Project Asset packs

Questions
1

I don’t know about everybody else but - I like to develop projects with assets from Documents and Dropbox so that I avoid multiple copies of assets in the separate projects (when duplicating projects). Initially I find that the best way, but Documents does tend to get cluttered and my Dropbox is quite complex.

Originally Codea used to keep assets as spritepacks, but they have been replaced by asset packs. I set one of these up for a well developed project to make development smoother, but all I did was put images in a suitable folder. I can not see the images there and the folder does not have an image on its folder.

Sprite packs used to have a plist in the folder that I am sure provided the info needed. Does anyone know what I need to do and how to get my asset pack sorted?

2

I’d suggest you to sort them in one table:

tab = {
     [“math”] = {
          [“primes”] = readText(“Documents: PrimeList”),
          [“num”] = readText(“Documents: Numbers”)
     },
     [“docs”] = {
          [“data1”] = readLocalData(“password”)
     },
     [“functions”] = ...,
     [ ... ]
}
3

@TokOut - thanks for the feedback but I don’t think that will work.

Nice work with the primes!!

4

Hi @Bri_G, user asset packs should work. I tested it just then by creating one on my Macbook and then using dropbox inside the Files app to copy and paste it into Codea.

You do need to have the Info.plist file. I’ve attached an example pack that you can modify and put into Codea. Changing the Icon@2x.png and Icon.png will give you a custom icon for your pack as well.

This pack supports all file types but you can change that if you want too.

Here’s the format for the Info.plist files:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>Author</key>
	<string>Author Name Here</string>
	<key>Name</key>
	<string>Test Pack</string>
	<key>Icon</key>
	<string>Icon</string>
	<key>Vector</key>
	<false/>
	<key>Types</key>
	<array>
		<string>sprites</string>
		<string>shaders</string>
		<string>sounds</string>
		<string>music</string>
		<string>text</string>
		<string>models</string>
	</array>
</dict>
</plist>
5

@John - thanks for the info, got this to work by unzipping your example, copying to Dropbox and editing the info.plist file adding my own name and a list of sprites under the sprite sub-heading. I also added my own icons (64x64 and 128x128) as icon and icon@2x.
Then copied them into a folder, set up with FileApp, example.assets which was into the Codea app Documents folder.
Thanks for the help - will ease my development and help tidy all my assets. Looks good in my assets list as well.

6

Hi @Bri_G I’m glad that helped! We added that feature a long time ago but until now it’s been somewhat difficult to manipulate files in the documents folder. That said, I think we will look into making user-created asset packs more easy to import and edit.

7

@John - tried to do this at an earlier stage with Codea, when the folders were for spritepacks, but no joy a lot messier then when we had little access to folders etc. Now going to convert all my projects into access from asset packs.

The asset packs should make it easier to Xcode.

@TokOut - hope that has clarified what I needed, maybe you could use it.

8

@John - just tried out another assetpack and it took me ages, resolved a few minor issues but the assetpack refused to be recognised by Codea - until I changed info.plist to Info.plist. Is it necessary to be case sensitive on this?

9

Yes, this is an iOS / OSX level thing (file system case-sensitivity). Just something to watch out for.

10

@John - every day a new gem learned. Thanks for that, if I read my docs more thoroughly I’d probably save a lot of time!!!

Edit: need I not i in Icon.png and Icon@2x.png too.