What is even the point of the GFX folder?

[anastasiaorosegirl]

So, in case you're all wondering, in my last post I complained about the purpose of the gfx folder and the character.png, which I still don't quite understand. What is the purpose of these two files and why am I required to have them? I can kind of divine how to use the gfx folder, it sounds to me like it's a graphics folder for resources. Still, this makes me scratch my head since various other game engines use something like: "res, resource, etc." and yet LÖVE 2D uses "gfx". Even then, why am I required to place a character.png in the file? The irony of this situation is lost on me, I assure you.

I just don't get it, why is something so vital *not* documented. I mean, I'm sure someone will try and make the excuse that "It's a relatively new feature, so that's why there's no documentation" but that's somewhat moot when it's important to the creation of an executable archive. This baffles me on so many levels; something that should have tons and tons of documentation has next to none and the forums don't divine any information as well. Even when I did attempt to look on the forums, it simply did not allow me to look for the specific file due to limitations of the forum software.

So, what I want do know from someone who actually works on the engine: Why is this even here? I am trying to work on an automation tool to make my development environment and there is next to no information on this stuff. While I would say this is somewhat inexcusable, I can't really complain since I haven't been working with the engine in six years. I'm just more bemused and dumbounded by this; this is a statistical anomaly. Somewhere in the documentation, there should at least be one reference to this. Is this a dummied out feature that somehow made it into the recent version? Is this a thing I actually need or just yak shaving that the developers thought was a good idea? I really wanna know, what is going on here? Thanks to anyone who can explain this to me.

[Tesselode]

Are you talking about the game distribution page? The gfx/character.png is just part of an example. It's showing you what your zip file should look like if your project had a gfx/character.png; it's not saying that you always have to have that file. The only file you're required to have in a LOVE project is main.lua.

[anastasiaorosegirl]

I feel like there should've been some clarification, but maybe I just missed it or am just dumb. Anyway way you slice the pie, it's my bad.

[pgimeno]

The keywords to understand that part are "e.g." and "if":

To create a .love-file you have to create a zip file of the whole game directory. Make sure that your main.lua is in the root of the archive, e.g. if you have

If you have that then you do what it indicates. It's an example as denoted by "e.g."

I've edited the wiki to add a "then" that emphasizes the "if" in the hopes that others will notice it.

[zorg]

More and more do i feel the actual calling for actually creating a very frequently asked questions and answers page on the wiki, that explains things that i'd call, lacking a better word for it, "basic". At least it would probably be both helpful, and some threads would magically stop being created again and again...

[anastasiaorosegirl]

Hey, here's a tip: Maybe actually mention this in the Wiki? And if you really want to stop this stuff from repeating, maybe actually have this explicit rather then subtly hinted at. Or even better, how about just not have it in the example? Six years ago, this wasn't even in there so this question never came up. Someone thought it was a brilliant idea to put it in there and that's why there's so many questions.

P.S. Oh and if you really want to get nuts, maybe make it so the forum technology can actually look this stuff up. I swear I had to go out of my way to find this information and I really should not have to do that. And I know some people are not admins but at the same time, this should be something explicit in the wiki. Or y'know, use one of the many tools given to programmers to explain what you meant by this. Like, I don't know... A comment? The fact that this apparently comes up a lot and no one has done a thing about this bugs the hell out of me. So, yeah, excuse me for not knowing what you all meant. My bad.

[s-ol]

More and more do i feel the actual calling for actually creating a very frequently asked questions and answers page on the wiki, that explains things that i'd call, lacking a better word for it, "basic". At least it would probably be both helpful, and some threads would magically stop being created again and again...

I would like to think that would help, but a lot of people are immune to FAQs and basic wiki lookups. It would maybe shift the balance a bit but I think there will always be that one question that comes up every week.

Hey, here's a tip: Maybe actually mention this in the Wiki? And if you really want to stop this stuff from repeating, maybe actually have this explicit rather then subtly hinted at. Or even better, how about just not have it in the example? Six years ago, this wasn't even in there so this question never came up. Someone thought it was a brilliant idea to put it in there and that's why there's so many questions.

P.S. Oh and if you really want to get nuts, maybe make it so the forum technology can actually look this stuff up. I swear I had to go out of my way to find this information and I really should not have to do that. And I know some people are not admins but at the same time, this should be something explicit in the wiki. Or y'know, use one of the many tools given to programmers to explain what you meant by this. Like, I don't know... A comment? The fact that this apparently comes up a lot and no one has done a thing about this bugs the hell out of me. So, yeah, excuse me for not knowing what you all meant. My bad.

I think you misunderstood what we meant by "happening again and again", I have not seen anyone misunderstand "character.png" or the "gfx" folder specifically in my time on this forum (since 0.9.0) and I think I have seen nearly every thread in the Support & Development and General forums since I've come sort of active here. In this case I can see how the wiki could be very confusing but it is a lot better with the "then" that was added.

What we mean is that a lot of simple questions or topics come up in something like a two-week rotation, which is a little annoying for others in the forum. However the people asking these questions are either those that just can't be bothered to search the forum correctly and will ask regardless of higher-quality documentation all-around or very new users that may have struggled over a lot of issues and finally give up and ask for help on one (this is what I remember my first, really stupid question here being like).

[anastasiaorosegirl]

No, I totally get that. I'm sorry, I really did misunderstand. I have seen that happen time and time again, both here and other places. Hell, I was even that kind of person back when I first started. Most of my mistakes now either come from being forgetful or me being tired or just screwing up. I think it's just easier to ask the question then to look stuff up, even if that's the norm in most programming. Anyways, thanks for everyone who helped, clarified, or anything between. I'm super happy that even despite me being a bit irate, you're all calm, rational and kind. I'm glad that, even despite everything, that's one thing that hasn't changed.

[zorg]

I do agree with phpbb's search functionality being not the best though; i seriously often have more luck with googling "love2d" <blah> and getting the correct threads faster than searching on the forums.

@s-ol: Having one more place where people may find answers should never be a wrong thing imo
Not to mention that one article holding answers, that are both grouped and have an index to them, one can more easily search with even a plain browser ctrl+f.

[Jasoco]

phpBB's inability to search for anything three characters or less is ridiculous. If that's an option it should be turned off. If it's a limitation of the software, then we should switch to something else. Limiting search terms to 4 or more characters and disallowing common words is an unnecessary restriction on a forum like this.

However zorg's solution does work, but it's not something people are going to know to do.