[FAQ] How can I change map sizes?

[jcsnider]

STOP!

Changing the size of maps is dangerous. It depends on a clean start meaning all of your data would be lost. This is also completely unnecessary in 99% of cases. Below I will cover many misconceptions about changing map sizes, alternatives, and how you could destroy your project this way.

 

Seamless World Misconception 

This question is often asked when you don't know how the seamless mapping system works. You don't need large maps in Intersect because connected in-game maps are loaded and shown to the client seamlessly. For more information about this system and how to use it open the spoiler below!

Seamless Mapping

In the editor, just double click on a map border, it will ask you if you would like to create a connecting map and link it to your existing world for you! (See below)

 

 

Then if you open the Map Grid you can see your world as it grows.

 

Once you get in game, you can't even tell where the map boundaries are!

 

 

 

Performance Issues

The client loads and renders 9 maps at a time. The server processes 9 maps for each player so npcs move and look alive. The larger your maps are the more work the client and server must do to present the game.

 

Increasing the map sizes would lead to the following issues to begin with..

• The client caches maps to render instead of drawing every tile every frame. Currently it caches to a 1024x832 sized texture. Increasing the map size increases the size of the cache textures which is VERY hard on graphic cards. A lot of older PCs and older graphic cards won't support textures larger than 1024 pixels in width or height. A 64x64 map would require a texture size of 2048x2048 to be created.
• Based on the number of extra tiles alone it isn't unfathomable to see your client and server doing 4x the work per player. This is very, very bad and would limit how many players could exist in your game world at the same time.
• It would take longer for the server to send maps to the clients in-game. It would also take longer for the client to process the map and render it to cache meaning as maps are loaded in the background you would likely start seeing fps dips and lag spikes when new maps are loaded.
• Doing this could disqualify your game from ever running within web browsers (due to extra memory requirements) and mobile devices (lack of processing power) if/when those options become available.

 

So why default to 32x26? That map size with default 32x32 pixel tiles is just enough to fill a 1920x1080 screen with a little extra space in case of server lag when loading maps while walking around. To be fair if we could make maps smaller and still look good in game we would.

 

User Annoyance

If the maps are simply too small for you then we're sorry, you are free to change the size of the maps of course but we won't encourage it and we can't help you revert back later if you regret your decision.  Our advice, suck it up and use the default options.

 

 

Valid Reasons to Change Map Sizes

There are only 2 valid reasons I can think of for ever changing the size of in-game maps.

1. You are porting maps from another engine/system which were already created with a larger size.
2. You changed the tile size of maps from 32x32 to something smaller which would require larger maps to fill a 1920x1080 screen.

 

That's it! Those are the only 2 valid reasons I can think of. If you can think of others please post below and we can discuss.

 

How to do it?

So you want to do this anyways? You either have one of the valid 2 reasons above or you are going to ignore our warnings. Fine.

Change the Map Size at your own risk -- this will delete all of your existing game content!

 

Open your Server/Resources folder.

Delete the gamedata.db file.

Open the config.json file in Notepad++ or similar and change the map size under the map section.

Restart the server. Good luck.

 

 

TL;DR - Don't ever change map sizes in Intersect unless you have a very good reason.

 

[jcsnider]

Answered above.