Editor Troubles

[TheGreatCthulhu]

I managed to get an answer to some of my questions from Thomas (here):

Thomas said...
About editor paths:

The absolute paths are not a problem. While this should not be the case (most are relative), the engine just uses the paths to pick the correct resource if there are several with the same file name. The engine keeps a list of all files (search paths are in resources.cfg), and can therefor load files even if just the name (no path) is given.

If there are several with the same name it works its way backwards (the folder the actual file is in) and then checks for each identically named files how many directories fit, in the end picking the file which most picks.

Also, I found this at the hpl2 wiki - the 3rd party tools section, under Blender entry:

Important information about images

Textures(.dds, .jpg. tga and other general image formats) and material files(.mat, the engine specific file) - The material file is an XML file that contains information on what images is used in the material to create the texture and other properties. When the game loads a 3D model it searches for the name of the image used as a texture for the model(the .dds etc) and then replaces that name with the extension .mat to know what material file to use. Because of this it is important that the texture used has the same name as the material file, with the exception of the extension.
[emphasis by me]

If any of the members of Frictional happens to read this - if I may suggest something: the above is pretty important engine-related information that should be located in a more appropriate page, instead of just being a side note on the Blender page.

This is somewhat non-standard behavior, but I can see why it was implemented that way - no modifications to the exported COLLADA file are needed.
As a side effect, if one tries to assign an (engine-specific) material file with a name that doesn't adhere to this design, it won't work.

This info probably needs to be put somewhere where it'll be available to anyone...


I'd also like to know more about animations (in case where one wants to create a brand new entity). It seems that the scenario is similar here, but I'm not sure what exactly are the underlying rules. If someone can shed more light on that.
For example, are the *.dae_anim just renamed *.dae files, or there's more to it?