Package folder structure

Hello,

Sometimes some marketplace packs have lots of content and going by the suggested folder structure makes it really hard to work with.

Would it be ok if we did a structure like this?

Textures\Tileables
Textures\Masks
Textures\PostProcess

Meshes\Architecture\GasStation_01\ (In here would be the GasStation_01 mesh, material, textures)
Meshes\Props\LightPole_01\ (In here would be the LightPole_01 mesh, material, textures)
Meshes\Natural\Grass_01\ (In here would be the Grass_01 mesh, material, textures)

And so on.

This would help
A) Accessing the content would be much faster by knowing where to go by folder names
B) Easier for developer to later go back to specific assets and update/improve it and it’s dependencies
C) Optimization/material and texture sharing would be much more straight forward, less confusion
D) If something break it’s much easier to fix it. (Imagine if a complex mesh lost it’s shader, then you have to find out which textures among these hundreds of textures belonged to it, a lot of troubles like this happen all the time to both developer and end user)

Would such structures as mentioned be acceptable by Marketplace team?

Thanks

No reason you can’t do that, so long as they are still under the parent content pack folder. i.e. ContentPack\Textures\Masks.

Thank you! :slight_smile:

No problem! I found myself having to do the same with my most recent pack. Otherwise it would have been a nightmare sorting through all those textures. =P

As long as your path+asset_name aren’t > 165 characters, organizing stuff more clearly is a good thing.

Since I’ve created this thread before the exact same issue It’s better to bring it up now.
My package review failed, and one of the reasons is folder hierarchy. (Not that the hierarchy is wrong).


As you can see, it’s very well organized. It makes more sense to have the textures and materials localized in the corresponding mesh folders.


To follow the suggested hierarchy as in the PDF, besides the content getting totally unorganized, this makes it impossible to work efficiently with them for us as creators and for customers as users. Some of my packs have over +170 textures, +70 materials and so on. It really doesn’t make sense to move every content type to one folder as you’d need to spend lots and lots of time browsing through them.

Epic themselves don’t follow Marketplace’s suggested folder hierarchy in their example contents and games.

 @

Chuckles @ the concern about the directory hierarchy, this is subjective as all get out. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Personally I would like to see the assets for a static mesh, and it’s associated material interface and ALL assests that comprise the material, and all decals that are to go on the static mesh, to be in the same folder, so that it’s one stop shopping. Instead of, oh we need to go to this folder, and then that folder, and gosh, how about we need to go to a texture folder, and whoooooopie dingo, now we need to go to another folder.

Chasing down assets, is the most infuriating (and no I don’t care if there is a little magnifying glass icon, I don’t want to have change my train of thought, I just want the stuff there in one directory) thing. Ok, it’s not as bad as how structures are dealt with in Blueprints, but it’s just right below it. Oh wait the symbol table in blueprints sucks too. Ok, so it’s below both of those blueprint things. Nope, forgot one thing, that of the blueprint editor, kindly breaking the wires between the nodes, that always makes my day. I mean what else should a compiler do, when it finds errors with structures? Well of course, break the wires for the nodes dealing with that structure!!! Why didn’t I think of that?

Never let it be said, that a compiler cannot undo in milliseconds, what it will take the programmer 2 hours to put back together…

Folder structures is the thing I hate most about UE4. I basically move 80% of the marketplace folders I have into something more organized. I absolutely can’t handle opening up the content folder to see a mess of folders and not know where to even begin to look for stuff I need. I’m assuming that messes me up when it comes to updating these things? :frowning:

Also the fact that maps don’t move with folders and on top of that, most of the time it leaves files on your drive in the old folders so you can’t delete after the redirect fix. It’s obnoxious to work with.

Well, they told you different than what they told me when I wanted to do that.

It’s a problem to suggest such a hierarchy that’s not used in any game engine across the entire industry. It’s wrong to move every similar asset type in one folder instead of localizing assets where it logically makes more sense, makes navigation easier, and helps people to very quickly find the files they don’t know the name of.

Imagine collaborating with one or two other person on a project and everyone having to dump their files in one folder, that’s total chaos. Epic doesn’t do that for their own internal projects.

Factor here should be to see the product is being organized before it goes live instead of an invalid universal structure expected to work out for every package with any amount of content. People want the content to be manageable.

Truth be told, the folder structure I had to use in my marketplace submissions isn’t one I would desire in my own projects.

As a user, I wish all Packages from the Marketplace were off of a top level Packages Folder. (Could be off Content)

Each package would be in a subdirectory of the Packages top-level folder.
They could even have version numbers in the name!

When you have alot of packages, the current folder structure is just awful.

It is impossible to differentiate between your own stuff and package stuff.

Just like Plugins are in the project directory.

Yeah I agree with this. I’m a marketplace creator and it makes me really annoyed I can’t put my work inside of an “Assets” or “Marketplace” or “Packages” folder to save time when I use them myself XD If you look at the mod SDKs for Ark, Squad, Conan, etc. they all have folders for groups of marketplace asset, so it’s clearly a common method of use for packages. As it is, I spend the first day of a new project working out all the marketplace content I -may- use, putting it into the project and then moving it all just to avoid the hassle later haha

In terms of credibility among UE4 users I think Allar sits at the top.

Totally agree with you @Maximum-Dev. I had my pack rejected for the same reason. Now, I just move all assets into recommended folders so it at least passes point (or it should). I think if you keep you files well organized (like you did with Mars Rocks) they should allow creators to bend the rules a little bit.