It’s fantastic, it does everything I need to deploy really fast and easily. However, I want to deploy my game so that it doesn’t show all my .png files in the Content folder. Is there somehow a way I can secure that?
Also I don’t thinkt his is Ruge’s problem, it does this when I use ClickOnce as well. I tried going into Properties, Publish, and Application files, and setting each file’s Publish Status to “Data File”, but it still did the .png thing.
There are multiple methods available, starting with converting to xnb’s to put the amateurs off the scent, to creating your own ZIP pack with password lock which you then manage yourself at runtime…
As I said there are many methods, someone might chime in with a more descript method or even a useful solution for use with MonoGame
You need to decide to what extent you want to prevent people access, as mentioned already you can just put people off trying when they fail to bring anything up with a simple folder search for image files by converting to xnb files or develop a custom method… but a word of caution, if someone wants it that badly, they will find a way… so I personally would suggest just convert to xnb, and leave it there…
Don’t waste time and resources on something so basic, make your game a good one
Remember the time rule…
10% of your time spent on coding,
the other 100% of your time spent on making it a good game
How do I convert it to .xnb? Because when I build .xnb files and try to replace the .png files with them, it gives me an error saying “Cannot find texture.png in Content!”
Because I did not use the content pipeline, but the raw .pngs, if you wish I can send you how I extracted the png data and saved it into a custom file type, then load it, extract the data as Texture2D. I created a small importer/exporter that loads the pngs from a folder, then exports them as custom file.
Is there anyway I can use the .deploy files instead? Because .xnb takes up WAY too much space. My game is in alpha stage it’s already over 1.5 GB, it shouldn’t even be near a GB
The project was written in VS2013. After building it, you only need to add your png files to the New folder next to the executable, and when the export finished your files will be in the Processed folder. Change the extension from avd to something else.
Obviously, you need to add the references to the using section for these classes. Click on them, press shift+alt+F10 and in the popup select the one with ‘using …’.
Apparently TexturePacker support Monogame so that’s an alternative if you don’t want to do the work yourself. You can use their app and use their custom loader.
Okay so I figured out how to convert the .png’s to avd!
But… one problem , you said change the extension to something else. What do I change it to? I replaced the picture.png with the picture.avd, and now the game just crashes before it starts…
Sorry for the missing files, I simply deleted them before zipping the project and forget to remove them from the references!
Ok, so…
The ContentExporter project simply creates a binary file from a png. I chose the extension “avd” because that my initials. If you change it to something else, obviously you need to change it both in the ContentExporter and in your game!
The binary file contents are:
the original width of the png.
the original height of the png.
the color data (rgba) of each pixel.
The LoadAvd simply reads an avd, loads the first two values as integers (so the width and the height of the original png), creates a Texture2d, then loads the color data into it.
What do you need to do with this loaded Texture2d? Whatever you want. I loaded it into my engine’s texture manager, but that was my project, you may want to do something different.
Basically, the ContentExporter could be used for other files as well. Even for xnb, if you do not want other Monogame developers to use your xnb. Just simply add your logic and encode/decode your xnb, after all only you know what is inside the avd file, right? For anyone else the avd is simply a zipped file. If you add your custom naming of types, you can use only avd for everything, from png to wav. Your importer should know about how to properly read an avd (e.g. you can save the type as string and your importer will read a string first, then by creating the type from the string realtime, you can load the rest of the avd as png, or wav, or txt, or xnb, or whatever you saved into it).
In your project there is a Content folder. Create some well-separated folder structure and add the avd files to the corresponding folders (same as you did previously with pngs). Dont forget to change to Copy if newer! Something like:
Iterate through the contents in the Graphics folder and all of its sub-folders. When you find an avd file, call LoadAvd and at the end of the LoadAvd store your Texture2d as you wish (in a static array, or in a more complex manager class).
Here is a short code from my game how I did it:
string[] contentDirectories = new
{
".\\Content\\Graphics\\Avatars\\",
".\\Content\\Graphics\\Common\\"
};
foreach (string folder in contentDirectories)
{
foreach (string fileWithPath in Directory.GetFiles(
folder, "*.avd", SearchOption.AllDirectories))
{
LoadAvd(fileWithPath, true);
}
}
