Firstly, there's the issue of lag. The lag on single player manifests itself as a very noticeable jerkiness when scrolling the screen. These are the stats of the map (courtesy of MapStats by FaRTy1billion):
Units: 1166/1700 (68%)
Doodads: 1004
Sprites: 466/500 (93%)
Strings: 686/1024(66%)
CUWP Slots: 24/64(32%)
Locations: 148/256(57%)
Triggers: 1141
Briefings: 0
WAVs: 20/1024 (1%)
So as you can see, it is a pretty large map, but by no means the largest. I've seen maps with 1500 - 2000 triggers lag, but nowhere near as drastic as mine. I've tried several things to streamline the triggers. For example, I got rid of all the 'always' and 'preserve trigger' triggers and gathered them all up into one trigger. I reduced the number of strings. I've also deleted away most of the WAV files in the sound editor and found that they still run in the triggers, not sure how that works though. 90% of the triggers presently are triggers involving units, which I hear are the most significant contributors to lag. Unforetunately concerning the nature of the map, I don't think I can change anything about that. But still, Astrogears had 5000+ triggers and it still runs fine. I'd imagine that once I completed the triggers for all players, it would come up to that amount as well. What else could I do?
The map uses and absolutely needs hyper-triggers, and changing the waits to 168ms does help reduce the lag but the lag is still present. I don't just want to reduce lag though, I want to eliminiate it altogether. Because frankly, while the lag may be an annoyance it does not disrupt gameplay at all, at least on single player anyway. I don't want to do so much for with so little payoff. Although of course, the lag will probably become really bad in multiplayer, so this is a factor I would consider, among other factors, in deciding whether the map should be multiplayer or not.
This brings me to the next thing. I concentrated on player 1 first because the triggers for the other 3 players are pretty much identical save for the locations they use. So I was thinking of getting some advance text editing software, like the reconmended Notepad ++, copy/paste all the triggers from SCMdraft's trigger editor and do a 'find all' for "location X" and 'replace all' with "location Y". Is there any precautions to take before I do that, so it doesn't screw up the map completely? This is of course another factor in my Single player vs Multiplayer decision.
Finally, exactly how popular are RPGs on bnet? I don't see a lot of RPG maps being played in public channels aside from the usual such as Crash, which frankly my map is a far cry from. Maybe in private channels, or on networks or in map night? My map is planned to take 5 - 7 hours to complete, probably shorter if you do it in a group but I think it still might be outside the attention span of the regular bnetter. Like I said, if the multiplayer functionality is not gonna get used a lot, I don't see a point in putting too much effort into it really.
So, as you can see, the biggest challege I'm facing now is getting rid of lag, and the major decision is whether the map will be single player or multiplayer. I feel that the map is shaping up to be pretty good at this point, and I'm really determined to complete this map and make it the best it can be, so please help me out kay? ...all help is much appreciated...
None.