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Technical Question: Resource Management


MyThos

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Hi,

when installing/unpacking V16 I noticed the huge amounts of files (> 80.000) being unpacked from the archive and I wondered what these files are. Then taking a look at the assets and subfolders I noticed each image (icons, aircraft in various build states, etc. ) are located in separate files!

I have seen multiple examples in other games where files contain multiple images and are referenced via x/y offsets. I think performance could be tremendously improved if related images where stored in combined files for different kinds, like icons, aliens, equipment, etc. and separated for tactical and geoscape. I think loading times can be improved and memory and file handle management cleaned up.

What do you think ?

Regards,

Michael

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this would be a part of the game that is the way now because it is all in alpha, would be very suprised if it would not change to late beta/release

Hmm, I think it will get more and more tedious the later you switch to it. Especially now with the additional terrains being implemented it would make sense to look at the technical approach early. Well, we'll see. I just hope it the full version will not bog down due to memory and file-handling overload ...

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In short, we don't have access to the engine source code so the massive number of files is because the engine needs to read them that way. It's causing us lots of problems but I'm not sure it's avoidable. This has been discussed many times though so I'm not that keen to write a long reply about it again.

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We're not using GameLab stuff as far as I'm aware. Our engine is Playground SDK 5. The issue is they refuse to acknowledge we exist, irrespective of how many times we email them or try to call them etc. Idiots.

Just say and we're all going to make them aware !! ;)

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  • 3 months later...
I miss the pirouette of death. It's like the alien is turning to face you and say "You bastard, you kilt me dead" right before collapsing into a pile of blood and guts. Or blood and gooey goodness. Or just gooey goodness.

I miss the pirouette too. Hmm... maybe that can be modded back in? You'd need to replace all the death animations and corpse stills to be the same one regardless of facing.

But I'm a bit confused as to how the animation sheet works (you'd need to add the pirouette and possibly cut some of the falling down sequence to make it match the old animation in lenght.) Would it be possible to alter them yourself without messing everything up?

I wonder if you could add a sound effect (for the pirouette part) before the deathscream.

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I miss the pirouette too. Hmm... maybe that can be modded back in? You'd need to replace all the death animations and corpse stills to be the same one regardless of facing.

But I'm a bit confused as to how the animation sheet works (you'd need to add the pirouette and possibly cut some of the falling down sequence to make it match the old animation in lenght.) Would it be possible to alter them yourself without messing everything up?

I wonder if you could add a sound effect (for the pirouette part) before the deathscream.

Me too :(

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Indeed.

You got a small army at your disposal that can pester them untill they submitt.

Yarr! Finally we've got a target, comrades! Da fleet of russki pirate botships be ready for some heavy DDOS-bombarding!

Set sail fo' the Playground fail!

Jokes aside, this could lead to the serious consequences. I know this forum is full of the reasonable people, but just in case, dont make anything stupid.

At least, not before the Xenonauts release. Mwahahah.

Would it be possible to alter them yourself without messing everything up?

I believe the animations are scriptd via xml, so you can make animations of any (reasonable) length and change frames as you wish. Cant tell exactly since i don't have a moddable version on this machine, and zzz1010 isn't around too. Sound shouldnt be a problem too, so you can make an alien go a whole circus round before dropping dead. Though note that this would be a tremendous amount of work.

People telic enough can even make a graphic-renewed clone of the old x-com.

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