How many units before they start acting wierd?

[IronForge]

Hi, I know theres a max number of units each player can have before they start acting wierd. Do buildings and units with 0 movement speed count? Or is it only count MOVING active units?
Also, how much is the cap? Hows 300?

Thanks, I need to know cos my coming RPG is huge. This huge.

Every single last unit counts, I intend to push it to the max.

There are going to be 10 island outposts for each side with 5 big town centres so thats already easily 100 units. Then the spawns in groups of 6... x 6 spawn points (36)...
Then the smaller spawns for the said 10 island outposts... thats easily another 40.

So by now... its already close to 200. Should I be more careful and change some of those buildings to neutral control, or is the limit something like 400 and I can go on putting them in like crazy?
I heard somewhere its 300, then some say 200, others no limit. However I have experienced crappy maps where units get stuck move stuck move before.

Note that everything has been shrunk to EXTREME scale, map size is maximum. Therefore you are looking at an RPG with 3x the size of what is normal.

 

[Darkness-4ever]

Its not so much how many units on the map before they start acting weird and generate and evil fleshball of hell floating in the sky, its how many textures and models are present on your screen, though hopefully in your case the models will simply not show, in the worse case, you get that evil fleshball etc. you get what I'm saying.

 

[IronForge]

No thats not the issue, I'm asking how many units before the AI overloads.
Nothing to do with visual. I mean the units will freeze then move again, freeze and move again every other second etc. I had that problem with my hero siege map, someone told me to split the hostiles into 2 controllers and it works like a charm now. Just not sure about the threshhold though.

 

[Pharaoh_]

Well, then maybe avoid using more than 100 units for a player (that's the default Food cap, which of course responds to AI issues)?

 

[IronForge]

Not possible, I'm past 150 already.

 

[Darkness-4ever]

Then simply not possible .

 

[idodik]

Well those are lags my friend, and I think those can be achieved by several things:
1. Too much units (150 per player is a good example). The overstack of orders and routing for each unit causes terrible terrible damage to the quality of the game.
2. Weight of textures, models etc. that is currently being used. For example, if you have 5 high-quality lich kings on your map it overloads the system. In this case you should check the weight of your custom models (if there are any), and consider not using them if they weigh too much.
3. Leaks! Memory leaks from triggers. In this case you should seek a tutorial to make triggers leak-proof.

 

[IronForge]

1. Too much units (150 per player is a good example). The overstack of orders and routing for each unit causes terrible terrible damage to the quality of the game.

Hows 200?

 

[PurgeandFire]

You can have plenty of units before it starts causing noticeable lag alone. It may cause lag in combination to other stuff, but otherwise it shouldn't cause that much lag. It really only lags if you have too many on your screen. I was able to have about 400 footmen on my screen and still have like a 16 fps. =P Take your screen away from the 400 footmen and my fps goes up to about 53. This can affect loading screen time though.

Also, be sure to remove any unnecessary units, and try not to spawn an incredible amount of units (like thousands) via triggers.

 

[Berb]

I don't think he's talking about the FPS, I think he's talking about the point in the game where there are so many units that they only jitter towards their target, and move in tiny tiny little steps. This is from an order overload, as idodik has stated.

I don't see why you're ordering so many units to move at the same time though, this is typically only an issue in TD games or other games where there are hundreds of units.

By the way, if you have 150 units per player, and roughly 12 players (plus hostile), you're looking at about 1800 units on your map. I doubt you're going to be getting anything functioning very well with that many units.

 

[IronForge]

I don't think he's talking about the FPS, I think he's talking about the point in the game where there are so many units that they only jitter towards their target, and move in tiny tiny little steps. This is from an order overload, as idodik has stated.

Actually it works like this. Its a Battleships map, just blown up 20x. Not an exaggeration, literally. Map size is largest JGNP will allow (4x WE) and to fit in even more, I've made all units 1/3 of the size (since it aint workin well I'll make it half perhaps). Most Battleship maps and AOS maps use map size small.

Problem is to accomodate this, all buildings have been made units. So for the custom rotation things you know. Dont want everything facing the same way.
Only way to do this? Make them units.

So we're looking at about 300 'units' for the 3 teams. However, only about 100 of them are moving at one time. So thats 300 units moving for 3 sides. Plus another 200 moving units or so from neutral hostile. Its an RPG after all.

Will this cause problems?

 

[PurgeandFire]

Actually it works like this. Its a Battleships map, just blown up 20x. Not an exaggeration, literally. Map size is largest JGNP will allow (4x WE) and to fit in even more, I've made all units 1/3 of the size (since it aint workin well I'll make it half perhaps). Most Battleship maps and AOS maps use map size small.

Problem is to accomodate this, all buildings have been made units. So for the custom rotation things you know. Dont want everything facing the same way.
Only way to do this? Make them units.

So we're looking at about 300 'units' for the 3 teams. However, only about 100 of them are moving at one time. So thats 300 units moving for 3 sides. Plus another 200 moving units or so from neutral hostile. Its an RPG after all.

Will this cause problems?

As long as you don't have about 100+ units on screen at a time, it should be fine. (hopefully) But there are other factors as well, eg: missiles and abilities. So you might be able to fit ~50 units on screen without having a large amount of lag/weirdness/fps loss.

 

[IronForge]

I'm talking about order lag, will I be fine in that aspect?

I don't think he's talking about the FPS, I think he's talking about the point in the game where there are so many units that they only jitter towards their target, and move in tiny tiny little steps. This is from an order overload, as idodik has stated.

Thats what I'm talkin about.

 

[Berb]

Yea, the amount of units on-screen doesn't make a difference, the units still stutter-move.

 

[IronForge]

So how much is the absolute limit?

 

[Berb]

Well I doubt there's a point in the game where after one unit being created it goes from working perfectly to stuttering.

 

[IronForge]

Right, I just don't want them to stutter. Will I be safe-ish with 150 units each player (3 players)?

 

[idodik]

No, it won't. I remember having 2 players with 150 units, and it was stutter-move all along.
I recommend 100 units for each player, surely that would be good. If you can't subtract 50 units, try to subtract 25.

 

[IronForge]

Actually its about 200 units now, but only 100 of them are moving. The rest have 0 speed.

 

[idodik]

All units count, well I guess except for buidings. Even mobile units with 0 movement speed take up some place for orders.