I'll give it some thought. Its a completely different thing to things like Doom. With Doom the source of the game was released so the code that loads the textures for a level has the incredible advantage of knowing what level it is dealing with. With Tr1, all that Glidos can see is the texture; there is no extra info as to what the texture is for. There's no way we can get rid of the strange names for the folders or the coordinates in the file names. Those pieces of info are all that Glidos has at its disposal. They could perhaps be used in different ways, but they have to be used in some way.

We talked before about having link files, so that the strangely named files in the strangely named folders in turn refer to files with more sensible names.

Thinking a bit more about this: at the moment I look fot strangely named folders inside the folder "Textures"; I could look at folders two levels down from "Textures". It would be meaningless to Glidos, but it would allow you to collect things according to level.

Eh? Glidos obviously generates folder names based on some key value -- once all the levels have been captured (which obviously I will have done at some point), we will know what folders relate to each level. Can't you use that information somehow?

I must admit I don't really understand how the whole wrapper thing works -- I can't get my head around how Glidos gets information back out from the TOMB.EXE to even do *anything* let alone the cleverness that it achieves. Does it somehow intercept the video output from the TOMB.EXE before it's sent to screen? I only have a small brain when it comes to such things...

Glidos wrote:

Thinking a bit more about this: at the moment I look fot strangely named folders inside the folder "Textures"; I could look at folders two levels down from "Textures". It would be meaningless to Glidos, but it would allow you to collect things according to level.

Ah yes, subfolder scanning would be very handy.

Two levels: does it mean Textures> Mansion> 00AE19...?

Yes Textures\Mansion\00AE19. That could be done, but Glidos will scan the lot ever time you start TR1 or load game. There is no way it will
be able to guess which subfolder a texture folder might be in.

Glidos just interprets Glide graphics commands. All it sees i

Here's a texture
Here's a texture
Here's a texture
.
.
.
Use the nth texture
Draw a triangle using a particular part of that texture
Draw a triangle using a particular part of that texture
Use the mth texure
.
.
.

Gambit37 wrote:

Eh? Glidos obviously generates folder names based on some key value -- once all the levels have been captured (which obviously I will have done at some point), we will know what folders relate to each level. Can't you use that information somehow?

Although this facility is used only for TR1 at the moment, nothing in its implementation is specific TR1. I wouldn't want to build TR1 knowledge into Glidos. On the other hand, it would be possible to have a single key file in the Textures folder that gave a mapping from the strange names to more friendly and more structured ones. Glidos could use the key file if it
was there and, the old method if not.

I'm liking it! Good idea -- tricky to implement?

Not sure. I'll look into it.

Just asking if there's any progress on this?

I've been reorgansing all my folders and have started to use the link files which work fantastically -- I can have a folder called passport or lara or whatever and just link to those -- it'll keep file sizes down and makes updating so much easier.

To have the levels in named subfolders would really be a god send if you could implement it...

Hmmm, had this niggle in that back of my mind that there was something I was supposed to look into. I'll try to have a look soon.

That would be very cool -- thank you.

A query about link files:

You can have comments in the filename, which is very handy. What happens if you have two or more link files that have the same coordinates, but different comments, ie:

(0--96)(144--256).PassportCover.txt
(0--96)(144--256).MayanStatue.txt
(0--96)(144--256).AnubisHead.txt

Which gets use? The first one found alphabetically? I haven't tested this yet.

I just had another thought about folder management. How about NO IMAGES are stored in the weird numbered folders, but instead we use link files for everything? Then, in the Textures folder there is a control file that contains the line:

MASTER: trx\

The links files in the folders then contain just a folder path relative to the MASTER path. So, for example, in the first caves folder, 6C7FE41E229619C7ACDED8A8538E3F4E, the vines are file (0--64)(192--256).png.

This would become a link file called (0--64)(192--256).CavesVines1.txt or similar. The contents of the file reads something like:

TLNK: level01\vines-large-1.png

So when Glidos starts, it looks in the Textures folder and reads the master file. It then looks in all the weird numbered folders and gets the file paths/names from all the link files. So, for the vines, it now has the information:

trx\level01\vines-large-1.png

Assuming that we made all the link files available, ANYONE creating texture packs would have the same named files and could use the same directory structure. The only thing that would need to change would be the value in the master file. In this way, multiple texture packs could be installed without overwriting each other and it would be easy to switch between each one....

In fact, a better option would be to put mappings for the weird numbered folders directly into the master control file. That way we wouldn't need to even put anything in the weird numbered folders and could store whole packs of textures and links independently of other people's work, and wouldn't have to worry about problems with duplicate filenames etc.

For more info, my reasoning comes from wanting to do this for better management:

1\Glidos\Textures
2			\trx\common
3					\lara
4					\passport
5					\letters
6					\enemies
7						\wolf
8						\bear
9					\weapons
10						\uzi
11						\pistol
12					\levels
13						\level01
14						\level02

The master file sits in Glidos\Textures and looks something like this:

1BASE: trx\
2
3// level folders follow
4// Level 1: The Caves
5
6198EC2D38EF00FEA1653750E8B237D7F: levels\level01
7203D6ED9632B742A2209637764C375F6: levels\level01
854637C4BF0304439B63F51D3A5EEA382: levels\level01
960812F71A9287004111BA82EF2404371: levels\level01
10708171E626AA342A07B8567EA8A1A53D: levels\level01
11C0B3E0125D1A1A0FF5DBBCA296F8AD4F: levels\level01
12F7EB7D4BB45372D13AF34500AD82B217: levels\level01
136C7FE41E229619C7ACDED8A8538E3F4E: levels\level01
148B4825478FAB43844E3D4CB077E97613: levels\level01
15
16// Level 2: City of Vilcabamba
17
18F17F2EA5FCB70635738A07C173124945: levels\level02
190C4F02769AD92D3F8EF3653283C8DEB0: levels\level02
202B9F6A059344DAE154DAE71FD6FAB95E: levels\level02
21
22//etc..........

I am going to look into this; just really busy at the moment.

No problem -- just thinking out loud really....! 😉

Briliant idea -- keep it up!

Just having a quick think about this now.

The idea to avoid any images in the strangely numbered folders is nice, but can't we already do that with the link files? Obviously there's no way to declare the root folder at the moment, but the rest we can do I think.

I also like the idea of putting the mapping into one flat file, but I don't think it can be quite as you suggest: having several funny named folders mapping onto a single level folder loses information, and Glidos wont know which of the textures within the level folder to pick.