Indexing Icon Files in BYOND Discussion

ID:133332
 
Nov 15 2008, 2:32 pm
It would be nice to have a feature such as indexing the colors of icon files to reduce the rsc size of the game. I figure it would be really useful for large scale games trying to make it easier on dial-up users.

Edit:
Also, the option to switch the color mode back to RGB just in case people need to add new colors to the icon file.

Thanks,
Tekken
#1 Nov 15 2008, 3:45 pm
Tekken wrote:
It would be nice to have a feature such as indexing the colors of icon files to reduce the rsc size of the game. I figure it would be really useful for large scale games trying to make it easier on dial-up users.

In my tests, a color index offers little additional compression for small icons, such as the 32x32 BYOND standard. Also, as of 4.0 icons are saved as PNG, which is comparable to the old (indexed)DMI standard for icons with a few states/dirs.
#2 Nov 15 2008, 5:02 pm
In response to Tom (#1)
For the larger dmi files, when comparing side by side the same file in indexed png vs. dmi. A 38 KB file(dmi format) that contained about 36 colors was converted to an indexed png that was under 9 KB after indexing. Added up all together in larger scale projects would indeed make a difference or so I would assume.

Either way, you people are the developers after all. I respect that, I just am an efficiency nut and allowing the option to index the files to a number of colors would be super useful to some.

Thanks,
Tekken