Anyone else feels like filesystem needs a refresh?

[Worrazen]

I think I noticed some talk about this how it changed somewhere back a few years ago.

 

Now I'm obviously a newcomer any maybe I just but I have extensive PC-geek history behind me, and this is just my own logic and experience telling me it could be different.

 

Now I know it's not a conscious decision to make something bad, I'm not accusing, I'm assuming over the years stuff has been added but it didn't get problematic, yet.

 

I don't know if the filestructure overhaul is in the works, but it would make sense for such a big version change. But I'm afraid it may be a more bigger task and it may be looked into later after the merge, if that's the case people should be warned ahead not to set things in stone as far as modding goes as things

 

Ofcourse the recent new feature of being able to put cockpit textures (liveries) into the username profile folder is a great addition.

 

I think it would clear things up if you chould choose different cockpit liveries in-game as you can with external textures.

other

But I have no complaints, the updater is just awesome, I didn't have any important mods, just some small edits, but it did save all those files which I changed, it's really great because I forgot and it nicely puts into _backup, never saw any 3D sim/game do such a thing.

 

• - Stuff appears to be a little bit here and a little bit there
  
• - Some official textures are unpacked and inside liveries folders, ?
  
• - More individual unpacked files means more stress on filesystem congestion
  
• - The "Mods" and "CoreMods" ... wouldn't "Modules" make more sense?
  
• - some folders have first letter capitalized, some do not
  
• - Sound files are non-packed
  
• -
  

 

I think I figured out the idea behind CoreMods and Mods folders, Core is for the free stuff part of Caucasus and DCSW, and the Mods is for additional paid modules, however the Caucasus map data is in the Mods\terrains folder, so my assumption isn't working, im out of ideas.

 

I did figure out the cockpit and external textures of an aircraft are separated because you can still use the other paid planes as an AI, so when you buy the module you get it's cockpit textures, so external textures are then part of the DCSW Core ... I just don't think namings of the folders make sense for someone who's on the outside.

 

 

 

These images show only DCSW 1.5 and FC3 - so in 2.5 at least for me is NTTR and A-10C, and then everyone gets the updated Caucasus Map which would probably larger if there's updated textures and the rest, and what about all the people with tons of other modules.

 

As you can see the size is not a problem, it's more with sorting and cleanly ordering things, I'm just a cleanliness buff, that's just my thing, I was like that from the beginning, I never had a teenager dudebro-style room back in the day with all kinds of crap thrown around the floor or dusty, I clean and organize all my data and archives on my own PC very professionally and that also reflects how I organize physical belongings and other things.

 

 

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I was thinking what's the consensus here, are my findings similar to what you think ?

 

If I'm making a too big deal about this, then someone explain to me why this makes more sense, I have no idea how it was before I only started seriously playing like mere weeks after 1.5 came out with DX11.

Edited January 30, 2017 by Worrazen

[Flagrum]

I think, it is a non-issue really. It works for ED - and that is all that matters. Aesthetics like folder name capitalization ... I mean, really?

 

Besides that, while it may not be obvious in every case and while there are in fact some odd legacy structures, most parts are actually quite well organized and make a lot of sense. You just need to get a better understanding what is in there and why.

 

For example the CoreMods vs. Mods issue: CoreMods contains the parts of a (3rd party) module that has to be available for everyone. Namely the AI variants of the respective aircraft. And Mods contains the playable aircraft. This way you can fly on MP servers and see everyone in their own aircraft, but you don't have to have bought that module for yourself.

 

The only thing where you might have a point is the packed vs. unpacked issue. But it is 2017, we all got TB hard drives or SSDs and those files are only touched (loaded) once when you start a mission. So ... maybe we are talking about a performance difference of fractions of seconds while the mission loads (usually 10 ...20 ...30 seconds).

[Buzzles]

If you've been paying attention over a long period of time, ED are making slow progress to moving stuff around and tidying it up.

 

The structure in 1.5 (/2.0) has quite a few differences from say, 1.2.x (last non EDGE release).

[Worrazen]

Oh gosh, the "Mods" folder name suppose to be a short for "Modules" ... ?

 

Is it necessary to make it confusing with modding, or is the 255 character limit that important?

Edited January 31, 2017 by Worrazen

[ac5]

I completely agree with Wader8, and thank you for bringing this up!

