Animated maps vs effects

[Seems]

I've been reading up on animated maps and applying effects to maps. For players with older laptops, what is less resource intensive - an animated map or an appropriately sized static map with FGU's built in effects, such as the water or rain effects? I host my game on the FG server, if it makes any difference.

Thanks!

[Zacchaeus]

You host the game on your own computer, just to be clear on that. The cloud simply facilitates connection and doesn’t impact on anything else.

As to your question a lot will depend on the resolution of the image with larger images being more resource intensive. Animated maps are usually bigger in size so will take longer to upload to players which might be a factor if someone in the group has a slow internet connection. Whether using an animated map or using the built in fx probably uses about the same resources but if the users graphics card is older or the amount of gpu memory is low then I’d lean towards the built in fx rather than animated maps.

[Seems]

Thank you - I suspected as much. I think the built in FX will meet my needs for now so I'll try them first and see how well they work.