Hi all
As the amount of stuff grow in my I noticed it was a bit hard to find what i wanted so I knocked up a little program to help.
I thought it may be usefull to others.
It creates a database of the entities in the entity bank and allows you to add categories to them browse them by those categories.
It also has the ability to produce a category of the entities used in a level so you can see what you have used in the level by browsing that category.
This Needa an external unzipper to work, It is set up with 7zip but if you use a different one you can change it see the documentation.

Its not the best designed program and there is a lot to add but I feel it is reasonably self explanatory. I have included a small document (the start of the full documentation).

I was planning a fully documented release but my health has delayed things.
As I have to go into hospital week I thought I let you have what i have. So some feed back will be there when I get out.

NOTe : program 64bit and only tested on windows 10

Sorry if the above does not make a lot of cents but pain medmessing with my focus.

Many thanks Ratall,I will give it a try .

Dave

Looks good, Ratall. I can tell because I did a like thing, only with a different approach to the output,
and, after some thought, practically discarded the concept of user defined categories, because I doubt that people are so keen on maintaining categories.

Instead, I went for selection by searching for partial strings and showing graphically all icons of entities whose names are matching the search strings,
i.e., searching with "bar" will show all "barrels", but also things like "Bar sign" or "wheelbarrow". Maybe, that's also an option you might want to consider ?

Nevertheless, as long as I can't get the entity the user selects injected into GG's library panel, I will refrain from going public with it.

oh, and all the best wishes for your incoming medical treatment.

Being able to categorize my entities is the single most important thing I need. However, I really would prefer if any kind of search function is built into GameGuru, I hate having to switch in and out of GameGuru to find things.

[EDIT: a blank sneeked into the "[ ....]"

I have about 10,000 entities and found that the criteria represented in object names and path names that they come with is
totally sufficient, at least for me. 9 times out of 10, the partial object name is enough to get the object I'm looking for into the selection shown;
for the rest, searching for components of the paths - like "critters", "scenery" , "fixtures" etc. is sufficient, because all entries of all authors who put something under that category on their respective paths are listed together.


Tell that to Lee. Or tell him to at least to reveal whether he is willing to implement that any time soon - and actually do it. There are ways of communication between programs that can make GG select a given object from an external program's window, but it isn't worth the trouble investigating into the details when a GG internal solution is "just around the corner"

When I say "single most important thing I need" I don't mean overall in gameguru I mean single most important feature of a search function.

Ratall, I somehow like your idea of analyzing fpm files, too, it's something I didn't think of before, especially not in terms of the potential uses for that with
the entity finder. Good one!

Hope you'll be back soon and well!
y.

Thanks Ratall.

A very handy tool!

I really appreciate your sharing it.

It is saving me time already!

Yes, this is something that should be implemented in GG. The ability to efficiently order/locate your assets is a "no brainier" in a tool that claims to be "an easy game maker"....or whatever the branding will turn into.

When I fist purchased GG in October 2016 ....and use it I had to post this thread by 1. Dec 2016.

I have not reached the one year mark yet with GG.

ENTITYS - (GG ENTITY EDITING MODE) - ASSET ORGANIZATION QUESTIONS/IMPROVMENTS

The point I am making here it that through sheer intuition one of the first impression of GG as LACKING is that it need/ability of some sort of asset data base function.

Make of this what you will as new to GG.

I really like the idea (and this is much needed) since asset organization is a mess- I can understand it becoming a mess when you are adding your own things but I bought all the DLC and the way it even organized them makes no logical sense to me- Rather than having a folder for "trees" and then subfolders for all the types,(i.e.Trees Main- then jungle trees/desert trees/sci-fi pack trees of whatever) I have trees in each DLC folder which is alot of folders and things all over the place that should be together. Its waaay overly complex to find anything when im just browsing for a specific because I have to look at everything- Its a minor things except that if you start moving things around , steam will redownload extras right back where they are "supposed to be".

I was looking at your program and I like it , but before I take the time to set up everything into categories can this be used in the editor? I'm confused a bit here because if I take the time to sort everything into categories using this program will it allow me to look at the categories as im pulling up files in the editor? So , for example of I add a 'tree' category and place all my trees in there, when I go to add a specific tree to my game, I still have no idea where that individual tree is in the files- Only that "thats the tree I want"- Or 'decals' for animations...If this groups them and I can search all my decals from within this program and find the one I want- Do I still have to keep opening all the decal folders in the editor because I will have no idea where the one I want is located?

I hope im making sense- Seems to me im better off just duplicating all the files and having them organized somewhere where steam isnt going to mess with and then just point the file location there from the editor. Unless Im missing something...Which is possible since im lacking in sleep atm =P

No, it doesn't work inside the editor, it's merely an external database, you look something up in the database and it tells you where in your entitybank it is so you can go into the editor and find it quicker.

it's probably just as easy to go into windows explorer and type in the search field e.g. *uzi soldier*. It shows you the path etc...see pic.

True, but with this you can add tags and categories, so once you have the database set up, if say for example you wanted a house but wasn't sure which one, you could type house, and it would list all of them and where they are.

Hi guys,
Just a quick note to say I'm sort of back..
Glad to see a few of you found the program useful.
Been back from hospital a few weeks, my stay was somewhat longer than expected.
While I was away my place suffered some damage and some stuff went walkabout so it will be a while before everything is back to normal.
Once I get things set up again I hope start working on this again (the source was preserved in the cloud) .
I hope to add a lot more functionality.
TTFN

Rick.

Hi Ratall. Glad to learn that you are back on the level.
Wish you all the best.