Pruning image and sound assets distributed with the game engine
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@LaFayette That means that the assets are there just to support the existent maps.
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@Cernel The reason they were there originally is due to download time.
See:
The original roots came from SVN days when downloading maps was very slow, adding to the main download a single set meant maps using those images could be downloaded much more quickly. It was significant as waiting many minutes for map download, and repeatedly was a deal breaker.
It does not seem worthwhile or particularly beneficial to reverse that.
I'd agree it's unlikely for a new map to contain assets that are going to become so widespread used that it meets that bar.
Do you consider it a good thing for assets to be downloaded with the game engine? As stated, beyond download and install time, there are reasons to not do that. Particularly as well for lack of ownership. Maintainers are not going to want to modify existing artwork, a random artist is not going to want to make a change that is probably going to impact many existing maps. And finally:
(1) There are other ways to provide example assets without distributing it with the engine executable.
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@Cernel I feel like you're confusing whether to bundle or not is a value judgment of artwork or 'historical significance'. The reasoning to bundle or not hopefully has been made clear and it's not a value judgement of the artwork.
I hope the repository of sample assets does grow and will eventually include far more than it does today: https://github.com/triplea-game/map-maker-assets
As discussed late in this thread: https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/918/map-maker-resources/ and for the reasons stated there, for now adding images to that repository of sample assets is the best idea we have so far for how to host the files and make them available.
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@LaFayette said in Pruning image and sound assets distributed with the game engine:
Do you consider it a good thing for assets to be downloaded with the game engine? As stated, beyond download and install time, there are reasons to not do that. Particularly as well for lack of ownership. Maintainers are not going to want to modify existing artwork, a random artist is not going to want to make a change that is probably going to impact many existing maps. And finally:
(1) There are other ways to provide example assets without distributing it with the engine executable.
I think I've already answered this question, or at least at the moment I've nothing to say that I've not already said. As far as evaluating the costs goes, that is up to the developers, as it would be up to the developers, say, accepting adding a "train" image to all asset's players. Obviously, the only benefit would be in case, at any point in the future, there is a mapmaker that wants to make a map that features only players and units currently disposable in assets, plus also a "train" unit, and doesn't have to add a units folder to its own map because of that (as I said, it would be a bet on the future to guess what units may be important enough to be part of the default assets; obviously "infantry" is one of them, maybe "train" is not). The same thing if the assets would currently receive any kind of territory effects.
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@Cernel Okay. Perhaps the perspective difference is whether bundled assets should be making a bet on what will become heavily used. Notably such assets can be simply included here: https://github.com/triplea-game/map-maker-assets, then when it's the case that an asset is very likely to always be downloaded by every player, then we can save the repeated download and bundle. The game engine assets should reflect the current, particularly when we have data available that can guide those decisions. It should also be considered that releases are easier to come by, and it's not necessary to predict many years out in the future - releases can happen more often and in theory every pre-release is itself a "stable". We are out of the business of pushing "unstable code" that is fixed months later all at once by the maintainers, each incremental addition is ideally solid (though TripleA makes that extremely difficult, so we're not perfect at it).
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@LaFayette said in Pruning image and sound assets distributed with the game engine:
@Cernel Okay. Perhaps the perspective difference is whether bundled assets should be making a bet on what will become heavily used. Notably such assets can be simply included here: https://github.com/triplea-game/map-maker-assets, then when it's the case that an asset is very likely to always be downloaded by every player, then we can save the repeated download and bundle. The game engine assets should reflect the current, particularly when we have data available that can guide those decisions. It should also be considered that releases are easier to come by, and it's not necessary to predict many years out in the future - releases can happen more often and in theory every pre-release is itself a "stable". We are out of the business of pushing "unstable code" that is fixed months later all at once by the maintainers, each incremental addition is ideally solid (though TripleA makes that extremely difficult, so we're not perfect at it).
Right. Of course, the more time passes, the more maps will potentially not use assets that they might have used. Also, I believe that it would be wrong, then, to go removing any assets from maps on the basis that it is now provided by the program, while, on the other hand, I think it wouldn't hurt removing from the program an asset that proved to be unpopular, and adding it to the few maps currently using it.
I think that default assets should be used only by basic or simple maps (probably v4, v5 and v6 should have their current units folders removed, if actually useless (might be the mapmakers just didn't realize they didn't need to have them)), that don't really specifically care about the skin quality.
Still in my opinion, any really original map, instead, should fully feature all the assets it uses, even if currently some of them would be straight duplicates of what already offered in assets, so to assure the complete stability of the original skin for that map.
Just to let you know my point of view on assets usage. -
wow i read all this ... I get that your two philosophies are you both determining what is more important and time saving by determining where to store the old and eventually unused image files in the main game download or storing them in the map download
Can you have the main official release of the game run and then it notifies you there is new updates available and then you just click it and you're updated?
I'm just saying I'll download the official stable game once and then I want it to tell you when theres updates so you don't have to keep redownloading the main game of course -.-.
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@Captain-Crunch in my simple viewpoint as always
They are both way to concerned about the minor things and always seem to forget about the major things …. But ignore me I am always concerned about the lobby and the players 
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@prastle hehe well it sounds like Lafayette might know more about the technical side of it and making the main game download as small as possible and for some reason I enjoy these nerd discussions!
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shouldn't all (as many as possible) heavy (sound/image) game assets be in the domain of maps?
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