem like the game has frozen until its finished downloading. I used to stick to 30x30 unless it was a huge city and would of been happy doing 70x70\. My old elysium game has seamless maps working and I never noticed a problem. I think processing and download speed should be taken into consideration when doing large maps as multiple layers or badly mapped maps will be larger than needed.

[sherwin]

Im using Seamless Map, and connect the 50x50 maps all together.. Also i only render what visible on the game screen

My engine is created based on eclipse btw

[Colonello]

@'BeNjO':

> My main 'problem' is the size of the map file. Sending it to the client and the user have poor internet it would seem like the game has frozen until its finished downloading. I used to stick to 30x30 unless it was a huge city and would of been happy doing 70x70\. My old elysium game has seamless maps working and I never noticed a problem. I think processing and download speed should be taken into consideration when doing large maps as multiple layers or badly mapped maps will be larger than needed.

I probably should look in to some way to split my maps then. That sounds like an unwanted site effect I'd rather not have.

@'sherwin':

> Im using Seamless Map, and connect the 50x50 maps all together.. Also i only render what visible on the game screen
>
> My engine is created based on eclipse btw

Wow, that sounds awesome! :) If I knew how to do this I definitely would.