Yvori
Terrarian
The current file structure of the game is an incomprehensible spaghetti mess that's nearly impossible to navigate, I assume because of all the developers who have come and gone, game structure changes, etc. over the years, but it should really get consolidated into something more sensible before development ends (if it ever does at this rate).
This would be a massive boon to makers of mods and resource packs that need to edit or interact with base-game sprites and content, because currently it's a massive headache to even just browse through, much less find everything you're looking for in a reasonable timeframe. Given that the final final (for real this time) final update(well, until 1.4.27 or 1.5 comes with more crossover content as some of the devs seem to be interested in) is coming soon, I feel like the modding scene will explode even more than it has already, as well as the already growing resource pack scene... But the process of using any vanilla sprites is pure suffering.
Examples include:
"Images\Accessories" contains 22 vanity hand accessory sprites. "Images" itself contains most of the other vanity accessories- 34 back, 18 balloons, 4 beards, 19 face, 11 front, and duplicates of a bunch in the "accessories" folder but in a different layout as well as the rest of the hand accessory sprites, neck, shield, shoes, waist, all the wings... why isn't all of this in the "accessories" folder???
"Images\Armor" contains 245 armour body sprites, while "Images" contains all the head/leg sprites, why aren't these in the same folder as the rest??? It also has "Armor_Body", "Armor_Body_2", "Armor_Head", and "Armor_Legs" which are in a totally different format, with multiple different armor sets in the one image, and forgive me if I'm wrong but these particular ones aren't even in the game anymore are they? They look older than even the Ancient armor sets, like beta relics or something. The backpacks for armors are also stuck in here for some reason.
-Unrelated but "Armor_Head_238" seems to just be invisible? Not sure if that's the Familiar Hat or what but that seems weird? "Armor_Head_265" has a weirdly inconsistent layout too. Not sure which that is.
The "Images\Backgrounds" folder has all the underworld backgrounds, and even has a nice subfolder to contain and seperate several background misc sprites like bg mobs, balloons, meteorites, etc. but the rest of the background-related images are once again stuffed inexplicably into "Images" base folder or "Images\Misc"????? Some of the background elements like the celestial BGs and their elements and the falling slimes in the sky during slime rain, UFOs from the invasion, clouds... and more!?
Speaking of "Images\Misc", it contains some Noise textures, but DSTNoise is for some reason in "Images" instead.
"Images\UI" starts great with subfolders seperating related pieces of UI but then everything else is just shoved in the base "Images\UI" folder including some things that would make more sense in subfolders like all the achievement-related things, cursors, inventory icons, menu icons, world icons, etc... And then there's a bunch of UI stuff still stuck in the base "Images" folder too!??? All the buff icons, chat bubble icons, some inventory icons, menu/text window backgrounds...
"Images" contains a bunch of extra stuff, mob parts, gore (except Moon Lord Death Gore which is instead in "Images\Misc\MoonExplosion"????), all the thousands of items, tiles, npcs, monsters, walls... All of these cound have their own subfolders to make things far less cluttered. As well as a bunch of stuff (as shown above) that should be in other, already-existing folders.
All the mounts are labelled as "Extra" for some reason as well as a bunch of other mob parts and various screen effects and the floating parts of master mode trophies and kites and minecarts and some projectiles and the stepladder and fireplace- all of this is just "Extra_XXX" ... why?!
Nevermind that plenty of things have unique names (like "EvilCactus" and "CrimsonCactus" for some reason) but the vast majority of tiles, mob pieces, walls, armors, everything, just has generic numbered names making actually finding what you're looking for darn near impossible.
"Images\TownNPCs" has few complaints for me; the town npcs each have sensible layouts, readable filenames, and are all kept in a subfolder... (Well except the gore for them which makes things more complicated, oh and the tied up sprites for Goblin, Mechanic, etc. also being unnamed sprites hidden in the main Images folder)
"Images\SplashScreens" is fine at least.
Item Sprites, Gore Sprites, Worn Armour\Legs\Heads Sprites, Worn Vanity Accessory Sprites, Tiles, Walls, Backgrounds, Enemy Sprites, Inventory UI, Menu UI... All of these things, and much more, should have their own subfolders at the very least, and many should be renamed so you can actually find things without knowing the exact order things were added in since currently that's the only way to know what "Armor_261" or "Item_1102" is without manually going through everything.(But hey at least the cactus sprites have proper names I guess?)
But seriously with how disorganized this all is, I feel so sorry for the resource pack makers that need to deal with this nonsense. Like 2/3 or more of the questions in the Resource Pack General Discussion forum are people asking where specific sprites are or why they can't find specific elements, and the official guide does nothing to help this other than tell you to basically just... find what you're looking for, which in a game with well over 11,000 individual sprite files haphazardly strewn about the folders with a mostly useless naming convention... You can see why they have trouble.
This all seriously needs a rework for creator-experience and user-experience. I know it would probably require a lot of code refactoring but... Most of that is probably not that hard to do with just basic Find&Replace functionality, inputting the old names/locations and replacing them for each thing changed. Would it take probably a few days straight of work? Yes. Would it be a massive improvement to the game's file structure? Also yes.
