Map size:
When you publish your map, it gets compiled and uploaded to Far Cry's online storage. The storage space per map is limited, and sometimes you may hit this limit. You will get a message like "Showshoe-B865AB46: Saving map failed: mapfile too large".
Maps can get too large due to several reasons. My general rule of thumb: try to minimize diversity in the map's terrain. This means:
- Having as few distinct terrain height values in the map as possible, with height levels preferably being as contiguous as possible.
- Same with the hole map: a 100% empty or 100% filled hole map compresses way better than a holemap that has several "islands" of holes.
- Same goes for the vegetation layer.
- Same goes for the terrain paint layer.
Generally, map makers are advised to flatten the terrain around the map's edges. This is because players will mostly never go there anyway. Any detail removed in sections of the map where players don't go will help decrease the file size.
- Adding more and separated holes with the hole tool makes the holemap more complex, which results in worse compression.
- Having more and separated distinct terrain heights makes the heightmap more complex, which results in worse compression.
- Having more and separated texture painted on the terrain makes the texturemask more complex, which results in worse compression.
- Having more and separated vegetation painted on the terrain makes the collectionmask more complex, which results in worse compression.
Take these steps to optimize compression of unused parts of the map and combat the map filesize:
- Use the Flatten Tool to flatten all the unused terrain, with the brush set to 1.0 Hardness and 1.0 Speed, 0.0 Distortion. Use as few as possible unique Height values throughout the map, so preferably pick a height for all unused terrain and stick to it. Like, the default height (50).
- CTRL-paint the unused terrain with the Texture Tool, with the brush set to 1.0 Hardness and 1.0 Speed, 0.0 Distortion and no brush constraints.
- CTRL-paint the unused terrain with the Vegetation Tool.
- CTRL-paint the unused terrain with the Hole Tool.
CTRL-Paint means: Holding the CTRL key while clicking the left mouse button. This effectively un-paints.