Plug-ins typically require access to resources such as images, fonts, and other data files. Strange Eons makes it easy to access these files from plug-in code.
Resource files are included in a plug-in like any other file, by placing them in the plug-in’s project task folder before it is bundled. For ease of access, resource files are typically stored in the plug-in under a folder called resources. As files in a plug-in are “visible” to all other plug-ins, it is important to avoid creating resources with the same path. The easiest way to do this is to store your files in a subfolder of resources based on your name, game code, plug-in UUID, or some other effectively unique string.
Example
Suppose Jane Simmons is writing a plug-in for a game called SuperWhiz. To keep her resource file names from colliding with other plug-ins, she might create a subfolder of resources named jsimmons and a subfolder of that named superwhiz. If she later creates a plug-in for a different game, she could store its resources in another subfolder of jsimmons.
To quickly create nested folders in a project, create a new folder, and then when prompted to enter a folder name, add more folder names separated by /. Following the example above, Jane could right click on her plug-in task folder and choose New/Folder, then enter the name resources/jsimmons/superwhiz to create all three folders.
The ResourceKit class defines a number of static utility methods for dealing with resources. Many types of resources are loaded using special-purpose methods (functions) that are designed to process that kind of file. Check the page for the particular resource type in this section for more information.
For general access to any kind of resource file, such as a data file in your own private format, you can use the ResourceKit.getInputStream(path). Here, as elsewhere in ResourceKit, the path is a path relative to the combined resources virtual file system. For example, Jane might access one of her files using the path jsimmons/superwhiz/data.bin. This would be stored in her plug-in task folder under resources/jsimmons/superwhiz/data.bin.
Resources can also accessed using URLs of the form res://. The remainder of the URL is the same as the resource path that would be passed to a ResourceKit method. For example, the following code is equivalent to the getInputStream example above:
new java.net.URL("res://jsimmons/superwhiz/data.bin").openStream();
Resource URLs are discussed in more detail in the next section.