Binary Data Managment: Extract/Release All?

The amount of binary data for my game keeps growing every day and it's becoming a bit of a chore setting up events to release and extract the data. I've thought about ways to automatize the process.

The easiest would probably be to:
1) Put together a list with the paths to all the binary data files
2) Included the list file in the binary data
3) Extract said file and load into a list on startup
4) Run loop and extract each element in the list

However, putting together this list could also get tiresome. I guess I could automize the compilation of this list as well, but I'd love to have the possibility to "Extract All" and "Release All" binary data. Are perhaps all files automatically released on ending the application?

Any reason why do you need to extract the files? Usually objects that support embedded binary files can load them directly from the EXE. Almost all objects except the INI object (on Windows) and the objects that play external video files like DirectShow, etc.

PS: yes I think all the files you've extracted are automatically released when the application exits.

Really? So the Array Object can load a binary file without having to resort to Extract File/Use Temporary Filename?

Yes, just load your file as if it was a normal file with the full pathname or Apppath$ + etc, the Array object will first try to load it from the embedded files in the EXE and if it doesn't find it it'll try to load the external file. Same thing for the Active Picture object, etc. You need to extract files only in specific cases if the object doesn't support direct loading from the EXE (for example the Direct Show or AVI objects that require external files).

D'oh! Well that would explain a few things...

I have my editor and game all in one frame; when loading map array files with the editor I'd use the full path which caused some problems. Now it's obvious to me that it would load the file stored as binary data rather than the latest saved file on the harddrive. The problem disappeared when I started loading the files using just a sub-directory path.

Was this mentioned in the .pdf guide? Thanks for clearing this up! :)

This is (will be XD) incredibly useful.
Thanks both for pulling out the question / shedding light!

Can anyone make a quick example of how to do this? I'm not sure I'm doing this correctly. I think I'm just loading the actual file on my local machine and not the binary-embedded version.

Edit:

Think I finally got this sorted out. Assuming the object you're working with supports accessing the file from binary without extraction, the expression should look like:

"\subfolder\file.txt"
"\subfolder\subfolder2\file.ini"

That works for the List and File objects I used for my trials.

Just wanted to post again in case someone relies on this in the future. What I mentioned in my last post doesn't work after all. It was only working on my machine and not others. I ended up extracting the binary as per the standard method, then moving it from the bintemp location with the file object

The PDF needs updating as this method was brought up to speed on-par with the exporters after the PDF was written.

Yea. At first that pdf was a godsend.... until I found out it had just enough misinformation to cause me weeks of headaches. It would be great if any future guides could include using arrays from Binary Data as well as calling sounds. Ini files seems to run under their own set of rules (like the fact they don't need to be explicitly saved by an action), so they are a sort of misleading example. The Windows runtime also seems to now bypass the Extract/release workflow, so maybe it should be removed or deprecated in F2.5 altogether?

EDIT: I should also mention that on iOS, you can save array files that come from Binary Data, which was a bit misleading to me at first. I assumed it was actually overwriting the array file in the .ipa, but now I think it must be writing a copy of the array file somewhere locally. This caused me to believe all runtimes worked this way. Ultimately, if you have multiple runtimes in a single mfa source, you have to establish multiple save routines. It would be nice if the help file at least had a description of what Binary Data is and what it should be used for. As it stands, it only tells you that the Binary Data button opens a window. T_T

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mobichan

The Windows runtime also seems to now bypass the Extract/release workflow, so maybe it should be removed or deprecated in F2.5 altogether?

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Can you elaborate on this? I JUST implemented the extraction process into my program...does it not work consistently!?

@ratty:
Yves wrote: "Yes, just load your file as if it was a normal file with the full pathname or Apppath$ + etc, the Array object will first try to load it from the embedded files in the EXE and if it doesn't find it it'll try to load the external file. Same thing for the Active Picture object, etc. You need to extract files only in specific cases if the object doesn't support direct loading from the EXE (for example the Direct Show or AVI objects that require external files)."

That probably means you can use either method (extract/release OR simply call the file by its full path) but it is still a little ambiguous. I wish there was a more concise explanation of how and why Binary Data should be used.

Oh, ok. I misunderstood and thought you had said Windows wasn't allowing us to extract/release. Thanks for the clarification. I chose that route because I couldn't figure out how to call the files from binary without release. It's really hard and tedious to test that since you pretty much need a secondary machine for it.