Author Topic: Optimize your PNGs - Speed up loading by up to 80%! (Read 2893 times)

Demian · August 04, 2014, 04:06:54 AM

Of course there's a catch. You can only speed up loading of add-ons you make from now on and only PNG files. With a sample size of 74 I managed to get the average size down to 76% and at best 14% of original size. You could optimize default files but I think you would crash when connecting to servers due to file mismatch.

PNG optimization is awesome. What you do is take out all the extra unnecessary info out of the PNG file and leave the pixels, colors, and transparency untouched. In other words you're reducing the PNG file size losslessly.

I've used PNGCrush, PNGOut, OptiPNG, TinyPNG, PunyPNG, and Smustuff. Some of those (the best ones) are command-line tools, others are websites. I've spent hours reading documentions, experimenting with different settings, doing comparison charts, and lots of trial and error. A few weeks ago I discovered the best software for optimizing PNGs that was by far the easiest to use and on top of that it provided far better results than any of the previously mentioned software. I present to you PNGGauntlet. One button PNG optimization. It's god damn magic.
http://pnggauntlet.com/

I'm sorry if this sounds like an ad for the software but it just blows my mind how good it is, especially since I've tried all those other ones. I did some test with some of the largest print add-ons I have. I extracted them, optimized the PNGs, and recompressed:

Quote Original file	Quote Optimized	Quote % of original size
Quote Print_2x2r_SpaceTechRamps.zip - 4,39 MiB	Quote 3,88 MiB	Quote 88%
Quote Print_ModTer_Default.zip - 3,15 MiB	Quote 1,94 MiB	Quote 62%
Quote Print_1x1f_KeyboardGeneric.zip - 0,13 MiB	Quote 0,07 MiB	Quote 54%

I tested the prints in Blockland afterwards and they looked exactly the same. You'll save a second or two per add-on for the people loading add-ons you've made on servers. Discuss how cool PNG optimization is.

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Zeblote · August 04, 2014, 04:10:03 AM

Quote from: Demian on August 04, 2014, 04:06:54 AM

You'll save a second or two per add-on for the people loading your add-ons on servers.

And you'll also cause them to re-download all files they might already have from elsewhere because the hashes mismatch them from your files.

Demian · August 04, 2014, 04:41:51 AM

Quote from: Zeblote on August 04, 2014, 04:10:03 AM

And you'll also cause them to re-download all files they might already have from elsewhere because the hashes mismatch them from your files.

I mean you should use this on add-ons you plan to release from now on. Of course you shouldn't use it on existing ones exactly because of that.

Taboo · August 04, 2014, 05:35:34 AM

All my textures are 1x1 images of a colour and this still makes them smaller. Ah, file types.

Tetris · August 04, 2014, 05:39:33 AM

how well does it handle transparencies?

LeetZero · August 04, 2014, 05:45:03 AM

Quote from: Tetris on August 04, 2014, 05:39:33 AM

how well does it handle transparencies?

Seems to work just fine, it does not change anything regarding quality.
I like how lightweight the program is. It has no ads whatsoever and the program feels pretty professional.

Nice find.
Someone should do a dts/blb/ogg file size optimizer.

paulguy · August 04, 2014, 06:10:55 AM

Hmm, I might be able to write a more open-source alternative to this, but it won't have as nice of a GUI. Probably just a drag 'n drop sort of tool. As far as I know, all the tools it relies on are just other open source packages.

..oh wait, Ken Silverman. Nevermind.

Demian · August 04, 2014, 06:27:18 AM

Quote from: Taboo on August 04, 2014, 05:35:34 AM

All my textures are 1x1 images of a colour and this still makes them smaller. Ah, file types.

I told you it was magic.

Quote from: Tetris on August 04, 2014, 05:39:33 AM

how well does it handle transparencies?

Transparencies are unchanged.

Quote from: paulguy on August 04, 2014, 06:10:55 AM

Hmm, I might be able to write a more open-source alternative to this, but it won't have as nice of a GUI. Probably just a drag 'n drop sort of tool. As far as I know, all the tools it relies on are just other open source packages.

Yeah. PNGGautlet is just a graphical interface for PNGOUT, OptiPNG, and DeflOpt. The default settings are fine in my opinion but you can still adjust them individually.

boodals 2 · August 04, 2014, 11:46:58 AM

I tried this out on my brick textures. Had a little trouble at first. If it doesn't work for you, make sure read-only is off. Cut some of them down to around 35% of the original size. Very nice! Also doubles as a simple image file converter.

ZombieDude� · August 04, 2014, 01:27:17 PM

where are the people who made this so i can throw money at them

TristanLuigi · August 04, 2014, 01:39:18 PM

This earns the official seal of "cool as stuff!"

QuadStorm · August 04, 2014, 02:02:41 PM

Nice. I kinda always thought PNG was lossless but still was somewhat efficient if the situation allowed it to save some space, but clearly it isn't alone. Cool find.

Demian · August 04, 2014, 04:02:41 PM

Quote from: QuadStorm on August 04, 2014, 02:02:41 PM

Nice. I kinda always thought PNG was lossless but still was somewhat efficient if the situation allowed it to save some space, but clearly it isn't alone. Cool find.

PNG is lossless. PNG optimization just does cool math stuff to compress the data even further.

Smallguy · August 04, 2014, 07:19:46 PM

I tried optimizing the default png files. I could still connect to servers just fine but didn't notice any change in loading speed. I did have a slight increase in fps but this may be unrelated.

Evar678 · August 05, 2014, 01:07:02 AM

Quote from: Smallguy on August 04, 2014, 07:19:46 PM

I tried optimizing the default png files. I could still connect to servers just fine but didn't notice any change in loading speed. I did have a slight increase in fps but this may be unrelated.

I don't believe this is what this is intended to do; I believe this is intended to speed up the time it takes for you to start your own server, as well as have clients connect to it since the files they'll be downloading are a lot smaller. However, I'm not entirely certain