Using AssetsManager

The AssetsManager is the core component in effective media management inside your Gorilla3D application. Models, textures, audio, dialogues and so on will be cached for faster access and reusage. You can build packages within the AssetsManager for modular media management. For example: you could build a package for the main character and reference to it in every scene package. Scene packages are extremly useful for compact and fast loading of all data in a scene.

An assets package is the management unit to handle groups and their attached assets. Each asset can be a different type of media (model, texture, audio,…). and is able to manage further sub-groups of assets. This structure allows a complex and flexible asset structure for your project.

The assets manager allows two kinds of packages.

Packages are kept simple and transparent. File-based packages can be viewed easily by a typical ZIP-Viewer.

Each package provides a number of fixed group entries to organize media content. Those groups are fixed to allow automatic load/save for specific media types. For example: A model texture is getting loaded implicitly by loading the model, but the assets manager needs to know where to store. By detecting the file extension he is able to organize the media file into the package.

Default group ids to access the specific group of each package:

Since 0.8.3 also assets can contain group or so called sub-groups. This is getting important especially for TGorillaModelAsset which can contain textures, prefabs or scripts. In elder assets manager version it lead to name conflicts with textures.

A media file is represented as extended TGorillaAsset instance inside in a specific group in an assets package. Depending on the media type the asset holds the data.

A TGorillaModelAsset holds model and animation data by the internal definition format TModelDef. The asset converts all original model formats and writes them as *.g3d file to the zip-archive.

Caution: The file extension will be kept original due to linked names inside of the structure, otherwise relinking model of load from package will fail.

The following example shows how to load and show a model from a file-based package.

procedure TForm1.LoadMyModel();
var LGrp : TGorillaAssetsGroup;
    LAst : TGorillaModelAsset;
    LDef : TModelDef;
begin
  // load a file-based package
  FPackage := FPackage := FAssetsManager.LoadPackageFromFile('mypackage.zip');
 
  // get the model def from archive
  LGrp := FPackage.GetGroup(GORILLA_ASSETS_MODEL);
  LAst := LGrp.FindAssetByFilename('mymodel.dae') as TGorillaModelAsset;
  LDef := LAst.Model as TModelDef;
 
  // create a visual instance from model definition
  FModel := TGorillaModel.LoadNewModelFromDef(FViewport, LDef, []);
  FModel.Parent := FViewport;
  FModel.SetHitTestValue(false);
end;

Holds the texture as TBitmap in memory and writes those in original file format to zip-archive.

Holds audio files in a TMemoryStream and writes those in original file format to zip-archive.

Holds video files in a TMemoryStream and writes those in original file format to zip-archive.

Used for unspecified file formats. Currently supported *.txt, *.json and *.xml. Holds data in a TMemoryStream and writes those in original file format to zip-archive.

Holds dialogue data in a TMemoryStream and writes those as *.dia file to zip-archive.

Holds inventory configuration data in a TMemoryStream and writes those as *.iff file to zip-archive.

You can find the TGorillaAssetsManager component in the toolbar. Simply drag and drop onto your form.

In the next step we need to create a new package in “Packages” property by the Delphi collection editor.

Alternatively you can create the assets manager and packages at runtime.

Form1.pas

var 
  FAssetsManager : TGorillaAssetsManager;
  FPackage : TGorillaAssetsPackage;
 
procedure TForm1.CreatePackage();
begin
  FAssetsManager := TGorillaAssetsManager.Create(Self);
  FPackage := FAssetsManager.AddEmptyPackage(GORILLA_PACKAGE_DEFAULT);
end;

You can easily setup packages by the Gorilla3D assets manager tool. There you can also save packages to file, which can be loaded at runtime in your program.

Form1.pas

procedure TForm1.LoadPackage(const AFilename : String);
begin
  FAssetsManager := TGorillaAssetsManager.Create(Self);
  FPackage := FAssetsManager.LoadPackageFromFile(AFilename);
end;

Of course you are allowed to store the assets package you've setup. Easily use the provided SaveToFile method of each package instance.

Form1.pas

procedure TForm1.SavePackage(const AFilename : String);
begin
  FPackage.SaveToFile(AFilename);
end;

1) Each assets has an unique id (GUID) when added to the package by which we can find it exactly.

Form1.pas

  // finding an asset in a specific group by its unique id
  LAssetId := '{18E01973-D452-4596-A1A1-C51F09763954}';
  FPackage.GetAssetFromId(GORILLA_ASSETS_TEXTURE, LAssetId);

2) Get asset by its filename

Caution: This method will automatically import the asset from supplied file, if it can not be found.

Form1.pas

  // finding an asset in a specific group by its filename
  LAssetFile := 'texture0.png';
  FPackage.GetAssetFromFile(GORILLA_ASSETS_TEXTURE, LAssetFile);

3) Get asset by its filename and stream

Caution: This method will automatically import the asset from supplied stream, if it can not be found.

Form1.pas

  // finding an asset in a specific group by its filename
  LAssetFile := 'texture0.png';
  FPackage.GetAssetFromStream(GORILLA_ASSETS_TEXTURE, LAssetFile, AStream);

Next step: Billboard