As some of you should know, I'm working on my rpg project. For this project, I obviously need my own file formats to store all infos I want. To load/save them, I currently use a own content loading system which works fine as it is inteded. However, as I always want to simplify things, I researched a bit if I can also can use the ContentLoader of Delta to avoid having two systems for loading content (To make it better understandable: Content like maps is loaded with my system while Images, Fonts etc would be loaded with the ContentLoader from DE).
My problem is that I didn't exactly understand how I can use your content loader to extend it with own file formats. Currently, all my content is stored as xml file as I want to be able to edit it without the need of any editor or something else while the system is being built. Later, the content will not be as much editable as now as it should be protected from curios people or people who wants to cheat/mess with the content, whatever they intend with their action.

What I want to know is what I have to do to do the following:

Effectively, there should be then some kind of logic defined, how the content is being processed and it should not be public as I only want that content is loadable with the ContentLoader (my system does actually the same, all content from me is loaded via one single class which handles all the stuff and hides the actual loading routine)

I hope it is understandable what I want, because I had some trouble to explain it :)

Ok so do I understaqnd it right that the ContentLoader is not really extendable yet? For now, I could easily use XmlContent but since Xml is likely not intended for public use (not sure yet, for not it's xml) in my project, I probably cannot stay forever with Xml.
Using ContentType.Custom could be maybe the solution but I don't know how to implement everything and use it. What I cannot do is to tell you my formats as they are subject to change and I don't want to bother you each time when I change my format (I have some phases where I start changing things which I had a long time simply because I want to improve them)
I think the better solution would be probably to implement a second content system for my custom content although it would be not really good from the view of a user because they have two systems and they have to remember which system does what so this is the case why I asked how I probably could extend the content system of delta

Well basically I want to load XML for now and later I'm probably switching to binary files to protect the data from curios people.
All I need is only a method where I can load my data then and the way how I can load it with the ContentLoader.
I think it's easy to just load normal files so I don't think that any extra work is required.

Ok, thanks for the example. I also have to add that my xml is custom so I need to manually parse it when loading.
Can I make a derived class and then load the xml data in LoadData or how do I have to proceed then? As said, xml is used for now only during development so I can also manually use the XmlFile class as I do it now but when I'm already using the content loader then I also want to do it right :)
At the end of loading, how do I return my loaded object so the content loader can cache it and give it back to the caller? In your code, I don't see anything which is not marked as void so I cannot return anything

You might get a warning in debug mode if the content type is not recognized and the class name does not match the content type. Let me know if this is annoying so I can show you how to turn this warning off (for us it is very useful as we can catch errors early).

It's me again :)
I still cannot figure out how to use own content in the content manager and/or local content as my files always get rejected due to wrong type.
For your information: My files are using an own extension, although they are currently xml internally (as said, the xml content is subject to be changed so I cannot support it directly as I likely convert to binary data in a later step of the development process). Whenever I drag the file into the ContentManager, it says "Unknown Content Type" and when I'm using DiskContentLoader, it throws an UnsupportedContentType Exception when creating the ContentMetaData file.
How can I declare that my type is supported? Isn't it possible to say that every unsupported ContentType is meant to be loaded through the Application?
If it's not yet working that we can load own Content through the ContentLoader, I will have to stay with local content and my own ContentLoading methods.

I really appreciate your help :)

Not sure why you get this error still, in the v1.0 release the check has been removed. But if you still see it in your source code maybe just remove the check:



Remove all lines between #if DEBUG and #endif (they should not be used in the release or nuget builds anyway). If this is not your problem, please explain yourself better and give us an exception stacktrace

Ohh, you are using the DiskContentLoader, which is parsing the directory and trying to understand each file extension. Obviously he does not know about .sphx files and complains with the exception. There are 2 solutions with the DiskContentLoader:

- Remove the exception throwing and instead just use the JustStore content type for unknown file extensions
- Or manually add the .sphx file as JustStore content in your ContentMetaData.xml

Or use the OnlineDeveloperContentLoader where we can support such features for you on the service side.

We will remove the exception in v1.0 (just removed the check in release mode), so you can do it in your code and remove it later once you update to 1.0.

About the ContentLoader: You can change it and even write your own (e.g. derive from DiskContentLoader and customize it to your needs), just call ContentLoader.Use<YourClass>() before you actually load any content, it will work fine (e.g. before you initialize or run your game).

Currently using JustStore content types for all unknown content works just fine. In the future we will support custom content format. In fact we did that already in v0.9.5. However currently all the other content types have to be fully implemented, integrated and tested on all platforms before we continue on supporting external formats.

As I said it is already supported in the current DE nightly release. Basically you change the last line of ContentTypeIdentifier.ExtensionToType to: return ContentType.JustStore; or just modify the caller to exclude your file type and use JustStore directly there (in a derived ContentLoader). How much work it is to write your own depends on how much things you want to do, DiskContentLoader is not a very complex class anyway, it just has 100 lines.

Maybe it would help if you show concrete code instead of asking iffy questions, then it will be much quicker to help you.

Ok, now with v1.0.0.0 it seems that you support now any type of content files which is very nice.
I still have another question: How should I proceed if the content file does not match the given type?
For example: All my content files share an extension so the differences are inside of the files. Now the user wants to load a map but give me a tilesheet, what should I do now since the types does not match? Should I return from loading and return null or should I throw an exception (there's already one there but only active while debugging and also not for files which have the ContentType JustStore)?