Forum: The MarketPlace Wishing Well


Subject: Better file structure PLEASE!!!!!!!

LBAMagic opened this issue on Jun 11, 2010 · 17 posts


ptrope posted Fri, 11 June 2010 at 11:00 PM

I also set up my runtime based on type of item - exactly like the furniture example, although I keep the vendor, generally, under whatever subgroup. I want my runtime to reflect the way I work, not the way someone else does; I'm fine with geometry and texture folders being wherever the vendor put them (within reason, of course - I still don't want generic folder or filenames that could result in overwrites) but what I REALLY don't want is something in the Poser file of whatever stripe pointing to a specific location that may not exist on my machine. Case in point, and this is something that DAZ screwed up bigtime, a character that is hard-coded to their pose file locations! Find some way to load the poses other than pointing to the pz2 file itself - I don't want a separate INJ folder and REM folder, so I combined them and renamed the PZ2s accordingly, suffixing them with either INJ or REM so they are all grouped together sensibly, and then when I want to use a character, it bombs because it's looking for the pz2 file in "PosesV3 MorphsEars & Nose INJ" instead of loading and dialing the delta that the pose is based on!

Worse still, a vendor may have their own customized runtime, like mine, and create a character that pulls the pose from that setup, and then it never works correctly for a paying customer unless the customer edits the PZ2 or other file.

The person who makes an installer that prompts for locations within the runtime, so the buyer doesn't have to install and THEN track everything down, move it and possibly edit the files to make them work, is going to deserve every (reasonably priced) penny they get from the Marketplace. I would LOVE to have an installer that asks me where I want to put the readme files! That asks me if I want to put the furniture in Props directly or if I prefer it in PropsFurniture, or the robot in CharactersSciFiRobots. I'd love for that installer to check the references in the CR2 and fix them if the files don't exist or are in a path in the package that doesn't match the path in the PP2 file! But until we get this (Python programmers, are you listening to that last couple sentences? ;-D ), a bit of discipline, common sense and QC on the part of the vendors (and the marketplace reviewers!) goes a LONG way to making and keeping happy customers.