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Definitely a fair question. Prefixes and suffixes are used because having assets with the same name on disk is simply either a) a bad idea or b) disallowed by the engine. There are some cases where you can have multiple assets in the same on disk file and share the same name if they are different asset types but this is a technical exception and relying on this exception makes things annoying to work with. Also prefixes and suffixes tend to create shorter names than an additional folder, and if you’ve ever worked with a massive project you might find that its not too hard to end up with ‘filename is too long’ errors. Lastly, if an engineer has to make a reference to an asset in text form for a myriad of reasons, it is easier to instantly recognize what type an asset is (especially for references that don’t have the asset type auto attached).
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Character art, in my mind, would go into a Characters folder and then that folder would have sub folders based on the character’s ‘code name’. For example, “Bob”, “MechBoss”, etc. The reason for a ‘code name’ here is that if your character is named ‘Dr. John Williams V Esq.’, that would make a terrible asset name.
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Music and audio is one of the more weaker defined style requirements in my guide. I don’t work with large swaths of audio to know the best way to sort them, so I’m eager for feedback on it. What I have been doing is creating a Music folder and then subfolders based on how music is sorted, i.e. if there are 10 tracks for a level, I’d group them by level name. If its a dynamically composed score, I’d create sub folders like ‘Bases’, ‘Stingers’, ‘Action’, ‘CoolOffs’, etc.
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UI is also another weakly specified style. I put all UI assets in a folder called UI, and then create sub folders based on asset purpose. For commonly used things, I use a folder called ‘Widgets’. For things that are menu specific, I use a folder named after that menu i.e. “LobbyScreen”.
All feedback is appreciated.