Resource Manager Module - Beta

Hi,
I created a Resource Manager Module for Blitz3D that will be used for my future engine. This module, powered by briskvm, is build with efficiency in mind. Resource, are those media files such as sound, texture, mesh etc. that are used throughout the life time of a game. Normally, in a simple game, resource tends to be load all at once in the beginning. However, this might not work so well for larger games. This resource manager is used to manage this issue and dynamically loaded and free resource as needed.

The key features are:
- Pack resource files into data file for easy portability.
- It will load resource ONLY on demand.
- It will gracefully remove/free resource when it is no longer in use

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/353102/ResourceManager.rar

I need some tester if possible to test this, maybe possible ways of improvement. Just run the main.bb to see how it works, should be simple enough.

The only files needed to run in your own project (if you want to test this) are:
- modules\
- resource\
- vm_files\
- cubicle_resourcemanager.bb

Feel free to tell me what you think!

Nack

People seem to be rather tired of testing things, at least Tools/Utilities like these. I hope you don't mind.
I think it is rather important, that an EXE can access multiple resource files, and that multiple exes may access the same resource file. Especially for games with many levels and some hundred MB size.



How did you manage that, does the game pause during loading resources? Something a lot of people would like to be capable of is dynamic loading as a background thread, so the game never pauses to load things.

I can't test your file right now, maybe later. Thanks for sharing your work.