Best way to dynamically load assets

Questions
#1

Does defold support dynamically loading assets? I intend to use quite a few really hi-res graphics (4k graphics) for my next game (I have to use hi-res since svg isn’t supported), and I would like a better loading system than just a ten-second lag on program launch.
Thanks!

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#2

Yes! Live update is what you’re looking for:

I used it in an HTML5 game, it worked great. For apps you have to store the content on a server, all explained in the docs above.

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#3

Can I self-host instead of using AWS?

#4

Which platform(s) are you targetting?

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#5

Desktop and mobile (not web, but dealing with large number of massive assets)

#6

For desktop you might be able to store them locally, but not sure if that makes sense. For mobile I believe the only option is AWS.

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#7

zip isn’t supported on mobile?

#8

You can self host your files on any file server (not just AWS).

Not sure what other users use though. @pkeod @agulev, do you have any suggestions?

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#9

how do I do that? is there a hidden “other” option in live update?

#10

You export to “.zip” as you mentioned.
Then (regardless of AWS or not), you will need to load these files from a file server. The .zip contains the files that the live update will request later on.

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#11

You can try it with a local python server, e.g. “python m SimpleHTTPServer”, which will give you a file server (from the current directory), at “http://localhost:8000”

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#12

I think there was a misunderstanding in the original post. @Griffin is not needing live update features but instead needing to use collection proxies to not load everything at once. https://defold.com/manuals/collection-proxy/

Use Monarch and only reference the atlases you need on the screens they are mentioned on. This makes it easy for general assets, you load between screens.

We have 50+ location backgrounds often in our games, these are loaded and unloaded dynamically with collection proxies too. So max there are 2 loaded at once and they are usually swapped between screens.

What do you mean by 4k graphics? You should know that max texture size matters a lot especially on mobile you should try to keep atlases at least below 2048, but even targeting 1024 is also a good idea. This can be done with texture profiles.

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#13

Is there also a way to download and load assets from a url? Or will I have to make an atlas with a 1x1 image of every single hexadecimal color and make my own encoder with an absolutely ridiculous quantity of gui nodes?

#14

You can download images from the net and set their textures to nodes. For other assets, you can download them too, and as long as you have a way to make them useful, you can use them.

Here’s a bare bones example of downloading an image and setting it on a node.

http.request(url, "GET", function(self, id, response)
	if response.status ~= 200 and response.status ~= 304 then
		print("Couldn't access URL of image")
	else
		local downloaded_image = image.load(response.response)
		if not downloaded_image then return nil, "Failed to load image" end
		
		gui.new_texture(url, downloaded_image.width, downloaded_image.height, downloaded_image.type, downloaded_image.buffer)
		gui.set_texture_data(url, downloaded_image.width, downloaded_image.height, downloaded_image.type, downloaded_image.buffer)
		gui.set_texture(my_node, url)
	end
end, nil, nil, {timeout = 0.75})

Typically if you want to download resources like this you will also want to cache them to disk and use their cached versions based on a file manifest so you do not waste your user’s bandwidth. I’ll post an example of how to do this sometime in the future.

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#15

Sorry to necro this thread but would you still be up for doing this, @Pkeod ? :sweat_smile:

Or maybe someone knows an example of this that already exists!

I’m personally looking for a solution that would work on HTML5.

1 Like
#16

Maybe this is what you are looking for - Use Live Update to improve load speed of HTML5 game

3 Likes