Handling Large Maps
With
the growing popularity of map creation programs such as Campaign
Cartographer
3 and Dundjinni, many users will inevitably begin using
high-resolution and / or large scale maps. Large maps, such as 5+ MB
jpgs or those with over 3,000 pixel dimensions can cause performance
issues in many Java based applications. The Plain English reason for
this is that the Java Run-time Environment has a memory setting that is
static, and to be more compatible with everyone's systems, the
application default is usually set fairly low, like 256 MB for example.
So while your system may have 1 GB or more of RAM, the program will not
use any more than is set in the default heap size. Fear not!
There is a batch file in your d20pro directory that can be easily modified to accommodate your system's potential. - Locate the file: d20Pro.bat. It may or may not show the .bat extension, but the icon looks like:
 - Right-click the file and choose Edit
- On the first line of the batch file, find javaw -Xmx512m and increase the 512 number to 768 or 1024, depending on how much memory your system can allocate.
IMPORTANT:
DO NOT set it to use all of your memory, because you still need RAM for
basic windows operation and such. I would recommend leaving at least
256 MB of your system memory for other applications. In short, here are
my (personal) recommendations for your settings based on your system
RAM. Set it to 768 first and if you are still finding that maps behave erratically, then set it to 1024.
FINALLY,
remember that you have to start d20pro using this batch file from now
on. Do not use the regular executable. You should see a substantial
difference in performance with respect to high resolution or large
maps. |
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