Unite 2010GDC ChinaAsia Game Show 2010GDC 2011
|
IntroductionThe time has come for you to venture into a new world of the game development universe - the elegant world of resource files. Perhaps you may be wondering what a resource file is, or you may have a vague idea of what they are and you're interested in using them. Perhaps you may even be fluent in the use of resource files. Regardless of which position you're in, we'll now go over what resource files are, and what they aren't. Let's begin by taking a non-technical approach to visualizing what they are; this way, we can have a much better overall understanding of the concept behind them. Suppose you have a large leather magic bag, which has the property of being essentially bottomless. You can take various items and put them in the bag, and you can these same items out. Although you don't necessarily have the option of taking a good gander at the contents of the bag, there is no problem in finding a particular item in order to take it out. This bag is also virtually weightless - you can easily hold it, carry it, and manage it. Now lets take this strange model of thought and apply it to the software-programming field, in our case, video game development. The magical leather bag becomes the resource file, and the items that we could put into the bag become the various pieces of data of which are used by the game – bitmaps, sounds, game-logic scripts, and so on. Additionally, the idea of being able to easily manage the bag still holds true, only in this case, we are managing the data in the resource file. So basically, a resource file acts as an abstraction layer for managing multiple items of data; however, this is only one of many advantages that surface once you partake in the use of such files. Before we discuss the other advantages to using them, as well as going over a couple of the disadvantages, we will have a look at where resource files are already in use today.
|
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
