How much do custom spells take up?

[sethmachine]

Hi,

On average, how much space do custom spells take up (those which are based on in built spells in the game).

E.g. say I made a hero ability with n levels for each of the vanilla warcraft 3 abilities (frost nova, heal, mass teleport, etc.).

How much space would that add to the map? Or is it better just to modify the vanilla ones rather than make new abilities?

 

[GreeN!X]

This may be a cheap way to find out but it's the easiest.

You can try testing it by having a blank map then making/importing a spell into it. Save a blank version of the map and also save a version of the map with a custom spell then compare the size of both.

Anyway, I don't think the size of custom abilities is something to worry about since it won't affect the size of the map much. The only thing about having so many custom objects is that it prolongs the loading time of the map.

 

[WaterKnight]

When copying a standard ability, except for modifications, it just stores the new id, the id of the base object and number of modifications. That's 2*char[4]+1*int=2*4+4=12 bytes. Then there's still mpq compression.

The modifications you have on inbuilt abilities would take just as much as on custom abilities.

Slks are more flexible in size since they are in clean text, less sequential, different number lengths and do not force you to state certain attributes. But overwriting them will require a huge static overhead if you want to keep the inbuilt objects.

 

[sethmachine]

I'm a bit worried because I'm already at 5 MB with models alone, and haven't even done all the terrain or triggers. The code itself takes up .5 MB (without being compressed) and it's only about 20-30% done.

What exactly are slk files? These would actually save space versus using the object editor?

 

[WaterKnight]

I'm a bit worried because I'm already at 5 MB with models alone, and haven't even done all the terrain or triggers. The code itself takes up .5 MB (without being compressed) and it's only about 20-30% done.

What exactly are slk files? These would actually save space versus using the object editor?

The (optimized) war3map.j of my current project has a compression ratio of 23%, therefore amounts only to ~1mb. The optimization reduced it to ~40%, but that heavily depends on how much overly generated stuff you have and what language you use.

For models you can apply MDX Squisher, which nullifies unimportant attributes of models, so the mpq package is more effective compressing them.

As I said, slk files are not as static in format as object editor files, so I fail to compare them. It depends on the contents. The Widgetizer can transform your map's object editor data to slk if you want to test it. Then again, you need to know which of the inbuilt objects you want to keep in order to kick the others. Slk files are data tables and the native format wc3 uses for all the object editor data and more. Luckily, wc3 reloads most of them on map init/you can overwrite them. The big advantage is that it does not consume further init time ingame, no first use lag. On the other hand, wc3 is very slow reading object editor modifications. In the past I used to tidily nullify all the unnecessary fields of objects in the object editor but as written above, doing so takes a lot of space and boosts the init duration of those objects greatly.

 

[sethmachine]

MDX squisher didn't decrease the size of any of the models I'm using. Literally didn't lower it by a single byte...

I think I'll stick with scripting the abilities for now in LUA.

 

[Xonok]

MDX squisher didn't decrease the size of any of the models I'm using. Literally didn't lower it by a single byte...

I think I'll stick with scripting the abilities for now in LUA.

It doesn't do that. It makes the MDX compression more effective, this means that the map size gets smaller, while even import editor doesn't state so.

 

[Arhowk]

MDX squisher didn't decrease the size of any of the models I'm using. Literally didn't lower it by a single byte...

I think I'll stick with scripting the abilities for now in LUA.

1) It makes the MDX compress more when in a mpq, you wont notice any difference in the windows file system

2) you cant. You have two options...

a) object editor
b) scripted (jass)

 

[sethmachine]

1) It makes the MDX compress more when in a mpq, you wont notice any difference in the windows file system

2) you cant. You have two options...

a) object editor
b) scripted (jass)

I'm quite sure you can script abilities with LUA, you just can't make triggered abilities. I am just talking about generating the objects with LUA script.

 

[Adiktuz]

Well scripting the abilities, when we're talking here, is more of triggering abilities...

Your's was generating abilities via scripting...

 

[Arhowk]

I'm quite sure you can script abilities with LUA, you just can't make triggered abilities. I am just talking about generating the objects with LUA script.

Bad practice. Making them in the object editor is a lot faster, unless they are above 10 levels which you should not do. (Ever wonder why abyss rpg takes 10 minutes to load and spikes on new hero?

 

[sethmachine]

Bad practice. Making them in the object editor is a lot faster, unless they are above 10 levels which you should not do. (Ever wonder why abyss rpg takes 10 minutes to load and spikes on new hero?

Bad practice?

Well first of all it's not faster (for me). Keep in mind I'm not running some Alienware or normal desktop. Using the object editor is very laggy (for me).

Also, the lua script is only run once. Then you delete it. And it creates exactly what copying a custom spell would have done. Just blazingly faster.

Also, it makes every object portable. Don't need to deal with importing objects. And then I can also use regular expressions or find to make very quick modifications.

What advantages does the vanilla object editor offer

 

[Xonok]

The object editor is only slow if you have brush list open.

 

[WaterKnight]

No, it's still slow setting all the values manually, moving through the menus and it's error-prone. Doing it via script shines if you have to follow specific patterns like in BonusMod. And as OP said, it's more modular portable this way.

 

[Xonok]

No, it's still slow setting all the values manually, moving through the menus and it's error-prone. Doing it via script shines if you have to follow specific patterns like in BonusMod. And as OP said, it's more modular portable this way.

Oh this. I guess it's possible that way then.