Defer char.ini loading and use direct img src for char icons

Instead of eagerly fetching char_icon (with HEAD requests per extension)
and char.ini for every character on join, set img.src directly to
char_icon.png and defer char.ini loading until actually needed (character
selection via handlePV, or first IC message via handleMS). This
eliminates thousands of HTTP requests on join for large character lists.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/webAO/packets/handlers/handleMS.ts b/webAO/packets/handlers/handleMS.ts
index 2622fe6..9b46bc0 100644
--- a/webAO/packets/handlers/handleMS.ts
+++ b/webAO/packets/handlers/handleMS.ts
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 /* eslint indent: ["error", 2, { "SwitchCase": 1 }] */
 
 import { client, extrafeatures, UPDATE_INTERVAL } from "../../client";
-import { handleCharacterInfo } from "../../client/handleCharacterInfo";
+import { handleCharacterInfo, ensureCharIni } from "../../client/handleCharacterInfo";
 import { resetICParams } from "../../client/resetICParams";
 import { prepChat, safeTags } from "../../encoding";
 import { handle_ic_speaking } from "../../viewport/utils/handleICSpeaking";
@@ -27,6 +27,9 @@ export const handleMS = (args: string[]) => {
         );
         const chargs = (`${char_name}&` + "iniediter").split("&");
         handleCharacterInfo(chargs, char_id);
+      } else if (!client.chars[char_id].inifile) {
+        // Lazily load char.ini in background so future messages have proper data
+        ensureCharIni(char_id);
       }
     }