It's a multiplayer game, and it doesn't know the map until it has connected to the server. I guess I'll do it, though :/

if the maps are static, I'd suggest caching them after the first load and saving them to disk for future loads.

Nope, they're not static. What fun But they always start out the same, so it still might work.

Well if I load the images based on the distance to the player, after a tenth of a second or so you can't see black background. It's still a bit choppy, but it's acceptable.