Packing utility for games
Community Forums/Showcase/Packing utility for games
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| I didn't quite know what to put for the title, as this program I'm writing is kind of hard to describe... Basically, it's a program that converts a folder of your game projects into a pure text file. Then you could copy and paste the contents of that file into a post here. Then, anyone that wants to use that program/game/whatever can copy that post into a file, download the free unpacker I wrote for it, and it then unpacks the files into their original state! The main idea was to provide a way to post fully compiled games here without needing your own website. Currently, you can only post source code here. With my program, you can compile it and then post it here. Or even just include external media (models, sounds, etc.) with it! My question is, is this legal, because Blitz would technically be hosting whatever files anyone posts. Also, would there be any interest in it? Thanks! |
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| a) why wouldn't it be legal? b) I wouldn't use it, it would just be silly....there are free uploading sites, and I think u will just annoy BRL staff, as they will have to deal with database entries that are in the MB on there server. Plus I think there is a character/line limit on Code Boxes. |
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| yah...cool code.....but not really useful. |
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| So, people are going to start posting 2+MB text files into posts here? I think you may make a lot of people unhappy. |
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| I didn't quite know what to put for the title, as this program I'm writing is kind of hard to describe... Basically, it's a program that converts a folder of your game projects into a pure text file. Then you could copy and paste the contents of that file into a post here. Then, anyone that wants to use that program/game/whatever can copy that post into a file, download the free unpacker I wrote for it, and it then unpacks the files into their original state! Posting converted binary text in a forum would be a massively bad idea, since I'm sure that BRL isn't exactly waiting to store who knows how many MB of data in their database that's undoubtedbly not designed with that in mind. 'normal' postings are a few hundred or maybe a couple of thousand characters in size. If you start posting binary files, those messages could be hundreds or even thousands of times the size of a typical posting, putting a much higher load on the database server, very long load times, massively increased bandwidth (every user looking at the thread essentially downloads the file each time they look) Gives all those downsides, I'm sure that posting converted binary files on the forum will get one banned in no time. Anyway, if you do have a real reason to convert binary info to text format (which does not involve posting it on the forum), then there is no reason to reinvent the wheel -- there are already several established standards that do exactly that: - UUencode/UUdecode - MIME - Base64: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=49450 Note that email doesn't support binary files either, and all email clients use one of the above variants to convert the binary file to text and include it in the body of the message. The email client itself hides this from the user and shows the 'attached' documents, but from the internet's point of view those attachments are plain text just like everything else. |
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| So, people are going to start posting 2+MB text files into posts here? Nope. IIRC, there's a 65,536 character limit per post. |
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| It was just an idea that I was kind of working on. Thanks for warning me! |
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| Things like this are a great thing to really know where you stand as a programmer and give you ideas for other projects. Good job on making something you thought would be a good challenge. People need to reinvent the wheel on occasion so they understand higher level concepts and are not bound to specific pieces of software or library. |
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| on the reinventing the wheel bit im all for people remaking the umpteenth gazillionth pong break out etc, but the whole world dont need to see it but coding said games helps you progress onto more complex games and bmp to txt ... some utils allow you to use bmp's etc as data in the source code, so this if worked on, could be your take on the concept |
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