Avoid memory leak - what dead units are to be removed ?

[Ricola3D]

Hello,

I'm developing a Hero Defense map. Since it's the concept, many ennemy units & heroes die during the game.

I want to be sure to avoid memory leakage when the game time passes, so can you please help me figuring out what units are automatically removed by the WarcraftIII engine, and which ones need to be removed manually by triggers.

Depending on:
- Hero or not (I don't want to ressurect the heroes btw)
- Raisable or not
- Decayable or not

Maybe others parameters that I don't know ?

Also what's the best way to remove them ? Something like the one below ?

• Events
  • Unit - a unit Dies
• Conditions
  • <Conditions to be answered>
• Actions
  • Custom script: local unit u = GetTriggerUnit()
  • Wait XX seconds // Enough time for decay/raise... to be over/impossible ?
  • call RemoveUnit(u)

PS: for info if necessary I've a unit indexer

 

[IcemanBo]

Units are automatically removed after decayed. There'a game constant for dacay time.
But if you don't need such thing and no revive, then you can just set death type to "can't raise - does not decay".
So I believe you don't need to trigger unit removal.

 

[Ricola3D]

Units are automatically removed after decayed. There'a game constant for dacay time.
But if you don't need such thing and no revive, then you can just set death type to "can't raise - does not decay".
So I believe you don't need to trigger unit removal.

Are heroes too ? Since you could rebuy/revive them in many games ?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Heroes will always leak a bit of memory even if removed from the game.
I highly suggest not using heroes if you dont plan to recycle or revive them, especially when you plan to create hundreds of them.

 

[IcemanBo]

Heroes won't be automatically removed, true.

 

[Tasyen]

Warcraft 3 Removes dead Heroes when a hero dies and that player already has 7 dead heroes. Then it Removes the longest dead Hero (owned by that player).

 

[Dr Super Good]

What Tasyen is saying is correct. Reviveable dead heroes is limited so cannot leak. Care must be taken if some heroes need to be revived or they might unintentionally get removed by this mechanic.

It is my understanding that all units leak a very small amount. Some people claim that Warcraft III periodically cleans this up, but I have not seen evidence to support this. I also have not checked this in recent patches, which might have fixed the issue as part of Reforged development. The leak can be considered trivial for the most part due to how little memory it is (a few kb per unit) with the main issue being stability over time. Even still 20,000 units per playthrough should still be fine which is enough for over 2 units being killed per second for over 2 hours. Even the most spammy hero defences struggle to rank up such numbers.