Pruning image and sound assets distributed with the game engine
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Just a heads up, it looks like there is opportunity to drop assets distributed with the game engine. I'll be focusing mostly on removing sound files that are only used by a few maps and will instead move those assets to the map itself.
I'll post a zip of the assets before removed and will add a list here of the files removed & moved to specific maps. The net result is that the images/sounds distributed with the game will be a bit fewer and will need to be included by maps specifically if they would want to use them.
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@LaFayette Maybe also link those assets to the first post in the 'Map Maker Resources thread'.
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@Hepps any thoughts on reorganizing categories? @Lafayette I believe would like one spot for devs to look at.
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@prastle categories I think is its own conversation. For me, the problem is not necessarily multiple places in forums to watch, it's that we have multiple websites to look at; then to make it worse forums is not bug tracking software and does not have those benefits. I think dev's posting in 'feature requests and ideas' makes some sense when it comes to pitching game changes.
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@LaFayette Yup I get ya I am just attempting to start the conversation with one of the mods that it will matter with. Please open our private chat as a new discussion for them all to look at. Hopefully a best of both worlds can be achieved. Less stress for devs and mods is the goal!
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@LaFayette Without even considering what sounds are going to be removed (rather, there are some missing that should better be added; for example technology sounds), I'm certainly against this, and I honestly cannot understand why anyone is favourable. The only substantial advantage I see is a few seconds less download time for TripleA, that cannot possibly be more valuable than a higher simple covering of sounds effects for the various eras, no matter how currently scarcely used, especially since sounds are a oft neglected item, thus many future mapmakers are unlikely to put much effort in it (it's already not so likely that they'll bother adding the required entries, when making maps set not in a late modern scenario).
Anyhow, I suppose you should link the GitHub stuff for this. Not everyone following the forum may see it, otherwise.
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@Cernel said in Pruning image and sound assets distributed with the game engine:
no matter how currently scarcely used,
This is where I respectfully disagree. If a single, rarely used map, uses sounds and adds 2% to the download size, that is 2% more that every player needs to pay in terms of download size and install speed. The installer speed is commensurate with install size. The "main" game assets is AFAIK really intended to be the common assets. Otherwise, why not include every asset in with the main game?
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@LaFayette On top of which having a full plethora of different sounds in the engine rather than individual maps does not in anyway improve the chances of a map maker including custom sounds. If someone wants custom sounds... they are likely to research it and figure it out. Few ever bother, those that do... figure it out and drop the sounds into their game folder.
My concern is really that all the custom sounds we have make it back into the right game folders.
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@Hepps said in Pruning image and sound assets distributed with the game engine:
@LaFayette Maybe also link those assets to the first post in the 'Map Maker Resources thread'.
As an idea, what do people think of us creating an "assets" repo in triplea-maps? We could put unused images and sounds there.
It would then be a place where sounds & images could be checked in and stored for general usage in other maps. Map makers could browse it and copy assets into their maps as they choose.
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@LaFayette By that you mean on GitLost I'm assuming?
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@Hepps Well, if we accumulate more images that are created and unused, it'll avoid creating more zip files. A forum post for "get your assets here" could be good, but I shudder to think about looking through dozens of zip files and the various variants. Nicer to have one place IMO.
Also I wonder if people would really want to post there if they have just one or two images.
For the record git deletes nothing, all items checked in are recorded in its history. Deleted files are marked as deleted but still always fully available in history.
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@Hepps it would make it very easy to browse all images. All repo's have a 'download as zip' link. From there most OS will show thumbnail previews. No need to hunt through pages of forum posts downloading zip file after zip file.
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@LaFayette All good. I am just not a techy... so I was really just asking if what you were talking about was GIT Hub.
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@Hepps In short yes. Git is a technology, like email. GitHub is a provider that hosts an implementation of Git, similar to how Gmail hosts email, or hotmail host email. There are other git providers, notably: bitbucket and gitlab. Github is very open source friendly.
Previously all TripleA assets, code and images and maps were on SVN hosted by SourceForge. That we went from one source control system (SVN) to another (git), really means that in some ways nothing changed over the lifetime of TripleA. I'm not sure if anyone here is really that big of a fan of SVN; but it was easy to confuse as sourceforge did happen to host a forums (and that is not SVN, that is just a simple forum). For completeness, what did change is that all map changes are no longer queued up for months at a time for one person, an admin, to do then a bunch of SVN work to register all the updates. With git that workload can be, for better or worse, distributed and is self service. You don't have to have (as in 100% required) a map admin anymore to push map updates for you.
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@LaFayette All good. I was just clarifying. I am behind the idea.
My suggestion to link it here was to ensure Neanderthals like myself know how to get to the "Pearly Gates".
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The pruning effort is essentially done, the files being removed can be seen here:
It was interesting to see confusion around images and duplication. For example, 'puppet-states' is in the main game engine, but all maps with that player already include those images.
For sounds, most are used, the sounds in the 'other' folder can be pruned (not very many). It's also interesting to see when assets were 'disabled' instead of just being removed, eg: "_old.png" images
closed Remove unused sounds #39
closed Remove unused images #40
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Should note, for sounds, the biggest surprise were the "turn_start" sounds, the game engine does not have configuration to play those sounds. Should be unused. FWIW: SoundPath.java has the list of folders that are looked at for playing sounds.
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@Hepps Sorry I'm still scarred from the experience of:
Me: "We're updating TripleA technologies! Existing is going to become new, better, easier, and free up time for us to make more TripleA improvements faster!"
Audience: "What!! Change! TRIPLEA IS OVER! IT IS DEAD! MAY AS WELL SHUT IT DOWN! Why are you introducing new things?!"
Me: "Umm.. nothing is new, just updated, the things being updated were transparent and took a lot of time to manage"
Audience: "SHUT IT DOWN, SCREW YOU, YOU'RE KILLING TRIPLEA, WE WON'T USE THAT, WE LOVE SOURCEFORGE, WE'RE NOT MIGRATING!! WE'RE LEAVING!"
Me:
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