How viable, is reading resources, e.g. pictures from server and send them to clients?

[poopoodice]

Normally this should (probably?) be done with resource packs but it is not something I like much.

So, as title, how viable, is reading resources, e.g. pictures and images from the server and send them to clients?

 

Thanks in advance.

[warjort]

You can define a server resource pack in the server.properties.

See Default Resource Packs here: https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Resource_Pack

This is downloaded "out-of-band" from the specified url

 

I don't think sending images directly from the server to the client is a good idea.

* It is outside the normal lifecycle of resource loading

* Doing so with custom login network packet(s) is going to slow down the login and potentially break the 30 second timeout for people with slow machines/networks

 

If you do want to do it, one way is to look at how skins and capes are handled in SkinManager.

 

But in general having a client make a random network connection is a bad idea, a potential security hole and a privacy issue.

When I see this kind of thing happening in modpacks, e.g. trying to connect to discord or the like, I generally just uninstall the mod or the whole mod pack.

[poopoodice]

Hi, first of all, thanks for the reply.

How about only send the data when requested? For example the client can decide whether they want to requesting and get the images.

 

I'm also not considering using external links and such, maybe something like how maps are handled?

Edited October 22, 2022 by poopoodice

[warjort]

Then why not just implement it how the MapInstance/Item works?

But, the Map renders as blank while waiting for the server to send the data. Maybe that is ok for you? 

Edited October 22, 2022 by warjort

[poopoodice]

Was curious more on the custom server i/o (without using resource packs), and the image transfer since the image will be way larger than a map does.

 

In fact I just realised that some of the images are around 4~5 MB... probably not a good idea to transfer them then... sorry for bothering and thanks for the help.

Edited October 22, 2022 by poopoodice

[poopoodice]

3 hours ago, warjort said:

* Doing so with custom login network packet(s) is going to slow down the login and potentially break the 30 second timeout for people with slow machines/networks

Actually I have a one last question, if I managed to compress the images to lower qualities, e.g. size of around 100 KB or even less (hopefully not!), will it still be an issue to communicate them with clients? Or it really depends on the situation (user end)?