Orxonox

Today I've just wondered whether we already need all seamless metal textures that have been created lately (the ones in the sl_metal folder). I mean, they use up 14MB and I don't think we're using them because they're PNG and that makes the tardis boxes cry.

Anyway, my point is that there are a lot of files in the game/data/trunk folder that are not needed by the game at the moment. And on the other hand there are so many files scattered through the depths of our SVN repositories that we don't really know anymore what we really have.

To provide a solution to both problems, I suggest creating a new SVN folder that contains ALL data files that are completed and at the same time moving some not yet needed files (no breaking changes!) from the game/data/trunk folder to it.

What do you think about that?

i think this is a good idea. and as we already discussed i would suggest to put these files under game/data/pool

now the question is how to organize all those files? does anyone have a good idea for the directory structure?

or maybe game/pool so it can also contain files from the internal data directory?

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i suggest to use the directory structure from the existing data directories... like audio, models, etc. but with more subdirectories and some changes.

for models i suggest one directory per model, containing old states + blend files. i don't know exactly where to put the corresponding material files though. probably into the same directory, and not into a global material directory, because no one could tell which files belong together then.

textures are usually either specific for one model, then they belong into the corresponding model directory, or part of a texture package. they usually also need a material file, which should be stored in the same place.

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2 more ideas:
1) author file - i suggest a 1-file-per-directory approach just like with CMakeLists.txt. add the author to the authors file of the same directory. thats probably easier to maintain than one really big file.

2) screenshots for each model + a small repository browser which displays the image files (including textures). that could be easily done in PHP.

I like these ideas.
And yes, I also thought of merging the two data directories. But we could still use game/data/pool. It's inconsistent, but it's all about data...

When already having a closer look at our data folders, I have something else to discuss. Almost a year ago, I divided that very folder to avoid having multiple checkouts when having multiple code branches (since that would have been the alternative).
But even then I knew the dividing wouldn't be perfect. I mean, where the heck shall we draw the line? And I think it wasn't really drawn near to perfect... We still have lots of text files licenced under CC and we may still break something by changing them.
So, I would suggest to get AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE to the code repository (but no binary files at all). For instance we've got two folders with fonts (ogre and cegui's) and font definitions. We could do with one fonts folder plus textual font definitions in the code repo.
Just a thought...

the other thing that bugs me about the data separation is the name "data_extern", because SVN names it "data" by default. so it would be easier to rename the internal data directory to something different, like "data_intern" or whatever. or maybe it's even possible to call both "data"? are the different names even necessary?

Actually, the default name for the data checkout is "trunk"...
That's why you have to rename it anyway. And yes, there was a reason why I didn't want to rename the internal data directory, I just don't remember anymore.
@both data: no, we created the version tags so that the right data folder gets checked out automatically, but into the tag.

1337 wrote:Actually, the default name for the data checkout is "trunk"...

i think that depends on the SVN client. TortoiseSVN suggests "data" by default.

Unfortunately we're almost the only ones using TortoiseSVN...

i agree with most points:
- i like the idea of having one folder per model containing material, mesh, screenshot and in some cases textures
- i think it's a good idea to put an AUTHORS file into each folder
- i would also suggest to put pool under game/data/pool because i would contain only data and there is no need to seperate data_intern and data_extern because we will not package the pool (thus we'll not have to care about licensing)
- i also like the idea of using the directory structure of data&data_extern for the pool directory

Why would we not have to care about licencing when not packaging anything? I mean, you can still publicly access all files.

what i meant was that we do not have to care if we mix files with different licenses
sorry if that was unclear

So, I've created a branch for the data folder cleanup. And I've begun to restructure at will, just as a suggestion.

I've come up with this:
And every image that doesn't fit in either of the three folders will be located in the 'images' folder directly.

Also, I haven't mentioned the folders gui and packs. We should probably split them up into the above mentioned. I haven't yet given it a thought.

Ideas? Suggestions? Comments?

maybe it would be better to keep material files, textures and meshes together for models as we already discussed earlier ?!

Sry, this seems like the wrong thread after all. But in here everyone gets the notification

I was actually talking about the normal data repository, not the pool. The structure we've discussed so far was for the pool.
Though I wouldn't mind having a folder per model because it keeps stuff together.
On the other hand, if we are to use seamless textures shared across multiple models, then we can't keep things together anyway.

That is my concern as well.
Especially if we want to enforce content reuse, we're bound to have lots of textures and materials that are used by many (or at least some) models and then having a folder per model is not really feasible.
I suppose we can't just link the texture and material files into these model folders?