[Dev] SVN: james/326 Experimenting with a different method of styling a creature's animations

[James Paige]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 10:11:22AM -0700, Brian Fisher wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 8:00 AM, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:
> >  Hmmm. In the ImageAsset browser, ! appears last, not first... also, I
> >  can't see how the other assets are sorter... it certainly ain't
> >  alphabetically.
> >
> must be in dictionary key sort order - i.e. random

Interestingly, they seem to be sorted by directory, but not by filename.

> >  I am not sure what is best for the default case, but there are
> >  situations where I want to add an unassigned asset, and then choose that
> >  asset through the editor interface, but I cannot get to the interface
> >  because the unassigned asset raises an exception. Catch 22
> >
> That's what the broken reference asset is for at the moment - you can
> add one when you register the pouch. although it would be nice to have
> something more refined, I think...
> 
> Basically there are 2 cases - first is when you have no asset selected
> - in which case it would be nice to let the developer know. Another is
> when an asset has been selected, but for whatever reason is bad
> (folders moved, file renamed, asset deleted, etc.) and again it would
> be nice to let the developer know.
> 
> I want to make it easy to fix (i.e. you can stay in the editor) but I
> don't want to let a problem go on forever unnoticed (exceptions sure
> can't be ignored)
> 
> whaddya think?

Perhaps the exception should be the default case, but there should be 
some standard way of getting the broken-asset-by-default behavior

> >  It is better to just load what you know you will need, and worry about
> >  loading performance problems only when they actually occur.
> >
> Right - and having things where an asset tree can be built makes it so
> the game can programattically know everything you will need. So like
> if the level includes the hero, and the hero has a style sheet
> selected, and the style sheet references some sound, the game can
> build an asset tree from those AssetRef's to know that the level
> requires the sound.

Ah, groovy :)

---
James