The Asset Management Tool is a suite of operations that work on the game assets. This includes migrating assets to new locations, creating and managing asset link files, optimization of the assets.
NOTE:
Before using this tool please read about the engine’s link files feature: Link Files .
This tool is only available when the user folder is the same with the game folder, so operations will be happening directly on the files that exist. It is usually used by the developers to deduplicate assets, not much needed for the modding.
Add Files
You can manually add files you want to move to the common /assets folder, if other duplicates will be found in the current list, they will be added to their corresponding duplicates (found by content hash), though we recommend using the Search All Game Duplicates to generate the list since this will find all duplicates in the game.
Save List
Will save the current duplicate list to be worked on later. Attention, this list is not updated when assets are moved/deleted/added, it reflects the files and hashes at the time of the scan, so if you update svn this might not be the same with what’s on the drive, so you might need to rescan again the game and regenerate it.
Load List
Load the asset duplicates list from the drive (will clear up the current list)
Clear List
Clears the current asset duplicates list (wont clear the list on the drive, you can always reload that. If you also want that to be cleared, after clear press Save List)
Search All Game Duplicates - [recommended way to search duplicates]
This will search all game duplicated assets across all game data folders, of the selected files types, this operation takes a long time since it computes the content hashes for each asset in the entire game, then compares and gathers all duplicates
Search duplicates of the assets in the list, in folder
This will search for duplicates of the assets that are already in the current list, in a specific location, for example you have already 42 items in the list, and you choose /art to scan for duplicates for those items, if it will find duplicates for those, it will add them to the list
START MIGRATION
Starts migration and deduplication of the assets by firstly creating a .link file for the duplicate asset at their location, then copying the FIRST file to the specified new path (in the /assets folder) and delete the other copies, so only link files remain and the single asset in the /assets folder path
Skip UNDEFINED target paths
If checked, it will just skip the records that have UNDEFINED in their target path, that is the user did not assign them a final path yet, if unchecked it will not start any migration and will show an error dialog if UNDEFINED found in any of the records.
Set Target Folder Path
When you select records in the list, you can set their target folder path at once, for example you select several textures and you what them in /assets/textures/bricks so you would write that path in the text box and press the button, the operation will only replace the path part in the target path for all the selected items, leaving the file name intact
Check For Invalid Links
Will check for invalid link across all game folders. An invalid link is a link file that has a non existent target asset path
Delete All Invalid Link Files
Will delete all invalid link files (on drive) if they point to invalid target asset paths
Try Fixing Invalid Links
Tries to fix the link files by searching all assets inside /assets folder, by hash, compare it to the link’s stored hash and if they match, it will fix the target asset path stored in the link file
This tool will scan and check for invalid file names, the rules being lowercase letters, numbers and underscores only, will also suggest a name which you can copy and do manual renames, taking care that the files are not used by mods etc.
By default the path is /assets, but you can also search in other folders.
The delinker tool will copy the files that the links point to, for the specified folder, recursive, next to the link files, hence when loading an asset, that actual file will take precedence and the link will be ignore, this way you can send a level or a mod without worrying about external files pointed by the links, everything being local to that folder now.
The delinker wont erase the link files, since its not needed, the engine will load the actual files next to them (same name but no .link extension)
The link files will be needed by the relinker which deletes the actual asset files found next to the link files, hence making the links now take precedence.
A delink item operation may fail on asset path not found to copy next to the link. It will be shown as FAILED, in red.
The relinker tool will delete the asset files that it finds next to any link file, for the specified folder, recursive, this way restoring the links as the first thing to be loaded (hence using the internal path stored in the links).
To avoid unwanted problems, the deleted assets will be stored in the game root folder inside: __relinkN folder, using their initial paths, where N is a counter, incremented on each relink procedure, so no asset is lost, user can delete these folders or they can retrieve the old asset, if maybe was modified and they want that version back. This measure was taken because we dont want full destructive logic when it comes to user data.
A relink item operation may fail either on disk full, cannot copy file to the backup folder or cannot delete the asset next to the link. It will show FAILED as status, in red.
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