Chunks

^{Home | Tile Systems}

Tiles are mapped using a chunked data structure which helps to avoid memory wastage when large areas of a tile system remain empty. Custom scripts can access tile data transparently of the underlying data structure.

Chunks are also home to the meshes generated by procedural tileset brushes. Procedural meshes are typically generated at runtime since this helps to reduce the file size of your scenes. There is a build option which allows you to pre-generate such meshes if preferred.

Tile meshes can be combined by material on a per chunk basis helping you to reduce the total number of draw calls in your scene. This is similar to static batching and can help to improve performance, especially on mobile platforms. Tiles painted using procedural tilesets are not combined since they are effectively already combined.

Tip - Whilst tile meshes can be combined on a per-chunk basis, it is possible to specify a different chunk size for the mesh combiner if desired (see Build Options).

Please remember that there is a maximum of around 64K vertices per mesh which means that the chunk size must be chosen accordingly. For example, the maximum chunk size for a procedural mesh has an area of 100x100 tiles (though not necessarily square, it could be 10x1000).

Visualizing Chunks

Chunk boundaries of the active tile system are outlined by default. This can help you to make better use of resources when planning your game.

The visualization of chunk boundaries can be hidden if you find them distracting by deselecting Display chunk boundaries (see User Preferences).

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Child Topics:

• Changing the Chunk Size
  The chunk size of a tile system can be changed using the inspector window which is useful when optimizing your scenes.

_{Source: topics/Chunks.md}