Re: Suggestion for reducing size of map files, server/client bandwidth

[BENJAMIN THOMAS KETTERIDGE <btk@aber.ac.uk>]

Ken Woodruff wrote:
>It occurs to me that in general there is very little use for floors
>being represented in maps as individual, repeated archetypes.  Since
>these are generally intended to serve only an aesthetic purpose it would
>seem to make more sense to allow a map to simply specify a "background".
>One simple example is map city/houses/house2.  Nearly half (230 out of
>580) of the total archetype entries are "woodfloor".  Additionally,
>the aesthetics of many maps is ruined by the fact that the floor
>used in most regions is not drawn under tables, chairs, generators,
>etc., which leaves strange looking blank spaces when the objects
>are destroyed (say by a fire).

and Eric A. Anderson replied:
>While this is initially a good suggestion, it won't really help the
>case which is a large problem, i.e. when lots of things are changing.
>The most recent representation will for that map take about 150-200
>bytes to do a full redisplay, and something pretty negligable when
>you're wandering around.

I don't think it's really the display overhead (or lack of) at issue
here. If we could halve the size of most of the map _files_ by setting a
background field then it would be a useful gain in terms of filestore
usage, and map load times!

I see no reason why this shouldn't be implemented, as it would change
nothing in the data structures or display routines, just make the 
file interface more efficient.

$0.02, Ben Ketteridge.
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