Does the number of posters impact server performance?

Too many posters can causes problems with the server start-up, because every image must be loaded, maybe the same
for data saves. We need a more accurate information from @red51. In the past we had over 3000 pictures on the server, and
if that doesn't really matter, why there is then an adjustable limit?

Quote from Deirdre

Too many posters can causes problems with the server start-up, because every image must be loaded, maybe the same
for data saves. We need a more accurate information from @red51. In the past we had over 3000 pictures on the server, and
if that doesn't really matter, why there is then an adjustable limit?

The limits are more to do with storage space, if you say have 100 users on your server all uploading 10 images each thats 1000 images, not that much right but if your server had 1000 users and you set your image max to 100 images each then thats 100,000 images oO oh no. so the limit is in place for a server owner to adjust, for in game the images should have little impact on performance but this of cause depends on the spec of the users computer and connection speeds, because all images that a user sees in game are uploaded to his or her own computer it shouldn't cause a problem unless you have of cause 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of images, i guess red does not comment much on this because its unknown and every server and computer is driffent so they all will have driffent outcomes oO.

Well, the server performance doesn't suffer very much from posters. Only thing you have to keep in mind is the used bandwith when a client downloads an image. A client only downloads images which are in his proximity, and only if there isn't already a cached version of the image in his game directory.

However, when it comes to the clientside performance, things are getting more critical: Basically every "visible" image has to be loaded into the player's RAM (direct memory) and VRAM. If there are too many different images close to each other, some players (who don't have that much RAM) may run out of memory. Here it's important to limit the maximum image size per user (you can do that in the permissions). You have to keep in mind that a 1024x1024 px image consumes 4 times more memory than a 512x512 image, for example. So having many small images isn't a big deal (e.g. having 1000 32x32 px images consumes less memory than a single 1024x1024 px image), but it becomes a problem when using many big images.

To cut a long story short: Don't worry too much about posters, it really depends on where those images were placed (if a player has a lonely house far away from everything else it's really not a problem when he uses many images), and also the max image size matters.

Btw, the file size on your harddrive does only matter when it comes to the bandwith. When loading an image into memory, we can't use compression yet (due to patent reasons), so the memory consumption per images is much higher than the actual file size (it's basically like storing a .bmp image).

@red51 Danke für die sehr ausführliche Antwort.