Reducing World Editor Lag (Trigger Editor GUI)

[CAAentertainment]

Hello, I'm currently working on the classic World Editor for 1.30.1 Warcraft 3. I do not wish to switch to the Reforged Editor at the time. My map is quite large, I've been working on it for close to ten years now. As it has grown, the editor has become slower and slower to work with that it has grown increasingly frustrating. The lag in the Trigger Editor, Region Palette, and Unit Palette is becoming unbearable, taking close to a minute or two for certain actions.

Now, you're probably going to think "Do you have Brush List off?" Yes I do. I've had that off for years, and it has helped immensely at first, but the size of the map has grown to the point where the World Editor is struggling. I have a lot of pre-placed units and pre-placed regions, and doing 'view units' to off doesn't seem to do much at all.

It's to the point that the entire editor will freeze on when working on certain Trigger windows for a solid minute. Such as:

Long Lag = More than a minute. Medium Lag = Less than a minute. Small Lag = less than 30 seconds.

- Selecting a specific unit/single unit variable. (Long lag)
- Selecting a region (Long lag)
- Selecting a unit type (Medium lag)
- Selecting a trigger for on/off/run (Medium lag)

Also...
- opening Unit Palette (small lag)
- opening Region Palette (small lag)


I have tried the following advice from multiple forums to certain degrees of success...
- Brush List off (Big effect)
- Reduce 'Undo Limit' to less than 30 (tiny effect)
- Set priority of World Editor to 'Above Average' or 'High' in Task Manager (Doesn't seem much effect)
- Switching View off for units/doodads/shadows (tiny effect)
- Changing visuals in Preferences to lower (Doesn't seem to have an effect)
- Restarting the Editor (Has a notable effect at first, but after a few short hours, returns to unbearable.)
- Keeping filesize low (No idea. But I always kept it below 14mb by habit.)

Does anyone else have any other suggestions or hints that can reduce the World Editor lag for large maps?

 

[CAAentertainment]

Bumping this thread. I really need any sort of advice for this.

 

[Chaosy]

I always suggest reinstalling the whole game first so you dont waste your effort just in case your install is corrupted.

Easy solution(s):
1. Start using jass or another language that is not GUI which will fix the variable selection problem. And possibly trigger disable/enable problems. Even more so if you use third party editors for coding.
2. Spawn units with code as much as possible rather than having them pre-placed, this reduced stuff the editor needs to load

It could of course be potato computer, or the map being insanely large but I doubt it given that it is sub 14 mb.

What hardware specs are you running? also details such as total units/triggers/doodads/regions/variables would give good perspective in figuring out if its the map or your install or your computer

 

[CAAentertainment]

I always suggest reinstalling the whole game first so you dont waste your effort just in case your install is corrupted.

Easy solution(s):
1. Start using jass or another language that is not GUI which will fix the variable selection problem. And possibly trigger disable/enable problems. Even more so if you use third party editors for coding.
2. Spawn units with code as much as possible rather than having them pre-placed, this reduced stuff the editor needs to load

It could of course be potato computer, or the map being insanely large but I doubt it given that it is sub 14 mb.

What hardware specs are you running? also details such as total units/triggers/doodads/regions/variables would give good perspective in figuring out if its the map or your install or your computer

I have multiple installations of Warcraft 3 in different versions, yet no matter what version, the same problem persists.

I have next to zero JASS knowledge, I've spend close to 14 years learning GUI. I don't use third-party editors.

My hardware specs are quite powerful. Enough that I can still run all the modern games on high graphics.
I have 24gigs of RAM, Eight-Core Processor 4.00 Ghz. Geforce GTX 1060. Windows 10.

As for map specs on total.
Map Size: 352 x 256
Units: 1661
Doodads (Destructibles): 9831
Doodads (Other): 11731
Regions: 1005
Triggers: 1166
Variables: 480
Camera: 30

I've been thinking of replacing the pre-placed units with trigger-spawned ones. Will try that out, any other suggestions?

 

[Chaosy]

Yeah I think we can safely say that hardware and wc3 installation is not the issue.

The trigger and region count is worrying though. I really cannot imagine a map with so many.
Maybe units too.

Problem is that I cannot really offer any quick tips on how to deal with trigger overloads as it is just a matter of coding more efficiently which is not something I can teach here.

Have you tried HiveWE? I don't think it will solve anything right now because all of the functionality is not implemented, but if it removes unit selection lag etc it will help you in the future when it is finished.

 

[CAAentertainment]

Yeah I think we can safely say that hardware and wc3 installation is not the issue.

The trigger and region count is worrying though. I really cannot imagine a map with so many.
Maybe units too.

Problem is that I cannot really offer any quick tips on how to deal with trigger overloads as it is just a matter of coding more efficiently which is not something I can teach here.

Have you tried HiveWE? I don't think it will solve anything right now because all of the functionality is not implemented, but if it removes unit selection lag etc it will help you in the future when it is finished.

Yeah, I've been looking into third-party editors, like Sharpcraft, but they seem to be just as limited. I've looked into HiveWE, and while it was incredibly tempting, the lacking functionality is a big deciding factor as to why I've restrained from using it.

Concerning the Trigger and Region count. I've pulling the info from the Object Manager, but I'm 100% sure I don't have that many Triggers. At have roughly around a hundred. Perhaps it's counting the actions inside each individual trigger.

 

[Chaosy]

Well I suggest you try HiveWE just to see if it removes the lag. As I said it might be a viable solution in the future if it does. It would be the easiest solution by far.