Efficiency standards

[kn1000a]

Sorry for posting another thread. Now that I am dedicated to making the game, a lot of questions flooded in my head.
(Yes, I have checked quite a few tutorials and threads on the game. But most of my questions are things a bit above the basics)

I am just wondering per map, how many events can the game handle?
Parallel Process? "NPC" type of events (regular dialogues)?
Does efficiency increase the smaller the map is?
What other technical factors impact the game's FPS/lag?
(to clarify, I don't plan to use more scripts besides Yanfly's battle script)

Theoretically, I would imagine only events that are constantly running (Parallel Process for e.g.) would requires a limitation.
But what if I have 30 NPCs on a map? Each of them have Stepping Animation on?

Sorry if this question isn't clear, I'm basically trying to grasp the limitation of VX Ace, because I don't wanna write the script and dialogues (doing it rn) only to find out the engine can't handle it.
Thank you once again.

 

[peves]

What you are asking isn't necessarily a question of what the game can handle as much as it is a question of how much can your user's computer handle. If you render lots of stuff all at once and someone is running a terrible computer that can't handle all of those processes maybe you could create performance lag and that would be due to their processing limitations. In 2020 however you are not likely going to find many computers that get set back by a 2d rpg game.

You should be able to get away with making fairly big maps without many issues on the user's end.

Think of it this way. What if i play Battlefield V and there are 64 players in 3d running around all over the place and they are all getting into tanks and helicopters and planes, meanwhile there are soldiers blowing the buildings to kingdom come all around me this is a whole lot more than what you are talking about, especially when you get into high end anti aliasing and other special particle effects.

This RPG is softcore to the billionth power in comparison. For the most part I don't think those things will be too much of an issue on modern PCs.

 

[Milennin]

With parallel events, don't repeat them faster than is necessary, which is why you put a wait command in them somewhere. Without it, they will definitely cause lag.

 

[Kes]

As a general rule, you can easily have the 30 NPCs doing stepping animation without any trouble at all. I often have more than 30 events on a map.
As Milennin says, it is parallel processes which can potentially skewer your game. These must, as he says, have the 'wait' command in because otherwise they will cycle through their commands 60 times per second which becomes hugely draining - and no one needs to check e.g. the player's x and y positions that often as the player cannot move that quickly.

Be especially careful how you design any parallel process common events as these will be running the whole time, irrespective of which map you are on.

 

[Andar]

@kn1000a
your questions can't be answered independently, because lag is additive. And everything that goes beyond certain limits adds to that.
For example you can have hundreds of decorative events (events that do nothing) on a map, but if an event moves then it requires more processing.
and while it is possible to have a few dozen carefully designed parallel processes on a map, a single badly designed parallel process can lag the best computer ever. That is where the comment about the correct waits above comes from.
The engine has no problems with handle large tilebased maps (250x250 for MV/MZ or 500x500 for Ace) - but add a lot of doodads and it will show, and using parallax mapping 100x100 tiles is too much for a lot of computers and 30x30 it too much for most mobiles.

And it is impossible to even guess how much any single thing adds to lag, a parallaxed map would have a lower limit on events as a tiled map and so on.
So a lot of the answers you'll get will differ based on experiences and different gaming styles.

 

[Shiro-chan]

There is also the issue with scripts. Most scripts come from experienced scripters who will reasonably know what they're doing, so those new functions shouldn't add much, if any, lag. There are however also others (Sturgeon's Law and all that).
Conversely there are anti-lag scripts which try to improve the way the engine runs and thus for example just cut out all events from being processed that aren't supposed to be processed anyway (like purely decorative graphic events). This can and does make the difference of having a map with 999 events just standing around doing nothing but still tanking your FPS to 5, or those same events literally not doing any difference to your FPS counter.

One thing I noticed the engine appears to really struggle with is screentint because it applies the tint to every single frame anew, which thus results in a lot of extra processing.

TL;DR lots of action and/or lots of extra stuff running in the background tends to cause lag.

 

[Nolonar]

I am just wondering per map, how many events can the game handle?

As already mentioned, it depends on the user's PC.

Parallel Process?

PP events put much more load on the CPU, so should be used sparingly.
I'm not saying you should reduce the amount of PP events your game uses. If you need 10 PP events, you should use 10 PP events. But if you can do with only 1, there's no reason to use more than 1.

"NPC" type of events (regular dialogues)?

Each event on the map adds to the CPU's workload. The CPU must evaluate event page conditions, track their position, update their movement, check if they're colliding with anything, and render them.

Unlike PP events, however, regular NPCs must be triggered before the CPU has to evaluate their event commands. PP's are always triggered.

Does efficiency increase the smaller the map is?

A smaller map requires less memory (RAM), but the efficiency doesn't change much.

What other technical factors impact the game's FPS/lag?

Plugins/Scripts (depending on what they do, when, and how often).

But what if I have 30 NPCs on a map? Each of them have Stepping Animation on?

The game has to clear the screen and redraw it every frame, so whether the events are stepping or not does not affect performance at all.

 

[peves]

In regards to parallel events you basically just want to make sure you are not spamming the computer with a lot of constant exponentially growing input because that will spike processing demand by quite a lot! This can cause lagging, crashing and even overheating so it is important not to spam information at such a rate that it does those things. but if you are doing things properly and watching out for it you shouldn't have issues. In most cases people don't go out of their way to do things like that and if you are properly play testing your game you will likely catch it pretty fast.

 

[kn1000a]

Thank you!

I normally reply to each person if their replies help, but since I actually learned something here from each reply, just want to say thanks to everyone. Especially @Kes, I did not know PP events run no matter what map you are on. That is something crucial and will affect how I plan my game.

*Edited from Kandar to Kes, sorry if you got the notification Andar :S

 

[Kes]

Just for the sake of clarity, it's parallel processes on common events which run all the time, not PPs on a map.