Hi all,

Package is a need because you can have a faster load time because you open a big file and not a lot of files.

When you works on content, you works without package and then you pack the folder at the end.

When you pack, you split each 4go, I think this number is not bad to have nice package size.

Now the question is how makes a good package file format and what compression use.

Is ZLIB the best choice to compress data for a package file format ?

Is a good package file format only :

- Header
- File table
- File data

Since the content on disk is a folder based, the file table should contains the full path using this folder has root.

Is it better to store like that or have a hierarchical file table ?

Thanks

We used to mount a file as a file system, it gave you massive speed increases on windows.

We used to call it a Virtual File System, here is an example.

http://www.flipcode.com/archives/Programming_a_Virtual_File_System-Part_I.shtml

Maybe that can do the sort of thing you want to do.

This means that you can't have two assets with the same name, but I see this as a positive feature rather than a negative ;-)

How can you differentiate if it has the same name ?

In UnrealEngine you can't have two asset using the same name, maybe they flat all using name only.

EDIT : I just tried and you can have the same name if not in same folder, so surely a flat hierarchy name.

The last engine that I used, used paths within filenames (e.g. An asset might be called "foo/bar/baz.type.platform") - so just a flat/non-hierarchical table containing these long names.

Looks not bad, that avoid recursion to search file data.

During development, assets are stored as individual files (not packaged) so it's easy to make changes to the game.

This is better yea, Unity works like that, Unreal Engine changed on his version 4 using this method as well.

A Lot of user of unreal engine was not happy to always works using package all the time.

We used to mount a file as a file system, it gave you massive speed increases on windows.
We used to call it a Virtual File System, here is an example.

Is it really a need ?

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What's about the compression ? That still a question.

What's about the compression ? That still a question.

You can build that in if you want to. Zlib is pretty fast, but it's not as fast as just loading a file so you will have to make a judgement call to see if it is worthwhile.

I use zipped file systems all the time for mobile devices, but it's not always a good idea.

This part is read into Ram on startup and kept there.

No split ?

Once this is done the users of the assets can load assets individually by asset ID, which basically just amounts to a binary search through the map and then returning a pointer once the asset is found.

Do you keep loaded the file or use fopen when you want to keep a file data ?

Is it bad to fopen/fclose for each file in a GetMemoryFile( const int EntryIndex ) ?