TX, on 14 February 2012 - 12:09 PM, said:
Maybe what we need is per-map .def files that get parsed at map load time...
Mikko_Sandt, on 14 February 2012 - 01:55 PM, said:
No, I was referring to the hassle of having to include a separate file if you wish to use a few custom textures. There are lots of good custom art sets for Duke but hardly anyone uses them. Compare this to Quake (and its offshoots) or even Doom where custom art assets are used far more frequently.
Actually, there is already a poor man's packaging system, namely zip files. They're pretty much on par with a directory root added to EDuke32's search path, since all kinds of stuff like ART and CON can be loaded from it.
I'm suspecting that their low adoption is because they're a bit clunky to use on Windows; on Linux at least, you can run e.g. "eduke32 ./NBCBP.zip" (in this example it's the zip in the distributed zip) from
anywhere on the file system, and have the included CONs and maps loaded for further enjoyment.
I tried to replicate that on Windows, but it's by no means intuitive: when you assign EDuke32 to "open" the zip, it'll start with C:\windows\system32 as the CWD, which is a bit daft. I next tried creating a shortcut and setting its options to start in the directory containing the exe, but that made it start in the directory with the ZIP instead. This is at least some progress, but then you'll either need to copy or link (on FSs supporting that) DUKE3D.GRP into that dir. So, maybe someone with greater Windows experience/routine can find a better way?
I'm telling this because I consider zip to be pretty much the perfect packaging in its own right. Of course, everything can be extended further to allow e.g. exchanging art in between different maps, but for the time being, placing one custom map together with everything else in a
flat zip hierarchy is the way to go IMO. Currently, one shouldn't even think about exchanging hightiles or models while Duke is running...
The other reason I'm bringing this up is on topic. I think there should be an "official" extended art package with everything from this thread that fits into the Duke world. For example, one could start at TILES32.ART and tile 16000, and devise some allocation scheme to allow for further expansion (e.g. tiles 16000-17000: city tiles, next space, etc. Of course, various categorizations are possible). Thus, mappers would only need to pull the ART files they consider necessary for a given project without the hassle of creating their own themselves; moreover numbering conflicts could be avoided.
So, is there interest in creating a project like this? I'd be somewhat willing to help maintaining it (if you need more TILESXXXX.art <-- numbers, just ask
![:lol:](https://forums.duke4.net/public/style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)
), and this would be the closest thing to Mikko's vision of MAP/ART bundles.
edit: I forgot that I bumped the max tilesXXXX.art to XXXX=0255 a while ago, so we could start with 0100.