I was wondering if it'd be worth adding URL support for textures to Forge. e.g. instead of specifying "customblocks.png" for your mod's sprite sheet, you can instead specifiy "http://me.net/customblocks.png". That way you don't have to bundle/update your textures in your mod's downloads, you just need to maintain an online copy.

 

Also for mods that allow custom user content (e.g. mine :3) it makes it easier to support server-side content configuration, because you wouldn't need to transmit the images to the client, you just need to send the URL.

 

I've added URL support for single textures to Xie's Mod, but support for sprite sheets can be done with about 8 lines of code in RenderEngine... Not sure if posting code is appropriate here, so let me know if anyone's interested

Well you would need to transmit the textures tot he client. Even if you specify the url.

If you really want to do something like this, just make your mod download the texture.

i'm interested in your code if you like to share some of it. Been looking for a way to download texture for my NPC so servers can descide what texture the NPCs have.

Spout supports texture urls, but all it does is just download it, cache it, and used the cache version, as you should.  Easy for any mod to support it itself if it wants to.  Personally I do not see the point of requiring an Internet connection if they play SP though.

Well you would need to transmit the textures tot he client. Even if you specify the url.

If you really want to do something like this, just make your mod download the texture.

Spout supports texture urls, but all it does is just download it, cache it, and used the cache version, as you should.  Easy for any mod to support it itself if it wants to.  Personally I do not see the point of requiring an Internet connection if they play SP though.

 

It's easier code-wise just to load the image into memory directly from the URL rather than downloading, saving then reading locally. However, the latter is probably the better implementation in the long run, since you only need to do it once, and it'll save everyone some bandwidth. So in conclusion FINE, I'll do it your way

 

Cheers for the responses.

 

i'm interested in your code if you like to share some of it. Been looking for a way to download texture for my NPC so servers can descide what texture the NPCs have.

 

Well I've only done it for blocks and items, not for mobs, but assuming it's similar all you do is supply a buffered image created from a URL resource:

 

BufferedImage image = ImageIO.read(new URL(urlString));

 

Then when the mod loads it reads the image into memory from the URL rather than from a local file.

Hmm I'll try that, a bit new to java still.

Add a mod_***_Version.txt in the same location as where the image is saved, and save the version of the mod that downloaded the image in the mod_***_Version.txt.

Every time the mod loads, if the version of the mod is not equal to the version in mod_***_Version.txt, the mod would re-download the image.

Add a mod_***_Version.txt in the same location as where the image is saved, and save the version of the mod that downloaded the image in the mod_***_Version.txt.

Every time the mod loads, if the version of the mod is not equal to the version in mod_***_Version.txt, the mod would re-download the image.

cool that will help from it redownloading every time the mod starts up. Also do i need to store my images a certain way or can i just upload and download them for photoBucket, dropbox or sourceforge?

As a ***.png file. just remember to use a link that will NOT change, and use the link to the image, not the page that the image is on.