Relative Map Size - fact brought to you by TitanMarkII

Titan

Good day/night all!

Sometime ago, before I got my dreadful router, I was playing online, so downloading maps wasn't a problem. When I saw an online map for the first time, I was shocked. The utter crappyness of those maps just killed me, it really, really killed me. Being a mapper that loves quality over quantity (But somehow manages to make a large quantity of quality maps (and is arrogant as hell)) I asked myself 'why?'. I never really took a look at the inside of the IsoMapPack. The IsoMapPak is the part of a map-file that contains the terrain data. Once I looked at it, I thought, 'Why is clear terrain smaller than grass terrain? And why should it be smaller than cliffs, or rocky ground?'

Every single tile is defined by definition in this IsoMapPack. It also has a height linked to it. Why would this change anything? Hmmm? Guess what? It doesn't change a single thing. I took dummy maps and inserted all kinds of terrain objects, ranging from height differences, cliffs, slope pieces roads, whatever. Flat tiles are as big as ramps and cliffs. Here comes a funny part. Height doesn't affect size, eh? Actually - it does. Hmmm? Now, now, Titan, why are you giving us false information? Oops, I'm not. Heights above 9 will, yes >9 (bigger than nine). And anybody with a bit of bits & byte knowledge knows that a character requires space. 10, 11 and 12 (or whatever the maximum height is) are actually 2 numbers and thus require more space! As long as your tile height is below 9, it won't take any extra space. Now what is a good mp map? A map without any modifications! Modifications take more space than elevation. So this

[HMEC]
Cost=0
Buildlimit=0

of yours takes more space than a good deal of giant hills.

If I'm not mistaken, that is. perhaps Dcoder and similar programmers can tell me wether i'm just a babling idiot, or somebody with a firm theory.

If you absolutely want tiny maps, use your tiles wisely. Don't want overlay? Use cliffs! I'm sure these giant 1-rock walls are much bigger than a tight wall of cliffs. I justed wanted to post this to make clear that making maps suitable for MP does not rely on detailing.

Lighting on the other hand... #Tongue

Clazzy · Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 12:06 am Post subject:

But you're talking about a few bytes. Since when is that a problem nowadays? A 140x90 map of mine is about 150KB, which takes seconds to download. It zips to about 90KB. Saving mere bytes isn't going to make a great deal of difference.

_________________

John Galt · Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 3:35 am Post subject:

Quote:

10, 11 and 12 (or whatever the maximum height is) are actually 2 numbers and thus require more space! As long as your tile height is below 9, it won't take any extra space.

Max height = 14. Tile heights are in hex. The "rock walls" are overlay, and as such are in [OverlayPack], not in [IsoMapPack5].

In my opinion, you would save more space by leaving out the preview pic than by messing around like this.

Titan · Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 10:45 am Post subject:

Which is what many people do. It is also exactly my point. When I was playing online I sometimes used my own maps (when hosting) and almost all of them said that 'It was too big' and a 'lag map'. I tried to explain it, but all they said was 'don't you have Ultimate [4 v 4] ? ' and then left. Laughing

I know that overlay is in the Overlay pack. I've been messing around with tool scripts to try and make some scripts that edit the terrain settings (I'm not Olaf or matze, so you can guess I don't know a single thing about this) . It's still true that overlay is bigger than cliff pieces, because an empty OverlayPack does not have all tiles defined. It'll add additional lines (and thus more space) for newly placed objects. It's only a few bytes, true, but if you're caring about the dial-up people...

And Clazzy, that's the point. People make a lot of maps without detailing and all players I talk to say that it saves space, which isn't true. I wanted to show some of the mappers here that what they're doing isn't required.

Meh, perhaps this topic is useless.

John Galt · Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 11:18 am Post subject:

Those who bitch about "too big" are most likely not modders but plain gamers, and as such would have little interest in our affairs, including this forum.

Titan · Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 12:43 pm Post subject:

Ah, well, I just wanted to show this.

Off-topic: DCoder, do you know what language the FinalSun scripts have been written in? I kinda get the syntax, but I don't recognise it. Embarassed