Preloading textures

[Luxor144]

A simple question (hopefully with a simple answer):
Is there any way to preload specific textures while the game loads?
My mod has a few massive textures which are used for effects (explosions and such). When these effects are called for the first time in the match, as in something getting blown up, it causes the game to freeze for a few seconds while the texture is loaded. Not a big problem, but enough to be annoying.
So..yeah, any way to fix this?

[Exotic_Retard]

im not quite sure, you could call it via script to create an entity with the relevant emitter at the start of the game and have it be invisible for everyone.

but really this is a workaround to a problem that shouldnt exist. why are your textures causing such a slowdown in the first place? are they like 4k each or something?
are you sure its just that and not some laggy lua function instead?

[Luxor144]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure. It's a 18.4 MB texture, so...yeah.

I had similar idea about creating some emitter at the start of the match to get the texture loading out of the way before anything important starts. Still, I'd prefer that to happen during the loading screen.