Tutorials » Untold Engine Toolchain

The Untold Engine requires all 3D models, fonts, images and particle entities to be converted into binary data before they can be rendered. The conversion is accomplished through the use of the Digital Asset Converter (DAC).

However, for 3D models, there is an additional tool that you must use aside from the DAC. Such tool is the Digital Asset Exporter (DAE). The DAE extract rendering data from Blender 3D and generates an .xml which can be imported into the DAC.

The image below, shows the Untold Engine Toolchain:

The following articles explain how to use the DAE and DAC.

• Digital Asset Exporter
• Digital Asset Converter

Once the game asset data has been converted into binary files (.u4d). You need to drag these files into the Resource Folder of the engine.

To make use of them, you simple use the U4DEngine::U4DResourceLoader class. For example, the code snippet below shows how to load scene, font, animation and particle data.

//The resource loader singleton will load all binary data into the engine
U4DEngine::U4DResourceLoader *resourceLoader=U4DEngine::U4DResourceLoader::sharedInstance();

//The spaceScene.u4d file contains the data for the astronaut model and island
//All of the .u4d files are found in the Resource folder. Note, you will need to use the Digital Asset Converter tool to convert all game asset data into .u4d files. For more info, go to www.untoldengine.com.

resourceLoader->loadSceneData("spaceScene.u4d");

//Load binary file with texture data for the astronaut
resourceLoader->loadTextureData("spaceTextures.u4d");

//load ui textures contains images that can be used for the UIs. Look at the joystick instance below.
resourceLoader->loadTextureData("uiTextures.u4d");

//load particle data
resourceLoader->loadParticleData("redBulletEmitter.u4d");

//Load binary file with animation data
resourceLoader->loadAnimationData("astronautWalkAnim.u4d");

//load font data. In this example, the font is used for the UIs.
resourceLoader->loadFontData("uiFont.u4d");