Mitigating large map lag

[Cosmic Architect]

(I thought this would have been asked before, so I did try to search for it, but I didn't find a discussion on this. If I'm wrong, please link me to the post and feel free to delete this thread, thank you. '^^)

I have a rather large map in my game(a town) that is often accessed by the player to get from place to place. You could call it an "over world" of sorts. There are passive events running animations here and there throughout the map I'm not done with it, and I've already noticed that it's laggy. Poor design choice on my part, but I started on it when I was a pretty new designer.

The two answers that come to mind would be to re-do the map in smaller pieces, or to add an event that would keep track of where the player was, and turn on/off events in overlapping sections so they'd no longer all be running constantly(this might cause issues with forced event cut-scenes...).
I'm wondering if my idea of overlapping event areas would work, because that is what I'd prefer, if it's possible. Any other solutions are quite welcome!

If you need to see the game to know what I'm talking about, a somewhat old version can be found here- www.indiedb.com/games/way-of-the-magi (most of my changes have been on the underlying systems, so it shouldn't be an issue that it's old)

Thank you in advance! I again apologize if I missed a threat about this. '^^

 

[Andar]

The first step here is to clear up a misconception on your part:

There is no singular "lag" of any kind, lag is always the result of several things that block CPU power adding together. And therefore there is no single solution, but you need to identify each source of lag and then think on how to remove that part.

The second part is to get some more data from you. We can't help pinpointing the possible lag sources without knowing more about the lag.
For example how large is it really? The size limit where lag happens due to map size alone is a lot larger than you might think - but it is reduced depending on how the map is done.

And please tell us which Maker you're using - not only because that is needed to move the topic there, but also because different Makers have different reasons and solutions for lag.
So it might be that the map size has nothing to do with your lag, or a lot with it. Parallax Maps need more resources, so the limits are smaller then.

 

[bgillisp]

Also, what engine are you using, and what version? Version 1.0 of MV had an issue where animated water tiles lagged, but that was fixed in later versions. if you started this map when MV was new and never updated, that could be an issue as well.

Otherwise, I'd say break it up into smaller pieces. I found that breaking my larger towns into 45 x 45 pieces (or 45 x 90 in some cases) worked well, as I could still make them feel large and populated and not have so many events that I caused lag.

And on that note, can you post how many events you have on the map? I found with ACE I could lag some of my player's computers at around 400 events (one got 8 FPS then), no parallel process events of any sort. So if you are at or over 400 events maybe breaking it up into smaller pieces would be a good idea for that reason alone.

 

[Milennin]

Unfortunately, there is no way to avoid lag on maps, even on medium-sized ones. I had a 100 x 75 map in MV, using RTP assets only, and not a single event, and it still couldn't maintain 60 FPS on my PC that runs pretty much everything at max, which is simply laughable. MV is terribly optimised, so your best bet is to cut that map down to 20 x 20 squares.

 

[Andar]

@Milennin and what core version had your project at that time?
this sounds like an experience with the earliest cores that had several memory leaks, something that had been solved one or two years ago...

 

[Kes]

I suggest we hold off with suggesting possible causes and solutions until the OP has replied with the information about which engine they are using.

 

[Nightblade50]

I suggest we hold off with suggesting possible causes and solutions until the OP has replied with the information about which engine they are using.

Also, what engine are you using, and what version? Version 1.0 of MV had an issue where animated water tiles lagged, but that was fixed in later versions. if you started this map when MV was new and never updated, that could be an issue as well.

Otherwise, I'd say break it up into smaller pieces. I found that breaking my larger towns into 45 x 45 pieces (or 45 x 90 in some cases) worked well, as I could still make them feel large and populated and not have so many events that I caused lag.

And on that note, can you post how many events you have on the map? I found with ACE I could lag some of my player's computers at around 400 events (one got 8 FPS then), no parallel process events of any sort. So if you are at or over 400 events maybe breaking it up into smaller pieces would be a good idea for that reason alone.

Judging from the screenshots in the link he posted, it seems to be either VX Ace or VX.

 

[Shaz]

There are passive events running animations here and there throughout the map

This is the first place I would be looking.

 

[Cosmic Architect]

The engine I'm using is RPG maker MV, I last updated it 6 months ago. I originally made the game in RPG maker Ace, and converted it to MV.

The map is ~1100 x 900 blocks, ~3/4-4/5ths of it is transparent blocks though. I did use a parallax because I wasn't aware that would cause lag. I have a few dozen parallel events running animations and one that controls events that don't have triggers to make them slightly transparent at times(going behind buildings).

My immediate take-away is that I'm going to remove some extra unnesisary blocks to reduce the size by 1/5th what it is. Past that, I'm going to look into whether removing the parallax and adding blocks or using it to replace blocks would make more sense. I'll be able to be more specific and try things out as soon as I get home, in a few hours.

Thanks all for your suggestions!

 

[Andar]

@Cosmic Architect
something doesn't fit with your numbers, because the maximum mapsize was 500x500 for Ace and is 250x250 for MV - are you talking about pixels when saying 1100x900? that would be around 25x25 tiles only and not a problem.

Second, the question is not when you last updated the editor, but when you last updated your project. Please open the projects rpg_core.js file and tell us the version number in its title line (no version = 1.0.0)

third, parallel processes are usually the biggest part of lag if they are done wrong, can you give us screenshots of a few of them?

[move]MV Support[/move]

 

[Shaz]

How many TILES wide/high is your map? You can either look in the info panel at the bottom for this, or go to map properties and it'll tell you. If your measurements ARE pixels, then map size is definitely not an issue, and I'd be looking at your events.

If it really is 1100 x 900 tiles, how did you get it that size? That really is massive.