Lowering 'LOAD TIME' (War3 maps)

Im trying to cut down the load time on my map, so if anyone has any tips id like to hear it.
One thing I noticed is if I remove the 'preplaced' heroes, loading time is cut by 1/4.



Placing them down at startup will probably be a better idea, but lag game briefly.

- Do all units have a big effect on loading time, or mainly just heroes?
- I assume lots of doodads has same effect?
(Perhaps removing all from unseen areas / thinning them down a bit in general as well).
- How much do globals effect load time? will having 50 or 100 have a 'big' change?
- In object editor, does it make any difference if you CnP an ability to make a new one, or edit a war3 one?

thx

If you have a finished version, which you dont mind releasing, then use Vex's optimizer then Pitzer's widgertizer, that will cut loading time hugely, to literally seconds of loading.

Lots of abilities effect loading time greatly, the less you have the better, but i dont think new or blizzard based abilities will make a difference.

Lots of doodads probally has quite a effect, but if you look through your map and find anywhere that the players will never see or get to, just remove the doodads there.

Lots of units will have a big loading time too, but i suspect heros will have a far greater loading time because it needs to load ability data, stats, etc.

My advice would to be set them up at startup, just have a 5-10 second black fadefilter, and announce some text so it seems its the maps introduction, and load everything then.

Mostly it's the models of units which take time to load, and that time is quite significant. Also, many abilities or abilities with many levels will take time to load. Doodads aren't really that important to loading time, but yeah they can slow it up a little.

nothing has a bigger effect on loading time than object data, that's what the widgetizer is for.

It could be that you got a lot of triggers and arrays with "size" 8192, but I wouldn't really bet so.

The max size isn't supposed to be 8191 (index-1, 0=1, 8191,=8192)?

Under that logic that 8192 is the max size while 8191 is the max index. But 8191 is the max size for other reasons but I didn't want to get into technicalities

Presumably the max size is supposed to be 8192. There is even a constant in common.j
However it has proven that you can't load a saved game if you use the index 8192, although that would be legal in a normal game.
But Vexorian is right - if the max size is 8192 then 8191 should be the max index considering we can use 0 as well.

> Do all units have a big effect on loading time, or mainly just heroes?
All units, but heroes are the ones that make the difference. And, well, if you don't preplace them and create in-game then the game will freeze for a second which might cause lag...and lag is worse than a long load, at least IMO.

> How much do globals effect load time? will having 50 or 100 have a 'big' change?
Not at all. Actually your map has much more than you know of...every map has to contain all the globals from common.j and blizzard.j so the ones you define don't make much of a difference.

I have found many times that if a varaible's array size is 8192, all the triggers in the map fail. Or maybe that's just me.

Removed as many preplaced units as you can, for example with heroes you won't be using all of them, right?
Also try to stay away from upgrades and abilities with very high levels.
Lastly, pathing - large map size and use of trees, destructables and pathing blockers.
Lastly (really), as has been stated, use Map Optimizer and Widgetizer to reduce load time and size.

All of that, or just get a better processor and more RAM ^^

Destructables have no or very, very little impact on loading time, and probably doodads as well (comparing preplacing them and loading them after the game starts). I've tested this on a few maps and this seems to be pretty consistent.

Next time, use the search feature. This question has been answered many times.

I don't think anybody has mentioned that custom models/skins/sounds will increase loading time. This is kinda obvious, but you can use a good amount of custom files in your map if you compress them nicely, and be mindful of the size of the file. As a matter of fact, many skins have greater detail then you will ever notice ingame. Look at the KB of the file, many great missile and spell effects are tiny, so using them would be a great way to give your map some eye candy.

This might not be useful to you, because I notice none of your heroes have custom models or skins, but its something to watch out for.