XMB Files : What are they for ?

[Stan`]

Today I tested something that's been on my mind for quite a long time, I tried to remove XML files from the public.zip as they supposedly cached under XMB files for speed reasons. After doing that the game won't even start not even atlas.

Why is it that dae are succesfully stored as PMDs but XMBs seems to fail to be of any use?

[niektb]

AFAIK XMB's are nothing more the cached versions of XML (but I don't know any details)

[Stan`]

Yeah, but my question is what the point of caching stuff, if the game doesn't use it, and still needs the original files...

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 4/27/2016 at 1:37 PM, stanislas69 said:

Yeah, but my question is what the point of caching stuff, if the game doesn't use it, and still needs the original files...

The game does use them. If there is newer XML than XMB, then the XML overtake. Game caches lots of stuff to binary format as far as I can tell.

Edited April 28, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Stan`]

Then there is no point of including them in public.zip ^^ That makes the zip heavier for no reason ^^

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

11 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:

Then there is no point of including them in public.zip ^^ That makes the zip heavier for no reason ^^

Maybe originals included for modders or reason game fail to launch if you remove them may be some kind of (obsolete?) crosscheck?

Edited April 28, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Stan`]

Ah you're right forgot to check that.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Maybe anti-cheat method too. Don't know. Ask @sanderd17

[sanderd17]

Sorry, don't know the details of XMB either. Up until this thread, I didn't even realise we cached the XML files for the release (I knew about the meshes and the textures, but not about the xml files).

[Stan`]

@sanderd17 Do you think that deserves a ticket ?

[sanderd17]

Better ask someone like leper or perhaps Philip first. They should have a better idea of what the xmb file are, and if those file can work without xml.

[Stan`]

Ah right forgot if I asked @leper  @elexis or @Ykkrosh by the time I was active on IRC. Will try to drop by if I have the time.

[Stan`]

My bad, I had 7-zip open which would prevent the game from starting (windows and lack of support multiple usages on the same file). So the XML can be removed. see this ticket

[leper]

Yes, the XML files aren't really needed, but are kept so modders can easily check what templates are used and possibly fix only a single one without requiring them to get the file from the repository. Also the XML files are not that huge, and in case we ever want to update the engine (possibly including updates to the caching format) we can get away with not updating the mod data (the engine would then notice that the cached files are not what it expects and just cache them anew).

So we could remove the XML files from the packed release, but I'm not convinced if that would really make anything easier and will likely make one of the few things you can actually mod for a release harder.

[historic_bruno]

XMBs are just for the sake of efficiency, they are a more compact binary format that's faster to load than the bloated text format of XML. It's a similar reason for converting COLLADA XML files into PMD and PSA files. They are lossy formats though; they don't preserve all the structure and contents of the original source.

On 5/2/2016 at 3:33 PM, leper said:

Yes, the XML files aren't really needed, but are kept so modders can easily check what templates are used and possibly fix only a single one without requiring them to get the file from the repository. Also the XML files are not that huge, and in case we ever want to update the engine (possibly including updates to the caching format) we can get away with not updating the mod data (the engine would then notice that the cached files are not what it expects and just cache them anew).

So we could remove the XML files from the packed release, but I'm not convinced if that would really make anything easier and will likely make one of the few things you can actually mod for a release harder.

Plus, if we add something like an entity editor to Atlas, it would be much easier to work with the source XML than a proprietary binary format. The output of such an editor should be XML anyway, so people can share them and see the results in a human-readable format.

[Stan`]

Quote

It's better to allow people to fiddle around with the xml files if they want to, and if they want to distribute a mod they can do that properly in a separate folder. We don't want to make the code base more difficult to browse either.

Why not include Daes as well then ? Since nobody can import PMDs anymore

 

[leper]

Because

find binaries/data/mods/public -name '*.dae' -print0 | du --files0-from=- -s -c -h | grep total
484M	total

that seems like a lot.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, leper said:

Because

find binaries/data/mods/public -name '*.dae' -print0 | du --files0-from=- -s -c -h | grep total
484M	total

that seems like a lot.

Could wait to make that determination at the end of development cycle I think, when download size finally determined. Remember, some AAA titles are 10+ GB. 0 A.D. already saving ton space by not use pre-render cutscenese.

Edited May 7, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[leper]

5 hours ago, totallynotmythos said:

Could wait to make that determination at the end of development cycle I think, when download size finally determined. Remember, some AAA titles are 10+ GB. 0 A.D. already saving ton space by not use pre-render cutscenese.

Which still ignores the fact that the DAE files aren't the actual source files and there have been issues with importing some of those for modification. Also someone wanting to modify some meshes should preferably do so by using the actual source files which should be in the art_source repo, so increasing the size of the public mod by a third without any actual benfit seems pointless and will stay pointless.

[historic_bruno]

On 5/7/2016 at 6:28 AM, stanislas69 said:

Why not include Daes as well then ? Since nobody can import PMDs anymore

 

I don't think we'll include a model/animation editor with the game. But data supported by the editor(s), whether actors, entities, maps, etc. should be bundled as XML. We don't have an entity editor yet, but it's a planned feature

[Stan`]

Well what is the actor editor.exe then ?

[historic_bruno]

1 minute ago, stanislas69 said:

Well what is the actor editor.exe then ?

That's the actor editor, which lets you edit visual things in the game: props, units, buildings, flora. I would like that to be integrated with Atlas at some point, and then add an entity editor, which would modify and create new entity templates.

[Stan`]

Ah okay  Wonder if that's so hard to do. Might need to wait for trompetin17 before that, cause his UI is way more modular.