How much is too much?

[Haxxors]

Is there every a point in a custom map where you have too many triggers/variables/custom models/regions/units where it reaches critical mass and everything just lags so much that the map becomes unplayable?

 

[Komaqtion]

Well, there is a size limit to play maps on battle.net, which is like 3-4 mb, but this wouldn't make the map lag i believe.

 

[Ayanami]

Well you won't be able to host big-sized maps online (not too sure over how many MB). Well, so far one of my map had insane amounts of triggers, regions, units, etc. However, it doesn't lag (except for the fact that the map size itself is huge). As long as you have no leaks or anything to cause a critical error, you should be quite safe, if I'm not wrong.

 

[Hellohihi]

Bnet mapsize limit is 4mb.

And large amount of units will surely lag the game.

 

[Ayanami]

Bnet mapsize limit is 4mb.

And large amount of units will surely lag the game.

Actually yeah, large amount of units will lag the game. However, this also depends on how "fragile" is the player's computer. Large units being present in the map may lag the game. The amount of units in your Object Editor won't matter though, although it might make your loading screen take longer to load.

 

[Faust]

Try to keep the map size below 3-3.5 MB.

Total amount of units below 3k, moving units at once below 750.

And the loading time should be below 30 sec and really should be below 1 minute (of course it's computer dependent).
Try to make the lowest dimensions of map size possible (a map bigger than 256 x 256 is not very recommendable).

 

[Darthfett]

A realistic amount of triggers/variables/custom models/regions/units is just right.

For instance, I can lag a map with 1 trigger, and I can have no lag with a hundred triggers.

A lot of graphical lag is from having many objects on screen at once.

Try not to have too many units, have even less on the screen.

Regions are fine, I haven't heard of having too many.

As long as custom models aren't high on polys, treat them the same as a WC3 model.

Variables are almost always better for processing speed than calling a native to get the value is. The exception is when you're only calling the native once or twice.