Roll20 uses cookies to improve your experience on our site. Cookies enable you to enjoy certain features, social sharing functionality, and tailor message and display ads to your interests on our site and others. They also help us understand how our site is being used. By continuing to use our site, you consent to our use of cookies. Update your cookie preferences .
×
Create a free account

Maps multiple objects or one jpeg

What is easier for the system to load? I have an offline application I can use to make maps, but I can also do that in roll 20. The difference is the offline app is essentially one jpeg, while the roll20 is multiple individual png or jpegs. Which is better?
Anything that has to be, or can be interacted with should be done on roll 20. Making the bulk into a single JPG will help with the system. I think you will find that the dynamic lighting lines and the lights themselves are what really grinds the system down. Limiting the size of scenes helps more than anything else. Smaller, more compact scenes with scene changes will give you the best performance, you have to weigh what you need to present your story against fluid operation of the site. Test it and see what your red line is.
1431724284
Gold
Forum Champion
Great tips from al. I think he's got good advice and I know he certainly has experience with maps with a lot of objects. Simple answer, like he said, the one JPG will be the easiest loading, least taxing on system resources.
Personally, I use MapTool to create the base map using tiles, textures, and objects... and then exporting it as a single image. Then once imported into Roll20, I add details that may need interaction like crates, doors, etc.
You can make the best of both worlds by using a base picture for the back ground and having destructible and movable items as individual objects.My slowest maps are a result of using hundereds of tiles to make grass or a decorated tile floor. Using one image to replace them made a huge difference.
1431752776
Lithl
Pro
Sheet Author
API Scripter
Unless you're putting hundreds or thousands of objects on the map, the difference is not going to be noticeable. There is a slight overhead for having multiple objects, but it's not very large. Roll20 will also automatically break up any image large enough to stretch off the screen, which lets it optimize performance. If you're running any API scripts which utilize the findObjs or filterObjs functions, you should probably consider reducing the number of objects on the map where feasible, as they can be slow if they have to iterate over too many things. (Of course, this also depends on how many properties you pass to findObjs or how complicated a callback to pass to filterObjs.)