 

As primitive as FSX was, the folder structure was far clearer,

every aircraft had a folder for itself, with its sounds, liveries (textures)

cockpit. That made modding / adding FAR easier than DCS 1.5.xx or 2.0.xx

where appears to be a little bit here and a little bit there, as Wader8

perfectly described.

[Worrazen]

Oops didn't mean to post this into Wishlist, actually yes, because I wasn't sure it's that kind of an issue technically, for most people.

 

I meant to say filestructure, but I guess I can't fix the title anymore.

 

Anyways, I now understand the idea behind the cockpit separation, it makes sense limited assets are available for the base core, where all the AI models and other's people modules work. That kind of a system can well be preserved and as long as it's clear and optimzed and fixed it's all fine even if it takes a bit more browsing, that browsing will be fast when things are in places you expect them to be, but quite a loit of texturs seem to be unpacked, so I wondered if those were the offical ones or not, It's not a big deal, I didn't install any mods, so there's not much to wonder, but these are the bits that slow you down when you browse around.

 

So I never meant for it to be completely replaced, I though it would need some refresh, for example like why is Cacasus map not in CoreMods but in Modules, but it's part of the free package and it's also part of all the purchased modules, it's not like half the map is missing if you don't have A-10C, so how it's that not a core thing ? Stuff like that, etc.

 

I get the space and SSD issue, but I can't buy a worthwhile SSD I could use and then use it just for DCS, I have a SSD for OS and I choosed not to put DCS on it, technically I could and get a new SSD but hey I spent on NTTR, GPU, A-10C and a new monitor all in last 3 months so it's not worthwhile a SSD for DCS, the GPU made a huge difference and pretty much eliminated all the laggies, so with all the unpacked soundfiles, I know it's not a problem ingame, and probably just loading times, not really performance, but it's still having to seek from the hdd each file, I am combating this with some good defragmentation procedures after each update or reinstall.

 

I have like 7 HDDs with tons of space so space is not a problem, packing those sound files into zips is more of a filesystem optimization, and ofcourse those zips shouldn't use compression, since it wouldn't compress anything practical with these kind of files (if legacy zip even has that option)

Edited February 2, 2017 by Worrazen

[Buzzles]

for example like why is Cacasus map not in CoreMods but in Modules, but it's part of the free package and it's also part of all the purchased modules, it's not like half the map is missing if you don't have A-10C, so how it's that not a core thing ? Stuff like that, etc.

 

It wasn't in /Mods/terrain/ until *very* recently. It was previously in Bazar/World (I think). Prep for 2.5 has seen it shift location. It might have moved again internally.

[Worrazen]

Revised my feedback and made my case clearer:

 

Well now that terrains will also be their own modules, I guess technically Caucasus map may be regarded as a normal Module, and you can then say it just happens to be free by coincidence. However, I'm actually going to follow the established logic and add my changes, but most of the time I will only be pointing out where the structure isn't adhering to it's own rules.

 

Please note that what I'm doing here is just about making something really good, how could it be in almost perfect case, and I do not want to appear as some smart guy lecturing the developers. The sizes, amounts, download times, and other factors may not be practically problematic for most users. It is up to the developers to choose at which time will they squeeze in such an optimization.

 

I know that folder/filename capitalization is nothing techincal, but at least somewhat of a factor in terms visual clarity when browsing.

 

Such a filestructure refresh and optimization should also include code cleanup in the asset loading part of the engine to clean out obsolete filepaths, additionally decreasing load times by saving some time looking for files in the wrong places. I do recognize that some of these "obsolete" file scans are part of the alternative location lookups, as with liveries, those are excused, but the engine should disable this lookup if the description.lua points to the file inside the main filestructure (i do not know if this is specific case is true, it may already have that optimization)

 

The core idea behind the filestructure is actually good, separating what's playable or not lowers the download size and filesystem footprint for users without many modules, and it looks like there's some data that is included in the initial download that is part of a paid module, because of this, everyone is forced do download this data even those who haven't purchased a particular module, like the A-10C.

 

 

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Further Analysis

 

 

I think every module that is FULLY PLAYABLE and part of the initial FREE download should be regarded as a CoreModule and put into the CoreModules Folder, and there's only 3. Two planes and Caucasus Map.

 

Looking at CacucasusBase, the aircraft specific terrain should not be in this folder. Such as the A-10C TAD textures. These should be part of the paid-part of the A10-C data.

