There are so many mods that share the same leaderheads, and leaderhead art is such a huge part of any mods size, that it would be nice if mods could share the same leaderheads and other art by path rather than making a new copy of the art. Unfortunatly, most mods use an fpk to reduce load time (how fast would it be without the art at all?!) so you can't simply raid them by path.

For instance, anybody interested in a Sci Fi (wince) mod would probably get MarsNow, so I figured they would have it on hand so my FutureMod could simply raid MarsNow for leaderhead art without having to include the same basic leaderheads again.

Unfortunately, due to FPK,

<NIF>Mods/marsjetzt-v03/Assets/Art/leaderheads/126)Indian/asoka.nif</NIF>

doesn't work the way

<NIF>Mods/The Road to War/Assets/art/LeaderHeads/finland/sid.nif</NIF>

does.


So here's my idea. Have art packs that can be downloaded and installed, then mods can simply use paths into the art packs to use the art.

Now, I have produced very litle original art, so I would have to get permission of the original creators, but I'm thinking I'd be willing to put something like this together.

So what about all the extra art in said FPK, that wont be used. Wont it have to load the entire FPK where that one leaderhead is? That will be a whole lot of useless files and a whole lot of extra initial loading time.

The idea is that none of it will be in fpk. Anything that is in an fpk cannot be used by path, you have to load the mod and let the fpk unpack or whatever it does. I've tried it, assets in the fpk of another mod cannot be used directly, you have to unpack the fpk and copy them into your own mod. So the idea is that there would be a set of art packs that mod users could download and install in their mods directory (I'd set them up as little mods that don't do anything but add leaders or units or whatever, not intended to be played just to be used for "path raiding").

Then modders would use the art in these art packs by simply quoting a path into them rather than including them in the mod itself. Rather than increasing redundancy it would tend to reduce it. Certainly, if a mod only used one non standard leaderhead and that was the only mod you wanted, downloading or using the art pack would be silly. However, from what I see the same art is used over and over in different mods, and people that play mods tend to download more than one. Thus it would reduce download time, load times, and memory size of mods generally.

Ok, I misinterperted that part. I guess its a solid idea then. Im all for streamlining and condensing things. It would decrease the total size of mods and total space that multiple mods take up on your HD. But being that the game would have to search several different art files in different places, wouldnt it atleast take the same initialization/loading time, or even a little more? The whole benefit of the FPK is it takes less time to load it. Ive tried loading a lot of art that wasnt packed and it took forever.

I don't know. I use exclusively unpacked art and path raiding in my mod and it does kind of load slow, but what's a couple of minutes when you are going to play a mod for hours. However, I don't know if path raided art is even loaded when the mod is started or if it is loaded when it is used. I'm going to upload all the Cfkane, Ekmek, and TheCapo galleries to AtomicGamer as such a resource as soon as I get permission and use them in my own mod anyway.

Quite frankly I think you have a genius idea there. Good luck with putting it all together.

So far, I've uploaded all the leaderheads of Ekmek, the Capo, and cfkane as three big packs onto AtomicGamer and put the links in the civfanatics Downloads database. However, I'll have to redo it because a lot of them are folders inside folders, unecessary packaging, but more importantly a lot don't have buttons, so I will have to make them from screenshots (I started by using nifscope shots but felt bad about it and started over). And of course I want to provide xml, at least the CIV4ArtDefines_Leaderhead. And the first example will be my own mod, when I put them all in there by an optional xml patch but tell downloaders to install the leaderhead art separately. Its that, all hundred or so extra leaderheads, or just the limited array of standard ones. Not that my mod is a best seller that will make it happen (whatever) but after that I might make alternate versions of more popular mods that do the same thing.

FPK and the enormous mod sizes it facilitates are just so totally unecessary.

Tholish: If you could post a list of which buttons you need I could check which ones I have made buttons for already. I wont have any for CFKane's LHs but I have plenty for Ekmeks and Capo's.