Pack resource

Hello guys

Someone could explain me how to pack all the resources in a unique file (.dat ie). ?

Thanks

incbin?

Welcome to the forums.

There are different ways of packing resources.
If you are after a single exe file solution INCBIN should be the command to use.

If you need external data files that include all your media you could:

1. use the Zip module in order to create your own files and password protect them.
Download: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=50074

2. use Filax's MPacker
Download: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=49274#550695

3. use other tools I currently can't remember... ;)

Grisu

Were you thinking of Molebox?

http://www.molebox.com/

Yes, for instance Molebox. Thanks Gabriel. I'm getting old... :o)

Also, there's another third party solution to protect your media which costs about 120 Dollar. Can't remember its name.

Conclusion:
There are many paths to rome. The problem is finding the one that fits you most.

Does MoleBox work with BlitzMax?

MoleBox works fine with BlitzMax for me. I've used it with a program that has several graphics files, two .ttf files, and an XP manifest file that are included along with the BMax/MaxGUI executable (which imports a projecticon.o file) in a single .exe. So, it seems to be able to handle just about anything. :)

The free approaches mentioned above should be able to do most if not all of that, though. I went with MoleBox Pro since I want to be able to send out updated data/resource files as archive updates if needed for bigger projects, and MBP allows for that easily. For the Mac & Linux versions of the above-mentioned program, I recoded a bit to use Incbin (the executables were naturally larger since MoleBox compresses and Incbin doesn't), but all three versions were similar sizes when zipped for downloading.

You probably already know this, but in case anyone else reading this doesn't, you shouldn't worry about larger EXE's from IncBin'ing data. Contrary to a popular misconception, resources in executables are not loaded when the EXE is, so your memory usage shouldn't increase over using an exe and a .dat file.

At least not unless IncBin does something funky it shouldn't.

Thaks a lot to all. I'll test each solution.

I've tried to download Filax Mpacker recently but the url doesn't work.

Someone knows another site where it can be found that .bmx?

Thanks

Making a data packer isnt that hard realy, ive just finished with mine.
Let me know if you want it.

Download my Packer ;)
http://www.blitzforum.de/upload/file.php?id=1256

Well the module is documented and fully working, but unfortunately there is no GUI Interface to create Packages easily.(I'm working on one ;) )

Features:
-ZLib Kompression
-multibranch directory (like a normal dir)
-password protection
-currently a simple encryption algo

grable:I would like to try your code

klepto2: Your code would be very usefull for me (and surely other people). I see that your unpack function needs to load the full pack file on memory before unpack an specific file. I need to pack a large amount or files, some of then with more of 1 Mb of data. It's possible to load on memory only de needed data each time instead the complete file? does another code do that? To solve that i can pack the larger files each one on a unique pack file but this solution is a bit tedious.



Thanks

xuulspectrum:
heres the code, its not a module though (you can easily do that yourself) so the documentation is in the Readme file.
And all packing is done through a commandline utility.
http://grable0.googlepages.com/PakFile.rar

@klepto2,
Great packer!
Is the request of xuulspectrum possible? It would be userfull.
@grable
interesting packer, I will take a look

thanks