Optimizing Maps

[Doom Marine]

What are the possible ways to optimize a map so it takes up less bandwidth and runs faster? Because you see, my map runs fine in single player but when I tried to play co-op in multiplayer (zdaemon, legacy even on a LAN), it kept kicking player out because it couldn't sync such a large map. Is there a way to optimize the map and compress the sidedefs?

[sargebaldy]

Yes, it's called "packing sidedefs" and the only editor I know that can do it is deepsea.

[EarthQuake]

Also, you can delete any unused sectors/sidedefs which frees up space by a bit. You might also try "packing sectors" (although this is irreversible and may not help much).

Deepsea has all these optimization options, but I think there are seperate programs which do these different tasks.

[myk]

Yeah. Look for DShrink at Ricrob's, and there's also UShrink to reverse the effect.

[boris]

All hail fraggle's WADPtr! It also packs graphics. But keep in mind that packed maps can't be zipped as good as unpacked maps, so the zips might actually become larger.

[Graf Zahl]

boris said:

All hail fraggle's WADPtr! It also packs graphics. But keep in mind that packed maps can't be zipped as good as unpacked maps, so the zips might actually become larger.

No they won't. All that's removed is redundant information that even packed would eat some space.

And don't expect miracles from sidedef packing. Normally it won't have any performance impact at all. Some source ports even unpack the sidedefs before using them (ZDoom for example internally requires each sidedef to be unique.) Sidedef packing will save some space on disk, maybe even in memory but the amount being saved is rather small compared to what Doom requires totally.
Packing sectors is a technique I cannot recommend at all because it can have a negative impact on gameplay if you are not very careful with it. This is only for experienced mappers!

[boris]

Graf Zahl said:

And don't expect miracles from sidedef packing. Normally it won't have any performance impact at all. Some source ports even unpack the sidedefs before using them (ZDoom for example internally requires each sidedef to be unique.) Sidedef packing will save some space on disk, maybe even in memory but the amount being saved is rather small compared to what Doom requires totally.

That highly depends on the map(s). Did you try packing 10sector.wad? WADPtr packs it from ~9.6mb to ~6.1mb. That's 1/3 smaller. (Yes, I know 10sector.wad is a special case). But I aggree that it's usually useless to pack the wad. I wonder why there's not yet a port out there that can read files from zips, now that would save some space.

[Erik]

Build a proper reject. Also realize that zdaemon and legacy aren't very good ports for coop play (they are excellent for dm though), I guarantee that you wouldn't suffer 1/10 as much lag in prboom or zdoom.

[EarthQuake]

The only real problems with sector packing is that if you have stairs that rise via trigger, then they will all merge into one sector rendering them useless (unless you have different properties for them, or set dummy tags). The other problem is with sound issues. Since sound travels differently now (because you have various sectors in different locations merged) then monsters in totally sealed off places will hear you.

Trying to edit a level with packed sidedefs is rather annoying. You change one sidedef's properties and about 50 others change with it :) You have to unpack them before you can actually do anything. Packed sectors, on the other hand, make it completely impossible to edit your level, so this is nice if you would like to protect your level from theft/modification.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

myk said:

Yeah. Look for DShrink at Ricrob's, and there's also UShrink to reverse the effect.

Doesn't that work with DooM 1.2 only though? (I'm sure the Cleimos text said so, because it uses go32.exe and when I tried it with 1.9 it screwed up the map)

[myk]

The Cleimos text doesn't say that (nor does the DShrink text), and the application has been used successfully on wads meant for different DOOM versions (Cleimos2 for instance), including 1.9. The DShrink in the Cleimos ZIP isn't exactly the same as the one on Ricrob's site (which is newer); I don't know if any DOOM version specific changes were made between them, but it's probably best to use the latest version for newer wads, just in case.