game.pak

You may choose to compile all of your game assets and code into a single game.pak file. Packer.exe is automatically built with the top-level CMake project and when ran will put each file from data/ and data/game/ into game.pak.

To build your game.pak file, copy Packer to your projects directory (or call it from your project’s root directory) and exectute

$ ./Packer

Usage

When Astro is launched it checks for game.pak and if it finds one it will load most assets from there with the exception of some various tools like File and Buffer which need the user to specify if they wish to load from game.pak. using_pak can tell your program if a game.pak is currently in use at runtime.

For most intents and purposes you may just work on your projects as normal and package your game up with Packer.exe at the end.

Notes

game.pak is not encrypted or compressed in any way, and the filetype is documented in Astro’s source, it is merely a way to not expose your entire game to most users. .pak files are read-only, which is why you may load files/buffers from it but you can’t save them to it after.