On 9/16/20 2:38 AM, Nicolas Weeger wrote: > To simplify, I'll call "assets" everything that is in the "arch" repository: > archetypes, pictures, faces, animations, treasures, artifacts, and what ever > else I'm missing ;)
Do maps have a place here, as well? > The goal: make it easier to add or replace existing assets for contributors, > simplify assets distribution, and make it easy for server admins to > add/remove > extra or "official" assets. These sound like good goals to me. > My proposal: > - have the server recursively browse "data" directory to find all assets > - browse in a deterministic manner (sorted case-sensitive, depth first) > - allow override of defined assets (thus the need to have a deterministic > browsing pattern) > - remove the requirement for "collect" > - keep the "collect" mechanism to consolidate assets in big files easy for > distribution - have it work for non official assets too To keep things simple, why keep the collect mechanism? Couldn't we put the "official" assets into a big ZIP file, and teach the server how to open ZIP files like ordinary directories? Scan the index, create sorted case-sensitive depth-first order, etc. > One big drawback is that the server startup will probably be slower, and the > code more complex (to handle overriding). > > I think that's an acceptable drawback, but that's subject to discussion ;) `make do-collect` on a cold cache on my dated computer, with an SSD, takes 6.3 sec. I imagine it could be a bit slower for those with spinning magnetic media. This seems acceptable for a video game, and particularly for a server that's supposed to be long-running. But, we should still profile, see what's slow, and try to make this faster. What would your strategy be for a change like this? One interim strategy, just to keep everything working, could be to invoke the current collect process at server start via fork/exec, read in output via loader, then start. Then merge the steps until they become one. Regards, Kevin _______________________________________________ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
