   Game Art Assets Packaging
  Hi All,this thread may seem to be out of place but was not able to find correct place to put it .. so am putting it here.well, I just wanted to know what are the common tools industry uses to package entire game art assets. Am looking for smthing which also provides some sort of encryption. I came across a tool which does similar sort of things known as Molebox, but it needs every file level selection which becomes hectic as we have more thn 1GB of art assets. Do we have anything which can do similar sort of things but at the folder level itself? Any sort of help will b appreciated. Thanks.   
  Moved to Game Programming.   ;  I'm not sure how others do this, but I just created my own custom resource file.  It encapsulates whatever file I want into a single file (with optional encryption and compression).I'm not sure if this is a viable option for you, but here's a type of tutorial that can give you an idea of what I'm talking about:gpwiki.org - Custom_Resource_Files;  In my framework, I use zip compression for packing my assets. You can set a password too.   ;Quote:Original post by iliakIn my framework, I use zip compression for packing my assets. You can set a password too.This has definite advantages, since you can work with the archive outside of your own tools (i.e. Windows Explorer since XP).  There are also apparently a few libraries you can find to load and work with zips, but I've never tried any myself.  I intend to do so next time I get around to working with game devving though.The problem with zip archives and security (the OP said he wanted some sort of encryption) is that apparently it requires trivial effort to find a tool to open the archive even if it's password protected.  Never tried to myself, but supposedly it's very easy.  That doesn't bother me, but it might some people.It would still put the assets in a single archive, make it easy to work with it, and would prevent casual tampering, but something more robust is probably going to be needed if security is really important.;Quote:Original post by PSSI'm not sure how others do this, but I just created my own custom resource file.  It encapsulates whatever file I want into a single file (with optional encryption and compression).Is it feasible to opt for this technique when i have more than 1.5GBs of data? Quote:Original post by iliakIn my framework, I use zip compression for packing my assets. You can set a password too.well, i think the problem may come when user accesses my EXE which ultimately extracts the Zip folder somewhere, isn't my folder content accessible at tht time when my exe is running? Anything games specific solution guys? just like Unreal engine which has pack-unpack facility with the engine :) any shareware or freeware u have come across? That would be real helpful.Thanks :)   ;  Compression alone is usually good enough since it will reduce the size on disk and deter most casual users from looking at your data.  Most of the time encryption really isn't worth it since at some point during your program's execution the data is going to be plainly visible in memory anyway and anyone who cares enough to look at it will be able to figure out how, or even just break the encryption on disk.I would also recommend breaking up your art assets into multiple files so that they're easier to work with.  I remember us having some issues a few years ago on XP with files over 2GB, either with some parts of the Windows API or a third-party library, however I can't remember exactly what they were.   ;Quote:Original post by TheOresteswell, i think the problem may come when user accesses my EXE which ultimately extracts the Zip folder somewhere, isn't my folder content accessible at tht time when my exe is running? Anything games specific solution guys? just like Unreal engine which has pack-unpack facility with the engine :) any shareware or freeware u have come across? That would be real helpful.Thanks :)If you're going to be loading the assets into memory, why extract them to an intermediate directory at all? Just read them straight from the zip file into memory. One library that does this is zlib, with the minizip "extension", which is a wrapper for zlib to support .zip files. I'm sure there are others.