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Resource files contain adventure game data. A resource package contains information how to create a resource file. The resource packer is used to edit resource packages and to create resource files.
To distribute your game, you may pack your image files and text mappings into one or several resource files. The resource files support compression to reduce the amount of space needed. Compression also prevents cheating by exploring the game data.
Files inside of a resource file are accessed by an index, which is the file name, optionally including path information. To load a file, ADePT first searches inside of the resource files, that are named in the Game item, then in the file system.
Note: Since JPEG and RLE-Bitmaps are already compressed, it is usually not efficient to compress them when they are stored in a resource file.
Note: Only images and text mappings, but no font, sound, music, or video files may be stored in a resource file. The icon and palette of the game item as well as the cursors for tools and objects must not be stored in a resource file. You may store any data in a resource file, but only images and text mappings will be accessible by the game.
The resource packer is a small program to pack files into a resource file. Its interface consists of a file list, two option fields and several buttons. You may add files by drag & drop.
The file list contains a list of the files to store into the resource file. The left column shows the name of the file in the file system, the right column the index used in the resource file. The file type is shown by the right icon. The left icon is a minus for a compressed file and a plus without compression. To change the compression for a file, click on the minus/plus or double click on the file name. With the context menu (right click), you may change the compression of several files and sort the file list by name, index, or type. When using a mask for the file name to change the compression, ? means an arbitrary character and * means an arbitrary sequence of characters.
The compression option determines the degree of compression to use. The path depth option allows to include the complete path (0) or some amount of the path information in the index. The path is cut after the given number of back-slashes counted from the beginning or from the end.
The menu buttons are:
From the command line, you may specify a resource package to open into the list or a resource file to show its content. With /p, a resource package is used to create a resource file directly.
The file format of the resource packages is plain text and may be changed with a common text editor. Each line is either an option (starting with #, separated with = from the value) or a file to include in the resource file (starting with + to store it uncompressed or with - to store it compressed).
There are two options: