I was under the impression that all their models were OgreXML I suppose that would be why only some of the worldforge models are in the assetpack.
If someone with web development chops might be interested fixing or putting together a new AssetPack Browser script, send me a PM.
Sorry to necro this, but…
I was just installing the SDK to a new Windows install and couldn’t get the AssetPack browser to show online asset packs. The credentials (user, password) are entered under the “AssetPack” settings tab.
Under my old (Windows 7) I still have a few assets under Users > Ogli > .jmonkeyplatform > assetpacks (which seems to be the standard path). These are from 2014, so they predate this forum topic.
If I can help to fix this problem, please tell me how. Always loved that feature and would like to contribute assets to the AssetPack browser in the future.
1 Like
The backend server for assetpacks sadly got left behind with the last jme host change and no one made a new one sadly.
How to fix? For the old SDK?
For the future:
Maybe just have a html or xml file somewhere that holds a list of URLs with asset packs?
So, I could publish assets on my google drive cloud storage space, and list the URL in the global .xml file which is hosted by the jme community? Broken links could be reported to - and removed from that .xml file then. Also … the xml could hold an attribute like this: <asset_pack name="..." url="..." version="..." author="Ogli"/> - if version is higher than the one on my machine, then there’s an updated version of the asset pack. The author is the name of an account here in this forum.
Sorry if the idea is stupid… I usually only write client machine code.
2 Likes
Heres the PHP scripts I did for the server back then, idk if somebody saved the asset packs I made:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5z8q9yltn6xbmvs/assetpacks.zip?dl=1
The scripts still use the WordPress user credentials though.
1 Like
Things have moved very much toward open source dependency rather than the previous traditional central server setup. It means we don’t possess the capability to allow that kind of activity anymore.
Not that kind - this form. As Ogli said, whats the issue with hosting one XML file? But I guess its pointless anyway.
argh… if nobody saved the asset packs, this would be bad.
I have 4 asset packs on my local disk - world forge, Jaime, the Blender house from the old “contest” in 2014.
Currently don’t know how to fix this, but maybe it would be good to plan the new idea (the one with the .xml file - might be hosted on github then). But maybe we can fix @normen 's old mechanism to work with the new idea.
Sorry, I’m AFK for a couple of hours now. I’m sure we can find a solution, at least for the next SDK version.
1 Like
So, the idea with an xml and google drive would work, it’s wrong for a few reasons (e.g. google drive blocking urls on exceeded traffic, maybe even banning users (but yeah, chances are very low).
The other thing is that the xml/github approach has two drawbacks: No Incremental Updates possible (which would save much bandwidth when dealing with asset packs in the Gigabyte region) and it needs an active curator which downloads the packs, inspects them and then merges the pull requests within a few hours/days.
Furthermore you can’t really preview them in your WebBrowser or something. Sketchfab (e.g.) is a much better resource for that, as it’s built around that.
Now the real question however is: Does JME need an asset pack?
For me If we’re talking about models, my opionion is no, because I already find that blendswap.com does not contain enough models (sometimes I have to rework the rather bad ones). A fact here is that artists don’t have gamedev in mind and so you might have to modify the model a bit anyway.
In fact, you have to rework every generic asset to homologize them in your game (same artstyle etc).
Talking about custom Shaders / Filters? That’d be good to have because you can’t use already existing ones (granted, you can port openGL filters).
To sum it up:
Show me 10 users which will steadily contribute to the asset packs,
Show me 1-2 users which will be able to maintain that xml on a daily basis,
Show me users which require the asset store
And all that for a 1-2 year horizon, then it might be worth implementing asset packs anymore.
But I’m not the one to decide about that. We could implement it in the SDK but I’m not sure if it makes sense and if there is any demand at all.
2 Likes
Okay, before I answer to your arguments (which are interesting), there’s another alternative idea:
Why not instead make a website / wiki page. It could follow a standard syntax - containing license, authorship etc. It could hold URLs to all the asset packs, maybe a little story text and a picture for each of them, etc. The picture could give a quick impression, like it’s done at https://opengameart.org.
Okay, the asset pack browser of the SDK is gone and there doesn’t seem to be a way to bring it back - that’s somewhat acceptable - maybe remove it from future versions (or even from the old versions), since dead features are bad features. Or (even better) let the user set an URL to a different server in the etc\jmonkeyplatform.conf - so they could take normen’s script and set up their own server at home or in their garage company.
Did not know that, but thanks for the hint. I’m hosting some files which can be downloaded here and hopefully Google won’t ban me. But if they do someday, then that won’t be a surprise anymore. Thanks for the warning!
Hm, did the old AssetPackBrowser have that? But good idea, of course that makes sense. How could one add that incremental-updates-feature I ask myself - since people already stated, that github can’t be used for things other than code (if it could be used for that, we could have hosted the ‘ingredients’ of the asset packs at github and let users bundle asset packs locally - so they would only need to download those assets that have changed in the meantime, not a whole asset pack).
Hm, that’s right. One could allow many user accounts with the privilege for that (not one single curator). I think the potential for vandalism is low, since a) version control provides reverting and b) people would not want to sabotage a good source for free assets. But yes, the core team might not want to get spammed by changes to one single XML file which is inside the same repo as the other jME stuff.
Not a big deal to me. Asset makers could make screenshots or videos for a preview. Also say something about vertex count or how many animations etc. and wether it’s intended for PBR or not (the “not” is called “for mobile” nowadays by marketing people btw).
Yes, I used the paid version of Blendswap and it’s mostly stuff for Cycles / movies, and some things for games. But I’ve already created nice assets for games from Blendswap assets originally designed for still renderings.
Then there’s https://opengameart.org - all for games, many not with .blend files - which creates a file conversion problem sometimes.
So, we are very lucky that nehon works on the Sketchfab and provided us with one very good source. We could not create (public) asset packs from these assets though (probably), because they want to market and sell in their shop. Some people might create their own private asset packs (see idea of private asset pack server above - that could be interesting to some people working with Sketchfab assets in their garage company).
Yeah, big topic for serious games development, I know. On the other hand there’s anarcho-stuff like VRChat - lets you use any 3D model you want, doesn’t care for homogeneous art style. For the game framework I’m currently making, I just use all I can find in the testdata jar that jME provides - will be open source and will mostly be for students and hobbyists anyways, so it’s okay too.
Yes, probably it’s a dead feature, aside from the idea to revive it for private asset servers - both: see above. Your working time most certainly is better spent in other things that more users would use more frequently (e.g. an up-to-date jME inside the SDK). Might want to consider a poll / voting to find out where the work time would be spent best - that’s my only idea to improve that work-time-management-thing.
3 Likes
I can see private assetpack servers being a very useful thing, nice idea!
I forgot to mention one aspect - One often seen advice on how to use jME was (not literally):
“Make asset packs in the SDK but use the code editor and deployment you like - Eclipse, Gradle, etc.”.
Of course, one might add the new JMB and other things like xbuf for asset pack management. But one core functionality of the SDK was to inspect and bundle asset packs in a quick and easy fashion. I think that this is true still today. So a functioning AssetPack browser seems a logical addition to this idea.
Maybe someone with some spare time might make a wiki page that describes how to use the script from normen (see above) and the SDK, to host own asset pack servers around the globe or in your garage companies.
You can always just create and share asset packs, you’re all aware of that right? Its not solely meant as a way to sell or distribute assets but also as a way to have your own assets available across projects.
1 Like