Cabinet Files

[LavaFlaminG6]

I'm not sure exactly how to phrase this question, since I'm not very experienced on the topic, but I've recently been interested in saving multiple files (images, sound, etc.) into a single compressed 'cabinet' file. I believe this is what it is called that I am looking for. It is for a game that allows you to create your own character with an editor and then applies the sprites/sounds to an active object.

I was wondering if anybody had experience with this sort of thing in MMF2/CF2.5? It would be greatly appreciated if they share their knowledge.

-Thanks

[lh37]

By cabinet, are you referring to a .cab file?

If so, I'm not aware of any extension for Fusion that let's you pack/unpack into Microsoft's Cabinet format specifically, and I would advise not going down that route.
In theory, you could use any file type (like a .zip) and give it a .cab file extension if you want, even though it's not a cabinet file. Or you could assign your own file extension so a user could double click this single file containing their save data and it'll open with your editor, much like a Microsoft Word document would.

• Archive Object -- let's you compress, encrypt archive (zip) files.
• Directory Packer -- packs/unpacks an entire directory from/to one file.

I haven't used these objects for a long time since MMF2, so I'm not certain if they still work 100% in Fusion 2.5.
They should be available in the Fusion Extension Manager

There may be other extensions I missed, but these will let you pack the individual files, (such as your sound/images/text files) for the character into a file for the user.
If you go this route, you would create a temporary directory so the editor can unpack the files and work with them. And equally saving will pack them back for the user for later.

[LavaFlaminG6]

I'm not entirely sure if it's .cab, I just heard from another member that may be what it's called. In essence I'm looking for a way to save/open files with an extension or custom method, with the file holding multiple images/sounds (if images/sounds are in different objects that's fine), but so that if you were to send it to somebody, they could NOT open the file with another program (like WinRAR), and instead, open it only with the editor I create using the custom method/extension (same concept as Arrays, but with more than just numbers). Thanks for the tip though, I will use that if there is honestly no other way.