Remote resources support.

There is now a PRELOAD_RSC define in code/_compile_options.dm. Setting it to 0 will allow you to use on-the-fly rsc downloads, or the new remote rsc features.

Normally (PRELOAD_RSC == 1) the game will send you all the resources for the game that existed at compile time, this is the long-delay before joining the game...but it means that the game isn't sluggish later on due to trying to download icons and such. Which is good, but uses a lot of bandwidth.

On-the-fly behaviour (PRELOAD_RSC == 0) is when the game only downloads icons when you see something for the first time...this is often responsible for things being briefly invisible on slow connections.

Remote RSC behaviour (PRELOAD_RSC == 0 and some urls defined in config/external_rsc_urls.txt), is a mixture of the two above behaviours. It allows you to connect without downloading lots of resources immediately. However, once you connect it will select a url from a list of urls which hold zipped up copies of the tgstation.rsc. This allows the load of downloading those large files to be distributed across a few cheap web-servers or free upload sites...whilst the main game-server is freed up for other stuff. Should preloading from a remote url fail, behavior will revert to on-the-fly.

code/_compile_options.dm

@@ -5,6 +5,11 @@
 								//By using the testing("message") proc you can create debug-feedback for people with this
 								//uncommented, but not visible in the release version)
 
+#define PRELOAD_RSC	1			/*set to:
+								0 to allow using external resources or on-demand behaviour;
+								1 to use the default behaviour;
+								2 for preloading absolutely everything;
+								*/
 
 
 //SYSTEM TOGGLES - these allow you to compile the game without some of the laggier systems if your server cannot cope with demand

code/modules/client/client defines.dm

@@ -39,3 +39,5 @@
 	var/player_age = "Requires database"	//So admins know why it isn't working - Used to determine how old the account is - in days.
 	var/related_accounts_ip = "Requires database"	//So admins know why it isn't working - Used to determine what other accounts previously logged in from this ip
 	var/related_accounts_cid = "Requires database"	//So admins know why it isn't working - Used to determine what other accounts previously logged in from this computer id
+
+	preload_rsc = PRELOAD_RSC

code/modules/client/client procs.dm

@@ -79,6 +79,11 @@
 	///////////
 	//CONNECT//
 	///////////
+#if (PRELOAD_RSC == 0)
+var/list/external_rsc_urls
+var/next_external_rsc = 0
+#endif
+
 /client/New(TopicData)
 	TopicData = null							//Prevent calls to client.Topic from connect
 
@@ -89,6 +94,12 @@
 
 	unlock_content = IsByondMember()
 
+#if (PRELOAD_RSC == 0)
+	if(external_rsc_urls && external_rsc_urls.len)
+		next_external_rsc = Wrap(next_external_rsc+1, 1, external_rsc_urls.len+1)
+		preload_rsc = external_rsc_urls[next_external_rsc]
+#endif
+
 	clients += src
 	directory[ckey] = src
 

code/world.dm

@@ -8,6 +8,15 @@
 #define RECOMMENDED_VERSION 495
 
 /world/New()
+#if (PRELOAD_RSC == 0)
+	external_rsc_urls = file2list("config/external_rsc_urls.txt","\n")
+	var/i=1
+	while(i<=external_rsc_urls.len)
+		if(external_rsc_urls[i])
+			i++
+		else
+			external_rsc_urls.Cut(i,i+1)
+#endif
 	//logs
 	var/date_string = time2text(world.realtime, "YYYY/MM-Month/DD-Day")
 //	if(revdata && istext(revdata.revision) && length(revdata.revision)>7)