Is it worth it to replace all my preplaced units with triggers to spawn them?

[SAUS]

I have a couple hundred units that are just standing around on the map. Is it worth it to have a trigger that creates these units after map initialisation (elapsed time = 0 seconds)? I want the map to load faster. There are a lot of other things to fix up still, but I'm wondering if changing this is worth my time or if I should leave it for later or just not do it at all.

 

[PublishedShadow]

I would assume it would load the map faster. But you would likely notice a considerable performance decrease since you are creating that many units at once. You would also have to set and remove several temp points if you did it that way.

 

[PurgeandFire]

Leave it as it is IMO. There is no point in reducing map loading time if it just causes an equivalent lag spike at the start of the map.

Use the tool "Widgetizer" if you want a faster map loading time (but you should only use it on a map that you aren't editing anymore, e.g. a release version).

It would only be worth it if you could partition it through time. (e.g. every X seconds, spawn Y number of units). If you can partition it wisely, it might spread the performance drop through time rather than causing the lag all at once. But you have to consider what bugs might sprout because of it.

 

[SAUS]

Spreading it out would be do-able. The game starts in a setup stage for up to 4 minutes for the players to choose their hero and stuff. It could easily do it in the first 30-60 seconds, I think.

Also I would be doing it with JASS, so they'd just by x/y coordinates with no points.

 

[PublishedShadow]

Yeah, If you can span them across a minute or so and use coordinates you shouldn't have any problems. One last thing to determine if it's worth the time is that it also depends on the unit size - if the models have a lot of poly's then yeah, I would assume spawning in game would likely save your loading time quite a bit.