Shopping mall addition to sim lag producer ?

I am contemplating adding a shoppng mall to my sim, and wish to keep my "lag" (low frame rate potential ) down to the bare minimum. Is this a practical goal with "reasonable" techniques ? I know with some vendors that scripts must be run. Thank you in advance for your time.
Steve

One sure fire way to keep lag down is to not fall into the temptation of getting camping chairs in order to artificially skew your traffic and make you look 'popular' - when the majority of users have worked out a long time ago that traffic is no indication of quality.

Scripts will slow down a sim - so things like rotating cubes and animated signs are one thing that will cause problems.

Are you filling the mall yourself, or renting out space to do so? If the latter, then you can put whatever conditions you wish on renters - and use this fact in your publicity that you do all you can to minimise lag unlike other malls.

Good luck with your endeavours.

Lewis

I will be renting out all the space to merchants. Thank you very much sir !

Apart from scripted things, textures is another thing to consider. They don't all have to be hi-res, use those only when you really need to. The scripting and building forums might give you better tips...

Ah yes, forgot about textures... we've all seen 1024x1024 textures on a 1m square rotating box - when a 256x256 would have been more than enough.

Textures should always be as small as possible, as there's less data to handle and less processing - all of which adds to lag.

Lewis

For the sake of technical accuracy, llTargetOmega used to create rotating prims is a CLIENT SIDE effect and puts no load on the sim, it merely sets a prim property.

Make every texture as small as you can.

Avoid cuts and shapes with holes - completely if possible.

Check your vendor types carefully - there are some that are heavy on emails for example, which slow the sim down, and some that are also displaying multiple textures at once, which again slows things down.

Whilst you can have totally unscripted vendors this means more textures and more space per person, so it can be a false economy. Texture load primarily hits when people arrive - and can be huge, so if you've got a popular mall more arrivals means more impact. Script load is more constant but is also flexible to some extent as the sim's server adjusts script time to try and keep things running smoothly.

Physical objects slow things down for the sim.

Particles and rotating signs using llTargetOmega don't apply load to the sim (particles do if they're constantly changing though, as they'll force a prim update) but can and do cause apparent lag, because they make the client work harder. That said small amounts of either rarely if ever hurt, but put a rotating stand in each shop and see the client performance dive even though the sim will be just fine.

From my experience, the introduction of rented spaces for vendors will create lag.


The merchants that rent your spaces will each bring in their own textures, scripts, and prims. Most of them do not care about the load they put on your sim. Your job will be to monitor every single texture, script, and prim that they introduce - It is a task that requires ALOT of work on your part.

Unless you have the time to babysit every single merchant that rents space from you, you have to choose between having a low lag area and a mall.

1: avoid automatic texture changers running on timers or complex vendor scripts.
2: use the smallest possible texture sizes. Don't use 1024 by 1024 when 128 by 128 will suffice.
3: as it is difficult to control what rentors put in your mall, consider offering discount rates for renters who use a vendor system you supply (so you'd know it's low lag), or even consider only allowing your supplied vendors (offputting to a lot of renters, but you'd certainly have a nice co-ordinated look to your mall), in the same way that Dwellget does.

Musuko.