Combining Small Maps - More or Less Efficient?

[Llareian]

Hi there, my question is for people who understand such things as computer resource usage and overall project disk size. (i.e., not me)

Would there be a benefit (in terms of slimming down memory or disk usage) to combining multiple small maps into one large map? Or is it more efficient to have multiple small maps?

More specifically, if you have a town and multiple small buildings/homes you can enter that are all, say, 17x13 or smaller, if you combined these into one large map with small used sections, you could cut down on the number of events, especially if you're using the same parallel process(es) in all of them, but there's a tradeoff in terms of the size of the map (by adding extra buffer zones). I'm just wondering which way is more efficient.

 

[Andar]

depends on how the maps are done. If they're parallax maps, those should always be kept as small as possible as they're already resource intense (in MV, a parallaxed map will use up about three thousand times (yes, >3.000 times) as much memory as a tileset map of the same size - that factor is always based on the grid size)

For tileset map the effect of mapsize is not as bad as with parallaxed maps. Larger maps will use up a bit more space because you need the black zones between different map parts (no size difference if there is no division between map parts), but that is usually nothing to be concerned of.

Larger maps create more lag due to a larger number of events processed at the same time however. That is based on the number of running events, because events on a different map don't exist for the computer.

 

[mogwai]

As a gamer, I think large maps are also a pain to navigate.