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Resource-Management.md

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Resource management

Heaps provides a complete asset/resource management framework that can be customized with your own asset packaging system.

Getting Started

You can directly access your resources in a typed manner in Heaps by using the hxd.Res class, for instance by doing:

var tile = hxd.Res.myDirectory.myBitmap.toTile();

Please note that this is strictly typed: hxd.Res will look into the res directory of your project (or the directory specified by -D resourcesPath=... haxe compilation parameter). It will then list all directories and files, and depending on the file extension, it will provide you access to the following resources:

Resources loader

The hxd.Res provides your strictly typed shortcuts to access your resources, but it does not take care of the resource loading. For this, you need to initialize a resource loader before accessing your first resource, for instance:

hxd.Res.initEmbed();

This will be the same as writing:

hxd.Res.loader = new hxd.res.Loader(hxd.fs.EmbedFileSystem.create());

A loader will cache the resources instances after they have been fetched from the underlying file system. There are several ways to store your resources.

Dynamic resource resolution

You can resolve a resource from it path in the resource file system by using the following command:

hxd.Res.loader.load("path/to/myResource.png")

This will return a hxd.res.Any which has various methods to transform it to other resources.

Resources with duplicate names and Res completion

Because Res does not list the file extensions, there is a possibility for name conflicts between multiple resources, in this case both resources are listed with their extensions by using underscore instead of a dot. For example, base.png and base.json would be listed as a base_png and base_json resources in the completion.

However some resource type have a so-called paired extensions, which can be found in the hxd.res.Config under pairedExtensions variable. When such file exists, if a file with same name exists and is listed as paired extension - it will be omitted from completion. Good example of that is font.fnt and font.png, which would only be listed as the font in Res and point at the font.fnt.

Runtime resource loading

You can also perform you own runtime loading of resources, by using for example hxd.net.BinaryLoader. Once you have the bytes for your resource, you can use hxd.res.Any.fromBytes to transform it into a proper resource.

File Systems

Resources files are accessed through a virtual file system which implements the FileSystem interface.

Heaps already provides several file systems, such as:

  • EmbedFileSystem will gives access to the resources which are embedded with your code (using haxe -resource compilation flag). On platforms such as JavaScript, this allows you to have both your code and assets stored in a single file.
  • LocalFileSystem which gives access to a local file system directory where your resources are stored. This require hard drive access so it is not available in the browser for example.
  • hxd.fmt.pak.FileSystem will read a .pak file which contains all resources packaged into a single binary. The PAK file can be loaded at runtime and several PAK files can be used, the latest loaded being able to override the resources declared in previously loaded PAK files.

You can initialize the resource loader and filesystem by yourself, or use one of the following shortcuts:

  • hxd.Res.initEmbed() for EmbedFileSystem - this will also trigger the embedding of all files present in your resource directory into your code
  • hxd.Res.initLocal() for LocalFileSystem
  • hxd.Res.initPak() for PAK FileSystem - this will load res.pak, res1.pak, res2.pak, etc. from the local filesystem - until no file is found.

Building PAK

You can build a pak file for all your resources by running the following command from your project directory:

haxe -hl hxd.fmt.pak.Build.hl -lib heaps -main hxd.fmt.pak.Build
hl hxd.fmt.pak.Build.hl

Options can be found in sources here

PAK Loader

If you want to display a progress bar while loading your PAK file(s), you can override the loadAssets method of your hxd.App class with the following code:

override function loadAssets(done) {
    new hxd.fmt.pak.Loader(s2d, done);
}

This will be called before init(), and while loading update() and onResize will not be called.

Live update

Heaps supports a live update system which can be enabled by compiling application with -debug flag or manually setting hxd.res.Resource.LIVE_UPDATE to true. Additionally, this is supported only when using LocalFileSystem (see above). Currently there are only two resource types that have built-in live update: Image and Sound.

It is possible to attach custom callbacks for resource updates, which can be done via hxd.res.Resource.watch method, see sample code snippet:

function reloadParameters() {
  Game.monsterStats = Json.parse(hxd.Res.monster_stats.entry.getText());
  Game.refreshMonsterStats();
}
reloadParameters();
// `reloadParameters` will be called whenever `monster_stats` resource changes.
hxd.Res.monster_stats.watch(reloadParameters);

// When app no longer need to watch the resource, callback can be removed by passing `null` callback.
hxd.Res.monster_stats.watch(null);

Things to be aware of:

  • Only one callback can be present for a resource and new one will override old one.
  • When using watch to resouces with built-in support - it will break the built-in live update of said resource.

Target-specific quirks

Some targets do not support specific file formats and file-systems, but some can alleviated.

  • On JS target, ogg is not supported. Can be enabled by using stb_ogg_sound library. Keep in mind that ogg decoder will not use browser capabilities.
  • On HL target, mp3 is not added to hxd.Res listings because it is not recommended format due to its design (not very suitable for music loops), but it can be loaded manually as well as force-enabled in Res by adding heaps_enable_hl_mp3 compilation flag.