I'm saying this as someone who is (or was, since the file structure is making me want to give up) currently making a resource pack.
Honestly, I can't even imagine how much of a pain the current system must even be for the devs, to even just find the sprite you want to reference in code.
This would be a massive boon to makers of mods and resource packs that need to edit or interact with base-game sprites and content, because currently it's a massive headache to even just browse through, much less find everything you're looking for in a reasonable timeframe. Given that the final final (for real this time) final update
Examples include:
"Images\Accessories" contains 22 vanity hand accessory sprites. "Images" itself contains most of the other vanity accessories- 34 back, 18 balloons, 4 beards, 19 face, 11 front, and duplicates of a bunch in the "accessories" folder but in a different layout as well as the rest of the hand accessory sprites, neck, shield, shoes, waist, all the wings... why isn't all of this in the "accessories" folder???
"Images\Armor" contains 245 armour body sprites, while "Images" contains all the head/leg sprites, why aren't these in the same folder as the rest??? It also has "Armor_Body", "Armor_Body_2", "Armor_Head", and "Armor_Legs" which are in a totally different format, with multiple different armor sets in the one image, and forgive me if I'm wrong but these particular ones aren't even in the game anymore are they? They look older than even the Ancient armor sets, like beta relics or something. The backpacks for armors are also stuck in here for some reason.
-Unrelated but "Armor_Head_238" seems to just be invisible? Not sure if that's the Familiar Hat or what but that seems weird? "Armor_Head_265" has a weirdly inconsistent layout too. Not sure which that is.
The "Images\Backgrounds" folder has all the underworld backgrounds, and even has a nice subfolder to contain and seperate several background misc sprites like bg mobs, balloons, meteorites, etc. but the rest of the background-related images are once again stuffed inexplicably into "Images" base folder or "Images\Misc"????? Some of the background elements like the celestial BGs and their elements and the falling slimes in the sky during slime rain, UFOs from the invasion, clouds... and more!?
Speaking of "Images\Misc", it contains some Noise textures, but DSTNoise is for some reason in "Images" instead.
"Images\UI" starts great with subfolders seperating related pieces of UI but then everything else is just shoved in the base "Images\UI" folder including some things that would make more sense in subfolders like all the achievement-related things, cursors, inventory icons, menu icons, world icons, etc... And then there's a bunch of UI stuff still stuck in the base "Images" folder too!??? All the buff icons, chat bubble icons, some inventory icons, menu/text window backgrounds...
"Images" contains a bunch of extra stuff, mob parts, gore (except Moon Lord Death Gore which is instead in "Images\Misc\MoonExplosion"????), all the thousands of items, tiles, npcs, monsters, walls... All of these cound have their own subfolders to make things far less cluttered. As well as a bunch of stuff (as shown above) that should be in other, already-existing folders.
All the mounts are labelled as "Extra" for some reason as well as a bunch of other mob parts and various screen effects and the floating parts of master mode trophies and kites and minecarts and some projectiles and the stepladder and fireplace- all of this is just "Extra_XXX" ... why?!
Nevermind that plenty of things have unique names (like "EvilCactus" and "CrimsonCactus" for some reason) but the vast majority of tiles, mob pieces, walls, armors, everything, just has generic numbered names making actually finding what you're looking for darn near impossible.
"Images\TownNPCs" has few complaints for me; the town npcs each have sensible layouts, readable filenames, and are all kept in a subfolder... (Well except the gore for them which makes things more complicated, oh and the tied up sprites for Goblin, Mechanic, etc. also being unnamed sprites hidden in the main Images folder)
"Images\SplashScreens" is fine at least.
Item Sprites, Gore Sprites, Worn Armour\Legs\Heads Sprites, Worn Vanity Accessory Sprites, Tiles, Walls, Backgrounds, Enemy Sprites, Inventory UI, Menu UI... All of these things, and much more, should have their own subfolders at the very least, and many should be renamed so you can actually find things without knowing the exact order things were added in since currently that's the only way to know what "Armor_261" or "Item_1102" is without manually going through everything.
But seriously with how disorganized this all is, I feel so sorry for the resource pack makers that need to deal with this nonsense. Like 2/3 or more of the questions in the Resource Pack General Discussion forum are people asking where specific sprites are or why they can't find specific elements, and the official guide does nothing to help this other than tell you to basically just... find what you're looking for, which in a game with well over 11,000 individual sprite files haphazardly strewn about the folders with a mostly useless naming convention... You can see why they have trouble.
This all seriously needs a rework for creator-experience and user-experience. I know it would probably require a lot of code refactoring but... Most of that is probably not that hard to do with just basic Find&Replace functionality, inputting the old names/locations and replacing them for each thing changed. Would it take probably a few days straight of work? Yes. Would it be a massive improvement to the game's file structure? Also yes.
I'm saying this as someone who is (or was, since the file structure is making me want to give up) currently making a resource pack.
Honestly, I can't even imagine how much of a pain the current system must even be for the devs, to even just find the sprite you want to reference in code.
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