Map Size

Me and a friend are planning a map, and we're nearing the development of it. We've written a dynamic, player-involving story and come up with a few nifty gameplay ideas that enhance/work with it, and now we're just tidying it all up.
We were thinking of using an attachment system for weapons and armour. There won't be many available in the game, but I want to have a different model for each item available.
This is a team-based map, intended for 2-10 players, and since 2 of the three computers in my house are on 1.5 Ghz pentiums with 256MB, we're trying to keep the map as system resource friendly as possible.

How many custom models/effects should we use, and how big would you recommend we make the map? I was thinking of trying to keep it under 3.5MB in size, using about 10-25 models (around 100+KB for each). Does that sound realistic?

3.5MB is close to the maximum when it comes to bnet, so you're not aiming particularly low if that is your goal. Simple unanimated attachment models have very small filesize, you can almost have as many as you wish, provided that they don't each require a 512x512 texture, but instead use ingame textures and/or small parts of one big texture for all of them.

Custom hero models are closer to the filesize you mentioned (100+KB), but since you were talking about attachment models a moment earlier you got me a little confused. So, 10-25 attachment models is nothing, 10-25 custom hero models is excessive.

Gah, I was probably over-estimating. And yeah, I try to pick simple attachments that use in-game textures because it takes less time to import them all anyway.
I was thinking of having 2 or 3 sets of armour, including matching shield and helmet (or at least some models that look good together), a couple of 'special' shields and between 10-20 weapons.
Also, I wanna have some models for potions and spell-casting consumable items. I can easily use a recoloured hp potion for mana etc, thus reducing file size.

If you want to have your map on battle.net then everything above 1MB is too much. Actually it's better to keep it below 500KB.
If you made it for fun to play with your friends then it doesn't matter as attachments do not consume too much resources.

I prefer games intended for LAN because you can make more roleplay-ish stuff. On Bnet people tend to be a bit daft.

Anyways, thanks for the advice. I don't think I'll be importing any models, maybe 1 or 2 depending on how we make the game, just attachments and an affect or two.

if your map have minimal coding and landscape but damn mass custom models, it will suck hard.

You can always use Vex's optimizer to cut some filesize...

Does his optimizer work on a Mac?

DioD, when did I ever say that I am not having much terrain or coding and lots of models? I am merely asking about importing too many resources.

Anyways, I'm interested in this optimizer now, what does it do exactly (other than decrease filesize)?

I'm unsure whether it works on Macs.

But what it does is compresses your code and cleans out stuff needed only by the WE. It also can make the map un-openable in WE (it saves the optimized copy seperatly) if you check off certain extras. It basically decreses filesize, optimizes code, and lowers loadtime. It won't help you cut filesize with models, but it can cut filesize with other stuff so models won't be as much of an issue.

Doesn't work on Macs, but you can find a PC user to do it for you :D

I guess I could use it on my Windows Emulator (which has a proper copy on it that I used to use :o) so that's not a problem. Does it always protect the map? I don't like to protect my maps. Opensource for the win.
They can be un-optimized anyway, and I like people to personalise it, like I do for LAN games. I often add features that aren't there, but I never add cheats, imbalances or modify as to damage the core gameplay ideas.