RAM Usage Increase

Suggestions
1

Tiled, being a great level editor, is a great joy to have for 2D games, but I’ve done some thinking about what can be improved upon reading a past news post, concerning it able to handle RAM memory for making maps.

I actually don’t know how much it can presently handle, but last I read, it seems to handle about up to 4GB RAM worth, but some are willing to go over that amount, because, well, people want to try to make more larger maps for games, among other things.

And that, in turn, leads to hitches in terms of smooth handling, because by going over, the program kinda gets sluggish, regardless of higher RAM amounts people have for computers. Kinda troubling, especially for those wanting to make larger/longer maps influenced by Sonic or others.

For the curious, the longest Sonic map in any 2D game yet is Asteroid Coaster Act 2, from Sonic Colors, the Nintendo DS version, set at 44,256 pixels wide. I’ve looked.

I’ve read one particular Twitter/X post from Dreamirl’s game, Noreya, about that, if you recalled already, and though it’s looking to be another good Metroidvania, the devs do make a good point about Tiled’s RAM usage and performance through it.

Don’t know if you’ve read, but presently, the largest overall map size in gaming history is Hollow Knight, whose map size of Hallownest is currently etched at 72,622 x 48,128. I don’t even know what memory it took, but that seemed to be plenty at that time… I think.

This leads me to this suggestion. RAM memory capacity increases to computers have come by, and gradually increased the overall max sizes time and time again.

As we see now, from what I’ve read, home computers can go up to 192GB RAM, because we’ve gotten new modules that gave us more memory, but, recently, we’re pretty much set to have up to 256GB from newer modules yet to come, and in thanks to computer board upgrades that allowed it in anticipation.

Tiled, in its entirety, regardless of systems, needs to be updated and optimized to handle a lot more RAM memory in accordance to the present max capacity increase for computers, which presently is 192GB, though I’m sure it will be 256GB very soon.

After all, if we’re getting much more extra memory, Tiled should take great advantage of it. Better to be ahead of it than later.

I hope for it to be for a later update after 1.11.

3

Thanks! Nice to notice.

4

Where did you read this? Tiled is only limited to 4 GB RAM when you use the 32-bit build. Most people would be using the 64-bit build, which has no practical limit.

Can you point out this tweet? If there are any particular performance issues I can have a look into it, but I somewhat doubt the performance issue would be related to the RAM usage.

Also, the “pixel size” of a map is entirely irrelevant when it comes to RAM usage, except when exporting it as an image.

5

The tweet link’s right here, straight from Dreamirl’s Twitter account - x.com Its where they had ran into slowdowns when they used about 8 to 16GB out of maybe 32 or 64GB of memory they got.

I just only meant that the program wasn’t handling larger maps, because it wasn’t optimized to handle larger RAM usage for anyone’s computers that had the most RAM yet.

As to where I read that, well, this past post is right here - Tiled 0.10.1 released | Tiled I thought I was referring to the program across both builds.

6

Ah, thanks for the link! It seems I might have forgotten to get back to that. Unfortunately it’s not so easy to optimize the graphics (and it’s certainly not a matter of using more RAM). I have a bit of a plan for this written down at New Hardware Renderer · mapeditor/tiled Wiki · GitHub, but it’s a big project.

At the time it did, but you’re referring to a 10 years old release! Since then the 64-bit build referred to there is the default and can use as much RAM as it needs to. :slight_smile:

7

OK. Nice read. A big project, yes, but I’m sure you and whoever is with you on it can do it.

Well, I hope you’ll whip up some solutions or alleviations to tend to that until that’s accomplished… maybe. At least enough to let people keep making more larger maps.

Yeah. We had not much memory then, even though the 64-bit build guaranteed us to make crazy huge maps, but I was sure we would do so once we did get more.