I'm about 60-65% through development of my map, and I've already hit the 4mb texture limit. I've optimized everything I can without sacrificing the visuals, but I'm still at about 4.3mb, with a fair bit left to build.

My question is directed at admins of servers that run custom maps, and it is this: if my map is overwise decent, can I expect it to get any play time on custom servers if it is over the 4mb limit? I figure, if Flayra expresses interest in making my map official, then I can go back and get it under the texture limit, but since I'm not counting on that happening, I'd rather just build it so it looks nice and release it as a custom map. If, on the other hand, custom server admins won't run a map that's over the limit, then I may as well built it toward that limit now, rather than going back later.

What are everybody's thoughts on this?

Umm, I don't think it's really a matter of "will people play it if it is or not" it's more of a matter of "The compiler wont (compile) the map if it is to high..."

Cagey's tools have an option to increase the texture limit - I upped mine to 8mb, and it is compiling presently.

That limit is there for the lower-end users (we're talking about 8-16 mbs gfx cards), since they have to preload the models, map, textures... etc. The performance impact is client-side, the server admins won't even notice.

...and unless they, on a matter of principle, don't want to host maps that will cause their players to lag and go to another server. I can think of any number of reasons why a custom map server admin would shy away from maps that are resource-heavy, just like they shied away from Hera and Bast back in the day. My question is, will being over the texture limit prompt any server admins here to not host my map?

I do beleive that a majority of people have at least 32mb gfx cards and can handle maps like that... Just don't go over 8 megs...

Woops, with "the server admins won't even notice" I meant that the server performance was going to be the same...

If they took out Hera and Bast was because they had a lot of entities, and that increased the CPU usage...

For using 4.3 mbs you're not going to kill anyone's system... heh.

Look at it this way, if you don't lower it you are just reducing the number of people who _could_ play your map. While I will admit, the people who don't have the rig needed to run more than 4mb of texture probably arn't a huge group and won't be the difference between your map being successful or a total flop, it is a good idea to try to reduce it down to 4mb.

4MB isn't a magic number. The .3mbs isn't going to make a difference to anyone.