What waste resources?

[Slayer]

Kinda a vaque question I know! But what uses resources the most? Like does blocking use more than npc avoid? Does using map events to spawn mobs use more than NPC spawns? Does having a vast area of animated tiles reduce performance? 

I understand these may be unknowns currently. I'm curious as to learn what are currently known high resource use tools and what I can go crazy with. I have little to none programming or game development experience so forgive me if this is a ignorant question.

Thanks  

[jcsnider]

Client resources don't matter nearly as much as server resources, if a player has a crappy pc and the client lags that's bad.. but if the server lags all the clients will.

 

For the server the map attributes don't matter, they all take (roughly) the same memory footprint. Resources/Npcs/Events are the most expensive (especially events).

 

A lot of it is common sense. Try to limit the number of looping or autorun events, don't create projectiles with 100s or 1000s of animations going all over the place.

 

Using events to spawn npcs when the basic map spawns will do is the far superior option.

[Neeknog]

So an event running an animation takes more memory than an animation attribute? My problem with this is that you cant make a animation attribute solid, players can walk through them. Also I use My Tree resources to create huge borders that dictate where the player goes throughout the world. Is this a terrible idea?

[Beefy Kasplant]

8 minutes ago, Niko said:

Also I use My Tree resources to create huge borders that dictate where the player goes throughout the world. Is this a terrible idea?

 

I do the same, and it's not a good idea. I don't feel like it has been a huge issue, but I've also only had about 4 players on at the same time max. (99% of the time it's 0)

[Neeknog]

@Dashplant you use the tree resource as borders?

[Beefy Kasplant]

2 minutes ago, Niko said:

@Dashplant you use the tree resource as borders?

 

Yeah, or to fill in gaps. I trimmed it down a lot, but I had areas where one player was loading 1k+ entities..

[Neeknog]

yea, I guess it would be wise fore me to just make some tree border tiles.... That's a lot of remapping though.. My biggest shame is using events to call a simple animation, i feel bad when I do it. Because I know how heavy events can lag the game so I get disgusted with my self when I do it. But noral animations can not be blocked...

[jcsnider]

Events that aren't moving, have no commands, and aren't set to 'autorun' really aren't that bad. But yes, map animations are far better than using events as animations.

 

Using resources as borders are not good though. We expect people to do it, and we've optimized as best we can for it, but for every single resource the server has to send the hp/sprite/etc to the player and the server must keep track of it's health, stats, inventory, etc which does require more ram. The hit isn't bad until there are hundreds of thousands of unoptimized spots in your game and someday you go to improve performance and realize that you've dug yourself into a hole.

[Beefy Kasplant]

What would be better: An event that plays an animation or

A map animation with an event on top that does nothing other than being impassable?

[Neeknog]

14 minutes ago, jcsnider said:

Events that aren't moving, have no commands, and aren't set to 'autorun' really aren't that bad. But yes, map animations are far better than using events as animations.

 

Using resources as borders are not good though. We expect people to do it, and we've optimized as best we can for it, but for every single resource the server has to send the hp/sprite/etc to the player and the server must keep track of it's health, stats, inventory, etc which does require more ram. The hit isn't bad until there are hundreds of thousands of unoptimized spots in your game and someday you go to improve performance and realize that you've dug yourself into a hole.

So I guess im going to start remapping before I get my self into a huge mess.

[jcsnider]

3 minutes ago, Dashplant said:

What would be better: An event that plays an animation or

A map animation with an event on top that does nothing other than being impassable?

 

Equalivant. The best move would be for us to have an Animation + Blocked attribute, but at the same time as long as the event isn't doing anything it isn't that big of a deal.

 

1 minute ago, Niko said:

So I guess im going to start remapping before I get my self into a huge mess.

 

I'm probably over exaggerating some. If I were making a game I'd 100% be mapping with resources too. We're still working on improving resources too, one of the only tasks for going into RC1 is 'Rebase Resource entities on the server the improve ram usage.' which will make mapping with resources even less of an issue. Whether to remap or not is a judgement call, even though I should have the answer for you all I don't know if the tradeoff of performance for convenience is worthwhile or not.

[Beefy Kasplant]

Would it be possible to have some sort of option in the map editor to convert existing resources in a map to tiles? 

[jcsnider]

Anything automated would likely place the tiles down in such a way that they overwrite existing mask/fringe tiles you wanted. It can be custom coded when source is out, but that isn't something I want to tackle.