Placables limit?

tgx

I seem to remember there was some kind of arbitary limit to placables. I think... it was project-wide, so if you made a series of areas highly detailed (overly detailed), you'd end up running over the limit. And the only way around that was to stop and start the new areas in a new module.

So, is this being looked at? Is my memory about this stuff even correct? It was something like that, right?

Sherincall

There is such a limit, but you will never hit it.

The two hard limits you can easily hit:
- The module can contain only 16k resources. This includes scripts, creatures, placeables, etc.. But only the actual resource files - if you make a custom creature, and place it down 10 times, it only counts as a single resource.
- The custom palette can contain only 16k entries per type. You hit this one by avoiding the first one: because the 16k is on the module, you can bypass it by putting some items in a hak. So you put 10k custom creatures in a hak, and 10k in the module. Now your server dies when a DM joins.

The second one is just a bug and should be fixed. The first is a limitation and needs more work to get removed.

As for number of placeables in the entire project - if they are static, they generally only affect loading time and client rendering. Each static placeable is still in the AI master list, so it marginally eats perf.
Oh, and each loaded placeable is around 1kb memory in the server process, so capped by your memory, that comes down to ~3 million placeables.

tgx

I see! Thanks for explaining all this. I admit I haven't actually worked on any sizable projects/modules. But, that might change. I just thought it might be good to revise the basic stuff while the toolset is being looked at. But, what you say explains a lot.

[Deleted User]

@Sherincall

Refresh my memory exactly how this module limit works, please.

Is that 16K worth of resource files (i.e. if my Temp folder while the module is open has more than 16,000 files in it, I'm over the limit)?

Proleric

Exactly that.

Plus up to 50 haks with up to 16k files each.

[Deleted User]

Thanks, Proleric. I thought that's what it was. Glad you chimed in as I'd forgotten about the 50 HAK cap - not that I'll ever hit that.

Sherincall

Speaking of limits, there's also the 100 tilesets limit.

As for the 16k resources - I'm not sure but I believe the .nss files don't count against it, just the .ncs ones. There's a few others that don't count, but they are too rare to matter.

virusman

IIRC 16k is the ERF file format limit; any files in the module/erf/hak count against it, including .nss

Sherincall

virusman said:

IIRC 16k is the ERF file format limit; any files in the module/erf/hak count against it, including .nss

The ERF format uses 32bit indexes, so you can put as much as you want into it. I think resman uses some of the key/bif logic handling when dealing with ERFs, which uses the top 12 bits to pick a .bif out of a key, then has 6 unused bits, then 14 for a resource within a bif. Because of that, resman can't load more than 16k resources out of a single ERF. But .nss is not a resource as far as resman is concerned, so it gladly swallows it.

I just tried adding 20k uncompiled .nss files to a module and had no issues with it.

I also found this thread detailing it a bit more: http://smf.asmodei.net/index.php?PHPSESSID=dlo7d9ok992q6as5b96hjt29m0&topic=23233.msg233436#msg233436
and a quick look at the disassembly seems to confirm it, but I didn't go too deep.

LaputianBird

Sherincall said:

Speaking of limits, there's also the 100 tilesets limit.

I'm pretty sure the default ones do not count towards the 100 tilesets limit, in which case I'd guess the ones loaded from a key/bif are ignored while the ones loaded from hakpacks are not. Not sure it makes sense in terms of resman though, or at least it sounds a bit bizarre, like bioware intentionally wanted to limit the number of custom tilesets for some reason.