How does blueprint library size affect performance?
How does blueprint library size affect performance?
My game is now giving me a warning that my blueprint library is 203MB. How does this affect performance from a technical level? Is it loaded into ram w/ my save, does it affect save size, is there big UPS gains to be had by drastically decreasing BP library size?
Re: How does blueprint library size affect performance?
203MB is pretty big, but if it works then it works. You can move or rename the blueprint-storage.dat file to test it yourself.
If your Personal Blueprint Library is too big then Steam Sync will stop working. It will use RAM (and some CPU when interacting with the Library) while Factorio is running, but probably not as much as the Graphics for the game anyway…
Blueprints stored in the Game Blueprint Library increase the Savegame size. Blueprints in your Personal Library do not affect Savegames.
If your Personal Blueprint Library is too big then Steam Sync will stop working. It will use RAM (and some CPU when interacting with the Library) while Factorio is running, but probably not as much as the Graphics for the game anyway…
Blueprints stored in the Game Blueprint Library increase the Savegame size. Blueprints in your Personal Library do not affect Savegames.
Re: How does blueprint library size affect performance?
The game warning is about the size of the blueprint library in RAM while the game is running. It's not about the blueprint file on disk - that's just a few MB. It's uncompressed and vastly increased only if loaded by the game and held in RAM. I had a library with 22 MB on disk but occupying 800 MB in-memory according to the Factorio warning. This 22 MB is also no issue for Steam sync - your map saves have similar size and bigger.
If your PC has more RAM available than Factorio is consuming, you can disregard this warning. But if you have RAM shortage, tidying up your library would be a good idea. Load your current map into Factorio, then use Windows task manager to see how much RAM Factorio is using, and see how much RAM is still free. My current map makes Factorio use 3.6 GB RAM, and 19.9 GB is still available, so whatever Factorio says about memory usage, my PC has enough. As far as I see, this isn't consuming any CPU cycles, so your ups is unaffected.
If you look thoroughly, you will see the game will report RAM usage for every big blueprint book (> 100 MB as far as I remember) separately. This way you're able to see where your "big" blueprints are.
If your PC has more RAM available than Factorio is consuming, you can disregard this warning. But if you have RAM shortage, tidying up your library would be a good idea. Load your current map into Factorio, then use Windows task manager to see how much RAM Factorio is using, and see how much RAM is still free. My current map makes Factorio use 3.6 GB RAM, and 19.9 GB is still available, so whatever Factorio says about memory usage, my PC has enough. As far as I see, this isn't consuming any CPU cycles, so your ups is unaffected.
If you look thoroughly, you will see the game will report RAM usage for every big blueprint book (> 100 MB as far as I remember) separately. This way you're able to see where your "big" blueprints are.