 

Looking at the vfstextures folder, that "vfs" probably means virtual filesystem, it's not a big deal, but once the sound files and other things get put into packed zips, this "vfs" thing probably isn't necessary to be highlighted as it won't be speciality feature anymore, probably isn't anything new in the industry anymore either, most games usually don't bother pointing this out anymore, however it may make things more clear for the development at ED in some cases, so the developers may disagree.

 

Static objects which were primairly built around Caucus Map are also available in 2.0 Alpha which only has NTTR, these should be in the appropriate Bazar folder, and I think they are. The building textures in these zips are caucasus specific maps that aren't user editable. This is correct.

 

Looking inside zips, many textures are named with only one terrain in mind, "land_0_2_5bl.dds", keeping all these names in check in the programming side is not easy, but I think it would be useful for all kind of future debug and ofcourse modding purposes good to have these filenames all use the prefix of the map name, therefore "Caucasus_land_0_2_5bl.dds"

And a prefix can be easily computer applied without the developer labor to manually do each one ofcourse.

 

--

Continuing:

 

Additionally, The M-2000C, SA342 and Mig-21Bis are having their own kind of filestrcuture logic, they stand out from the rest.

 

Furthermore there's a few weird extensions and extension-less files.

This is just from the Program Initialization part.

 

These don't cause that much load time, I know it's fiddly, but it just feels better having that cleaned up.

 

 

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However looking at just how much data do simple external livery textures take, I think, this is more than just filestructure issue, but a very interesing feature can make for a big solution to this.

 

The Livery Asset Manager:

 

The Initial FREE Core DCSW Installation should come with only a few liveries for all of the aircraft, developers would decide which ones would be part of the core.

 

Livery Asset Manager would be accessible from the main menu.

- 2 sections, external and internal (cockpit) liveries

- pick one mode to start browsing

- browser would contain a list of the airplanes you can select for livery settings

- airplanes/units with all official external liveries would have a little additional checkmark at the end of their name

- same checkmark thing with the cockpit liveries mode, but calculated separately, not together.

- you would just select the livery you don't have and check it, after you selected a number of liveries then you hit "Download Selected" and it would install those

- then, people would be able o upload their custom liveries, either external or internal, possibly an ability for them to host them on mirrors to take weight off ED.

 

Some people would say, ah that's just more steps for a complete install ... hmm yes okay, but ..

 

But wait, what about the testing purposes, when people install beta releases and uninstall them, reinstall, etc, this does make sense for a part of the community.

 

That's why, at the bottom corner of the Livery Asset Manager it should be a button called "Download All Official Liveries" which would start up the updater the same way it does when you install a new module, boom :)

 

For MP: If you don't have them all, and another real player has exactly the one you don't have, simple, the external livery name he's using would be displayed at the end or beginning in the lobby, and an indication would show if you have the livery or not, I actually never got to MP yet, so I don't know if such a thing exsits already, but maybe there could also be an indication before the game starts, beside the player, a icon along the livery he has indicating that you don't have it installed and it's going to set to the core-default one for that aircraft.

If this is somehow a privacy issue (im totally speculating cause im not sure at all about MP), players could maybe check "Don't broadcast own livery"

 

 

Since I put this thread now mistakenly into wishlist, the only thing I'm wishing for is that this would be one of the features of the final first stable release of 2.5, doesn't have to be rushed for the beta.

This FileStructure thing is one of the parts that also works with the other performance thread I will post shortly, and while that loading part would get reordered on the programming side, it would be a good idea doing this at the same time, because it is very practical, doing it separately would be doing some of the work twice.

Edited February 4, 2017 by Worrazen

[CHSubZero]

On one side you made a good analysis on the file structure and in a few points I agree (livery file size can be reduced by 50% when saving DDS as "DXT1 no alpha" when no alpha layer is necessary) and a few I disagree (Caucasus is CoreMods instead Mods) but to be honest I prefer to receive more modules, liveries, functions before changes to the filesystem which not all people would recognize at all...

[Worrazen]

but to be honest I prefer to receive more modules, liveries, functions before changes to the filesystem which not all people would recognize at all...

 

I would agree, but this is one part of a bigger problem, or at least one factor contributing to it a little bit, and that problem, or a whole network of them should be tackled first because they are infact making DCS a lot less then what it could be, and to the point that it almost doesn't matter if the FPS is as good as it gets, because the whole asset allocationa management is killing it. And I have solutions as well, but I'm not finished with testing yet, I don't want to put something out and then a few hours figure out I was wrong with something.