Structure of images/units/

[turin]

I've had this in my mind for a while now... wouldn't it make more sense to give each unit its own directory for images? So, instead of putting all unit images in images/units/, the Elvish Fighter's would go in images/units/elvish-fighter/, the Elvish Archer's in images/units/elvish-archer/...

The main reason for this change is, we have THOUSANDS of unit images. We over 200 units, and each one should ideally have around 20 images, probably more. That's 4000 images. Having that many makes browsing the images/units/ folder nearly impossible. It takes forever just to list the images, and once you have it takes forever to find the image you're looking for. Our old structure made sense when we had 150 units with 1-10 images each, but we have a lot more than that now.

I'm not sure how feasible the transfer would be (I would think the only hard part would be fixing all the .cfgs), but even if it is a decent amount of work, it is, IMHO, a really good idea, and should still be done.

[zookeeper]

It would be more of a pain to open up unit images in applications, selecting them in file managers for copying, etc. if they were split into several directories. I do understand that the number of images is getting very big, though, and that something should probably be done about it eventually. Also, I haven't noticed any problems with browsing the directory with all the unit images in it. Of course you can't have a thumbnail-view. Changing the .cfg's can probably be automated easily.

I'd say that if some sorting into separate directories is done, there should be directories for races, factions or something like that, instead of splitting the images into 200 unit-specific directories.

[scott]

I don't mind it either way because spotlight makes it easy to filter a huge list of files. I just don't like it breaking things, but I assume the coder types have their reasons.

[Noyga]

If in your campaign you want to use a single unit from another campaign it may be easier to copy an entire directory. Btw it isn't usually difficult since the name is usually almost the same as the unit (but sometimes it don't match exactly so you can make confusions)
Some pictures (like attack icons or missile frames) may be shared between several units, but this however actually never applies to the images/units directory.

[turin]

Also, I haven't noticed any problems with browsing the directory with all the unit images in it.

Well, whenever I try to browse the images/units/ directory in GIMP, or browse that directory on the online SVN repository, it takes between 5-10 seconds to load the list. That's what I'm talking about.

but I assume the coder types have their reasons.

I seriously doubt that... most likely, it is just inertia. Like I said, the current structure made perfect sense in 0.1, and even in 0.7 or 0.8.... but not now. We now have movement, death, defend animations, all of which take up between 3 and 8 images.... but, we'll see when a coder replies to this thread.

It would be more of a pain to open up unit images in applications, selecting them in file managers for copying, etc.

I really doubt that opening the files would be that much harder. Basically, instead of typing in "elvish-fighter.png", you type in "elvish-fighter/static.png". Or, if you want the moving, "elvish-fighter/move-1.png". For most of the images, you just replace one of the "-" characters with a "/". And, if you're opening them from a graphical file manager, how is double-clicking on a directory slower or more of a pain than scrolling through a list of 4000 images?


Anyway, if there are any images duplicated between units... just have them reference the same directory.

This would also possibly be an occasion to get rid of some of the stranger image file names, like "troll-grunt.png" for the level 2 troll, and some other strange stuff...

[Jetrel]

I had talked with isaac, and this is the plan:

As we convert to our team-color system, we're going to be splitting the units into folders that each contain one faction. Each of the folders will be given a factional name - our loyalists will be human_loyalists, the current elves will be wood_elves.


If we want to go further, and make units have their own folders, we may do this afterwards, as we're adding in the walking animations.

Based on the elvish fighter, we'll probably have some ... 32 or more images per unit, when all of this is done.

That's gonna be a damned lot of sprites to draw. Party hard, eh?

----

Anyways, I'd forgotten to do this when I did the dwarven thunderguard last night, so I'll get around to that today/tomorrow.

[ivanovic]

There will be quite a lot restructuring in the next time. Once the next release is out I wanted to have a look at making the mainline campaigns behave more like usercampaigns so that we can easily add new mainlinecampaings.
In this term it also does make sense to Move around images as needed. (Campaign art into the campaign folders and stuff like that) So moving around the unit images itself is a thing that should be looked at and probably will be looked at.

[Eleazar]

Partition images/units and separating campaign images, both will improve organization.

It can be annoyingly hard to find specific unit images among the (currently) 1701 .pngs since you never know if the file name will start the race, alighnment, or an old version of the unit's name.

[Jetrel]

I've begun separating the units into gross delineations according to faction or race, whichever I find more appropriate. I myself am only doing this as I update units for the team color system.

So far, I've moved the Saurian Skirmisher and Flanker into the "saurians" folder.


I'd like to have:
saurians/
drakes/
wood-elves/
loyalists/
outlaws/
dwarves/

And campaign-specific folders, named in accordance with the portrait folders (such as we have). Some units, like kalenz, are not campaign-specific, others like gwiti, owaec, and konrad, are.

[Noyga]

I this it may be better by races than by faction, because a few units like mages may belong to more than one faction.
However human a quite a large race so it makes sense to split it in than on folder for this race, like loyalists/ and outlaws/
Altrough they are mostly humans, the Dark adept line units aren't usually used outside an undead faction, so it make sens to put them in the undead/ folder.
For the mermaids, i would see a mermaid/ folder.
Well i think you go in the right direction

[Eleazar]

perhaps the folder names should go less specific to more specific. To sort better, thusly...

Code: Select all

...
drakes
elves-high
elves-wood
elves-wild
...

I know most proposed factions will (and should!) never be included in mainline Wesnoth. But it's seems certain that more units will be added. I'd make the individual folders as small and specific as can be reasonably done.

The magi could deserve their own folder because most people who have played more HttT than MP will not think of them as loyalists. They are, after all, a distinct group.

to keep things neat i'd also suggest "human-loyalist", "human-outlaws" etc.

The dark adept deserves inclusion as undead because he can become undead, that is a litch.