External Graphics

I don’t know if this has been suggested before but I think it would be great to have the option of using links to graphics on a file site somewhere rather than having them in the mod.

My game is very graphic intensive and in the beta version. It’s currently over 36 megs. We’re adding and changing graphics all the time but we have to delay putting new graphics into the game for periods of time as sending out new versions all the time would be quite a chore.

It’d be nice if I could just put the graphics on a file site and have a link to them in the game. That way I can change the graphics all I want and the game will always display the latest graphics from the file site without having change game versions.

Is this possible?

tried the modul updater yet?

On Mar 20, 2008, at 7:34 PM, Dr_Nostromo wrote:

I’m not sure this would be a good idea.

It would mean that you couldn’t play the module at all without a
network connection. So, for example, on a laptop that isn’t connected
to the net. It would also mean that any network interruptions and
server downtime would stop people from being able to play the module.

I do sympathize about the issues of trying to keep things synchronized
during the rapid development and testing phase.

One possibility for the (near) future would be look at switching to
SVG format for the graphics. That should presumably lead to smaller
graphic sizes, unless you are using something like photographs. BTW,
what leads to the large amount of graphics? Is it that there are a
large number of cards, each with unique designs?


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Yeah. 3 large maps, 20 large player sheets, several card mats and about 1500 components (cards, chits, tokens, etc.) give or take.

I understand why many people wouldn’t want to do the external link thing …especially for PBEM games. However, my game is set up strictly for online play between two of more people. So, it’d be an absolute dream come true for me.

Seems it would certainly solve the occasional graphics memory problems and slugishness as well if the game only downloads the graphics it’s displaying.

Thus spake “Dr_Nostromo”:

While downloading game graphics as needed might be useful for other
reasons, I can tell you for certain that it wouldn’t help at all with
memory usage and it would worsen sluggishness.

This is because:

  1. The source of the image isn’t relevant for memory usage. Whether
    it’s coming from your hard drive or the Internet or being produced by
    a spinning hamster wheel, the same image from all of these sources
    will use the same amount of memory once loaded.

  2. The source of the image is relevant for image load time. In
    particular, loading images from a local disk is going to be faster
    than getting them from your local network, and orders of magnitude
    faster than getting images over the Internet.


J.


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