preload specific resources?

ID:1982236
 
Nov 14 2015, 11:26 am
So I'm trying to find a way to get my game to preload specific resources so I've been looking at preload_rsc. It doesn't seem to do exactly what I want.

preload_rsc seems to only be able to either not load anything, load all compiled resources, load all compiled and dynamic resources, or load resources from a remote location.

I want to preload essentially 6 .dmi files and then let the players load the other resources as they need them.

The reason for it is because I have a few rather large animatations that need to play on certain actions. It breaks the visual if they have to download them when they first appear.
Nov 14 2015, 12:51 pm
I think what you want is browse_rsc():

var global/list/preload_resources = list(
    'some_resource.dmi',
    'another_resource.dmi',
)

client
    New()
        ..()
        // have the client download these resources upon connection
        for(var/resource in preload_resources)
            src << browse_rsc(resource)
Nov 14 2015, 3:58 pm
Thanks. I'll give it a try.
Nov 14 2015, 5:13 pm
So browse_rsc seems to store the files in the user's cache as raw .dmi files. That's not really something I'd like to do.

The references for preload_rsc says you can create a rsc file for just specific files and load that from the server and load everything else from the host. How exactly can you create a rsc file with just specific files? Cause that would probably work for me.
Nov 14 2015, 5:28 pm
In response to IceFire2050
Instead of putting the .rsc file in the .zip, you can also put the individual resource files there.

I take it you're referring to that. If so, you can zip up the files you want downloaded, upload it to a valid filehost (I believe Dropbox works, but you could also try Mediafire), and point preload_rsc to the zip download.
Nov 14 2015, 7:07 pm
I tried it out and it seems to work like I want.

It downloads the file while the login ad is playing. Then downloads any remaining files from the host as needed.

Im just a bit concerned about security. It wouldn't be the end of the world but I'd prefer to not have a direct download link to half the icons in my game floating around.

Is there a way to have byond read a passworded zip file through preload_rsc?
Nov 14 2015, 7:16 pm
In response to IceFire2050
Though I've never tried it, I'm fairly sure that's not something you can do.
Nov 15 2015, 5:14 am
In response to IceFire2050
I might be mistaken but I thought it was possible to make a project which includes the icons you want to preload, define them as the same types as they were in your game, build that rsc, and then preload_rsc, that rsc file instead of the direct icon files and it should work.