Asset browser parameter function?

Suggestions
1

Could there be a parameter function that, when tapped in the side panel, pulls up the asset browser?

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2

This is interesting to me. Hope you donā€™t mind some questions:

What would you use it for?

Would you want it to show a particular subfolder only? Or by default?

Would you want to be able to import assets?

3

I canā€™t remember everything off the top of my head but I feel like I think of things all the time that could use this.

I had a project based on making a primitive adventure game for my daughters, and I wanted to turn it into an adventure game building kit, but the difficulty of letting people load and place backgrounds stopped me.

I donā€™t know if you remember the Craft scene-building project I made, but about 80% of the time I spent making it was trying to figure out how to use the parameter pane to let people load the default models, and even though I did come up with a solution, it was as clunky as can be and it would have been awesome as heck to just pop a parameter panel up there.

The voxel editor upgrade I made could use itā€”as could the existing one in the example projects.

Recently Iā€™ve been wondering how hard it would be to make a primitive Craft-shader-lab project, and being able to load files and textures would be really great for that.

I attempted to extend my SimpleButtons project into an art program a while backā€”fwiw the color picker I made for that one is one of the few pieces of code Iā€™ve had someone else use in their own project, which was coolā€”but again the difficulty of loading saved files made me abandon the concept. I could have used such a parameter panel then. And so could every drawing project everyone has ever made in Codea, for that matter.

I donā€™t know if you recall a very old project someone made where a little 3D crate rolls around in a maze made of 3D crates, but I added a map editor to it, and there again it would have been way cooler if Iā€™d had an easy way to load saved maps.

I also tried to make a project where you could draw directly on 3D modelsā€”another place I could have used an asset picker.

So I guess the general answer is ā€œtoolsā€? Seems like any project that aims to help people make things inside Codea itself could use it.

To your other questions:

  • seems to me the exact current asset picker behavior would be best: open in the main Codea folder

  • absolutely, yes, importing assets would be a key ability. That said, for making things like drawing programs or the Craft model scene builder or the voxel editor I guess it wouldnā€™t be essential.

4

Would this solve your use-cases?

parameter.asset("Select Image", function(selected)
    -- selected is an `asset.key` the user picked
end)

parameter.asset("Select Image", "images", function(selected)
    -- selected is an `asset.key` the user picked
    -- tapping on the asset picker in this mode shows only images
end)
5

Oooooo yes yes yes. Thatā€™d do it all right.

By the by is there a reason thereā€™s no ā€œrenameā€ in the edit mode of the asset picker? Since weā€™re on the topic kindaā€¦ :wink:

6

@Sim while on the subject of assets!ā€¦
The .obj models should be accompanied by a .mtl file. When i use ā€˜add toā€™ to move an .obj to the assets of my project, i donā€™t think you automatically copy over the corresponding .mtl?
If not, may i suggest you also display the .mtl files and also allow them to be ā€˜add toā€™. In fact, i would prefer to show the extensions of all the asset files. Sometimes a model might be .blend, .stl etc. and it is useful to know what is what.

Is there a way with the files app to move assets directly into a project? I can move assets to the Codea documents.

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7

@sim expanding on @UberGooberā€™s request for a parameter asset browserā€¦
Could it also be an incode function with callback that could be used within the code, even if the sidebar is not visible? Similarly for the colour picker.

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