need help with map performance

Hi -- I've been working on an RPG map with alot of great features but have recently discovered a problem. About 30-40 minutes into play the performance begins slowing, and becomes unplayable. I have tried a few things so far:

1) I don't "remove" any units anymore. This did not help.
2) I temporarily disabled all triggers that create units. This didn't help either.
3) I disabled the creation of some special effects. Still didn't fix it. There are still a few small special effects, I'd say less than 10.

I'm wondering what other things there are I could check, and if someone is really interested, I can provide the map for examination (though it is a work in progress).

One thing I'm considering is the trigger that locks the camera to each player's hero. In this map, the camera is almost first person -- locked behind and slightly overhead each player's hero. It looks great and I'd hate it if that was the problem.

Any insights would be much appreciated!

What about your periodic and repeated triggers?

There are only a few periodic ones, and I have most of them disabled now while I try to figure this out. The ones that are left run maybe every 30 seconds and generally don't do much. They don't create anything...but I can turn those off too.

Of course, the camera trigger is an exception and runs pretty much constantly. I would expect that to cause lag immediately if it was the culprit though, right?

The last time I tested this, I just started the map and let it sit. Even with no player interaction the performance gradually eroded after 30-40 mins. So, I guess that rules out the custom spells, as none were cast.

Also, I'll mention that the numbers of units (now that all triggers are disabled) is quite low. Less than 50 I'd imagine.

Is it time to despair? :bangH:

I'm using a 3rd person view for my map as well, kinda similar.

Hmm... Are there any other custom things that may cause lag?

I can't think of anything else that could be doing it...it's so weird. Happens slowly over time. I wonder, could I get a look at your camera locking triggers? Maybe they are better than mine.

Also, what about this. One or two of the heros have a special effect on them all game -- for instance I attached a flame to the weapon of one of them. Could that be doing it?

Anyone else have an idea for me to check? I feel like it's a great map but this totally sinks it.

Flame attached to a sword? RAWK ON! Awesome idea!:D

I have run into a problem with my map when it comes to allowing the user to switch views, but maybe you know how to do that better than I? If so, make your suggestions. Attached is the current of my map. Use the Sulik ones, because the Marcas and the rest aren't finished yet. It works fine, so far, except you can't change views in-game that I know of.

I doubt this could do anything, but make sure your player starting locations arent overlapping ANYTHING but terrain. This causes much lag in the world editor, don't know if it will help you because of this. Also --- Save your map 25 minutes into the game. Quit, load it back up. If the problem hits in 5 minutes, its a trigger error. If it continues 30 minutes later, then its MOST likely a video issue, something is rapidly animating faster and faster...unless you had a trigger with 'Game elapsed time is 30 minutes'

Thanks for the suggestions --

1) Starting locations -- I will move them as they are indeed overlapping a doodad or two.
2) Saving -- that's a good debugging idea, I'm going to try it.
3) The map file -- thanks for posting it, I'm going to look at it. By the way, I know a good way (and use it) to switch views. I have an array that holds the heros of the players. Instead of locking the camera to a hardcoded unit, I lock it to the variable. That allows me to switch the view from time to time if needed. I also have arrow-key turning for the heros. Will look at your map and see if what I can learn that might help me with this slow lag-down. Have you run yours to see if it slows down after ~40 mins?

Nope, I haven't. I hope that someone could beat the game in 40 minutes.

Anyways, the variable idea is good. If you could add it and show me, I would be ever-grateful. And I would give you credit for it, of course.:D

I had this problem with my map too. Apparently I got "very little" help with it, so I'll tell you what I found out for myself. Any triggers that run every x.xx seconds will start to create lag overtime. Try to remove as many of them as you can, or if you can't, set the number of seconds as high as possible for your map. Also, it lags more when you have units that have do splash damage that can hit destructible doodads. If you have a lot of trees and a lot of units that do splash damage to trees, eventually WC3 will crash unless you have very few trees.

Hope this helps. :D

i'm not sure if this has to do with during-game play, but i know this has to do with after-game delay time -- the thing is that war3 saves every trigger that is ran into memory, so as periodicals keep firing, the 'trigger cache' gets bigger and bigger

I'd like to thank everyone for their suggestions so far, I appreciate your time. Here's the latest:

I waited until the lag got really really bad and saved the game. Then I reloaded -- there was no lag anymore. So, the previous post mentioning a video problem must be the cause?

Juvat, I'll look at adding some triggers to your map. I'll leave them disabled, but you'll be able to see how I'd do it. The mechanics of how we are bothing setting up the view is similar though.

I don't have too many trees (I try to avoid using them) and no unints at all that can destroy trees. In fact while I'm trying to figure this out I've kept units in general very low. I'm really suspicious of either some video thing or the camera locking trigger, which runs often and rapidly.

Juvat -- here is your map with added triggers. They are all disabled, but you can look at them. I also added comments to each piece.

Juvat, did you get a look at the triggers?
Also, does anyone know what kind of things could be causing a video issue? Like an animated doodad not to use, etc?