[gameprogrammer] Re: Embedded file monitoring system?

On Fri, 2005-04-29 at 10:33 +1200, Jake Briggs wrote:
> You could start by having a user initiated check. IE you bind a key 
> press to the "lookForAndLoadNewTextures" function. Although that does 
> avoid the more interesting part of the problem, how do you know the 
> files been changed/added.

Yes, that would be a solution, but unfortunately not a funny one :P

> You could just check the texture directory for its timestamp. On linux, 
> if you make a directory at 10 am, then put something in it at 10:30 am 
> the time modified omn that directory is updated also. If you modifiy a 
> file in the directory, its timestamp is also modified. You would only 
> check one thing per frame...

I use Linux and I didn't know it! xD That would definitely improve
performance in case polling was used


Anyway, I've been diving through the Windows API, and I've found this
very interesting function:
HANDLE FindFirstChangeNotification(
  LPCTSTR lpPathName,
  BOOL bWatchSubtree,
  DWORD dwNotifyFilter
);

It lets you wait for file changes in a specified directory (it's more or
less what Kevin suggested).

You can find this function documentation here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/fileio/fs/findfirstchangenotification.asp
and a code example here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/fileio/fs/obtaining_directory_change_notifications.asp


With this API, polling would be unnecessary in Windows (I guess I've
just found out how did the Bungie guys manage to do it in Halo2).

I will now investigate how to do this kind of thing in Linux (I've
already read something like this in the FAM page...) and MacOSX

Bye!



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