My wiki adventures (Wml optimisation)

[Dunno]

Hi,
I haven't made a decent, finished add-on because I've "moved on" to the higher level of programming and I got addicted to python. But, I've learned quite a lot here and I thought I should contribute as much as I can to the wiki to help the others. It's the least I can do. I'm thinking about adding more examples here and there, expanding some sub-sections and maybe adding brand-new articles.

My first shot is the WML optimisation, since I've had problems with it myself and Dugi's rant reminded me of it. Before I'll scatter links to this article around the wiki, I'd like to ask if there are any objections. It's been a while since I'd used wml and maybe this page makes no sense.

Thanks!

[zookeeper]

Looks like a good idea to me.

[Dugi]

It's well written and understandable (for me, I can't speak for others).

Ever heard of the trick to solve problems with large WML blocks inserted into all scenarios (that is needed if you're adding some extra functionality, based on a load of events that have to be in each scenario)? They cause long periods the game needs to load and large RAM consumption. The solution is to put these events into a dummy unit, create and kill it in prestart (the creation and killing can be finely a macro, the dummy unit holds all the WML), and this adds the events it holds. It can be also done by lua, but it would be almost identical, just without the need to use the macro. I think that it might be worth including there too, what do you think?

I also know a trick to optimalise problems related to too many AMLA options (if there is more than a hundred of them, it causes severe framerate drops), but it's extremely ugly, and even uglier on on 1.11.1 and later.

[zookeeper]

It's well written and understandable (for me, I can't speak for others).

Ever heard of the trick to solve problems with large WML blocks inserted into all scenarios (that is needed if you're adding some extra functionality, based on a load of events that have to be in each scenario)? The solution is to put these events into a dummy unit, create and kill it in prestart (the creation and killing can be finely a macro, the dummy unit holds all the WML), and this adds the events it holds. I think that it might be worth including there too, what do you think?

I don't think that's something one would want to confuse non-advanced people with. I mean, it's certainly a clever idea but it sounds like a big enough hack that I wouldn't suggest it to anyone who's going to learn anything from that wiki page. Doesn't mean we couldn't have a separate page for all sorts of advanced hacky tricks, though, in case UsefulWMLFragments isn't up for the task.

[iceiceice]

Just a thought -- probably we should use the discussion page of the wiki to discuss the actual content, and only put on the forum stuff that it doesn't make sense to put there, e.g. "I'd like to ask if there are any objections [to having this page in the first place]".

Dugi: Maybe just a note, like one sentence towards end, explaining that scenario & era wml is cached but unit wml is not so sometimes moving wml to units can improve performance? (This is just what I took away from your note.)

[Dugi]

Doesn't mean we couldn't have a separate page for all sorts of advanced hacky tricks, though, in case UsefulWMLFragments isn't up for the task.

This sounds like a good idea. I'll write it when I'll have more time. It took me long to figure these tricks out and I think that some people might find it useful.

Maybe just a note, like one sentence towards end, explaining that scenario & era wml is cached but unit wml is not so sometimes moving wml to units can improve performance? (This is just what I took away from your note.)

UnitWML is loaded as well, there is pretty much no way to avoid it. But the point is that it is loaded only once, and not for every scenario, because it is not the content of these scenarios, it's just added into one scenario when you start playing it.

[Dugi]

I'll write it when I'll have more time.

I have posted my most precious WML secrets on the wiki. Read it with extreme care, they are powerful and hard to control.