Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
(a)
(b)
Figure 5.1.
(a) What happens at loading time; (b) What happens at run time.
At loading time in the next run of the editor, the system reads both the main
database file and transaction files and properly merges them before handing them
over to a module for use.
whole asset directory and check if any files were added or deleted. It must also be
notified about any changes in the directory at run time. For a Windows platform,
you can use a series of API functions starting from FindFirstChangeNotification()
forthat[MSDNLib11].See
Figure5.1(b
)
forwhathappensatruntime.
5.3 Tags
A traditional hierarchical management of assets is not flexible enough to handle a
variety of needs that today's game developments require with the gigantic number
of assets. Tags have become a standard approach as an organizational aid that
complements the hierarchical grouping.
Tags can be considered metadata, but because of the extrinsic nature of tags and
concerns for sharing them, they requires different handling from other metadata.
