Cannot use Static/Resource Manager Component to load images while observers read instructions

URL of experiment:

Description of the problem:
Hi, I have an experiment with hundreds of images. Every observer should see each image exactly once. Either in its original form or in 1 of 3 distortions. This means that I currently have to download 4x the images needed and that requires + 800 MB of downloads.
My ideal case would be to only load the images needed. An acceptable case is to download the images while observers go through the instructions to minimise their wait time.

I have looked trough this guide Resources in online studies — PsychoPy v2022.2.2
For now, I have only been able to download the images before the experiments begin using the “online” section under properties or alternatively I have used the “Resource Manager Component” but that just gives a grey screen in the start of the experiment until all elements load in the background (which can take minutes depending on the internet connection).

I have tried to go trough a lot of the options such as setting the preload option to “start only” and even added the code

if resources.status == FINISHED:
    continueRoutine = False

… which isn’t obvious to me but it also didn’t do anything.

When I tried to use the Static component, the images were just not loaded at all.

I hope there is anyone that would have experience with these issues and that can help me on. Thanks for reading.

I had an idea and tried to hotlink directly to the images in my repository such as to

However, that also yielded an error related to recourses:

Edit: when I try to set up a static element to download, I get this error:

I am having the exact same issue with the gray screen during resource preload, however I get no errors in the devtools console. Any hope for a solution?