I also remember there was a debate about it, however..I don't know for certain what advantage one would have over the other.

My personal preference has always been the sign. Many, many years ago when I started to learn deco, I was told to NEVER use Chimes as a sign. I don't remember the reasoning behind it but I *think* it was Rob from Ava World that told me. So, I don't know if it just adds unnecessary lag or if there's some other reason.

My reasoning behind it is, if you need to use a sign, use a sign...not chimes. Each exists for their own purpose.

Hello BB_Licious,

we have something in common, unfortunately I only remember the title of the thread, but not what was put together there. So I'm like you and so far I still can not see any advantage in taking a sound prop as a replacement for the Sign_01.

Hi Pytch,

thank you for your very detailed, substantiated and explanatory reply. While I would have preferred to read something else, after all, your answer means a significant amount of extra work for me in auditing the club, the bottom line is that it is good to know.

All the best to both of you, divingA

I was told a long time ago to use chimes because it creates less lag. I have actually never noticed any difference in lag myself though when trying both.

Hello everyone,

having finally completed the audit of a large club on behalf of its owner yesterday, I'd like to have my say here again today in a little more detail.

When I visited the club for the first time after a very long time at the beginning of December, I had to live with a loading time of around 2.5 minutes. Given the performance of my computer and my fast internet connection, that seemed much too long.

So I approached the owner about it and after a few exchanged words, he gave me the order to carry out a complete revision of the layout. A little later I opened this thread here, continued to watch it while at the same time continuing to do the revision, at the time on the club's Christmas layout.

The Christmas layout was completely revised, I found around 250 sound props in it, all carrying common textures, most of them as pictures on the wall, but some extended to the size of complete walls.

Shortly after the day of the three kings, the now completely revised Christmas layout was exchanged for the regular one. This too contained a disproportionate number of sound props with ordinary textures attached, close to 300.

Of the 568 textures used in the club, unfortunately only 60 were correctly optimised, all the other 508 textures had to be optimised and exchanged together with their sources.

After some final tests last night, some of them with previously cleaned cache, the loading time on the first visit is about 24 seconds, on the second visit about 8 seconds due to changed file caching everywhere where necessary.

Of course, I am not in a position to say how much of the immense initial loading time is due to the, in my opinion, far too many sound props and how much of the loading time was caused by non-optimised textures. But the difference is really huge.

I have learned a lot from this for myself and can only recommend that everyone refrain from using too many sound props.

Have a good time, lots of success and fun, stay healthy, divingA

Hello Cassey,

thanks for reminding me about the Measure Props option, unfortunately I forgot to report on it in my previous post.

I have had some interesting experiences with this project, this club that I reported on, which coincide with yours.

When I started the Christmas layout of the club in December, I first switched on this option and went through the whole club, crawled into every remote corner. Except for two curtains blowing in the wind, all the numbers were green.

In the process, as mentioned above, 508 props were not optimised, the worst of all the props that really took the cake was a PNG texture with dimensions of 3197 x 2217 pixels.

Here is a screenshot from the file manager/explorer, sorted by dimensions, showing the worst 10 files I found.



And I would also like to mention this. Many textures were created as PNG, to my taste far too many that didn't need to be, because not a single pixel was invisible or transparent.

It is often said that JPG files often perform worse than PNG files. I cannot confirm this in every case either. On the contrary. Many of the pictures on the wall, showing portraits of club members with a name or inscription underneath, were clearer on my screen after conversion.

Prop maps such as cars, boxes or the most diverse furniture do not necessarily have to be saved as PNG. At least not as long as part of the prop is to be invisible or translucent.

Have fun and success, both in the game and in real life,

divingA

Hello Timmy,

my initial question was very well justified, because in contrast to your unfortunately false insinuation, I had absolutely no answer to the question of what the advantage is of using the most diverse sound props as carriers for ordinary images.

The practice of using sound props as carriers for images is quite widespread. And I wanted to know why. What is not understandable for you about it?

And as my just-revised club clearly proves, obviously NOT everyone has known for decades what lag and miserably long loading times textures cause that have not been properly optimised.