Resources and Assets

Assets like models, sound effects or others are a very important aspect of developing games. Basalt has a utility class for loading, caching, retrieving and unloading these resources: The ResourceCache class.

For this guide, we'll be using the Basalt.Raylib package and the extension methods it has for the ResourceCache.

Note

Extension methods will be accessed through ResourceCache.Instance due to limitations. In the future with .NET 9 and above, this might change.

Loading and Retrieving resources

Loading resources through the utility class can be done using ResourceCache.LoadResourceFromFile.

// Not recommended, but works.
ResourceCache.LoadResourceFromFile("myResource", "path/to/my/datafile.json");
var resource = ResourceCache.GetResource<MyDataType>("myresource"); // Keys are case-insensitive

// Recommended approach.
ResourceCache.LoadResourceFromFile("myresource2", "path/to/my/otherdata.something", (filepath) => MyCustomLoadingMethod(filepath));
var resource2 = ResourceCache.TGetResource<OtherType>("myresource2");

// Another method
if(ResourceCache.TryGetResource<OtherType>("myresource2", out OtherType result)
{
    result.DoSomething();
}

Warning

Loading resource directly from the cache is not recommended unless it is a more specific extension method like the ones provided by Basalt.Raylib, but it is an option. By default it will consider everything a JSON file.

Some packages like Basalt.Raylib give extensions to loading specific models. In this case, this package will add extension methods for loading Models, Sounds, etc.

ResourceCache.Instance.LoadShader("mycoolshader", fragShaderPath, vertShaderPath");

// Both are valid
Raylib_cs.Shader shader = ResourceCache.Instance.GetShader("mycoolshader");
Raylib_cs.Shader shader2 = ResourceCache.GetResource<Shader>("mycoolshader");

Unloading resource

For any resource, no matter if an extension method was used or not, can be unloaded with ResourceCache.UnloadResource(resourceKey). Using the previous code as example.

ResourceCache.UnloadResource("myresource");
ResourceCache.UnloadResource("mycoolshader");

var shader = ResourceCache.Instance.GetShader("mycoolshader"); // null
var data = ResourceCache.GetResource<MyDataType>("myresource"); // null

You may also unload everything using ResourceCache.Clear(). By default, the engine and basalt renderers will unload the resources automatically upon shutdown.

Caching resources

Using ResourceCache.CacheResource(string resourceName, object resource) you may also cache an existing instance of an object. Just like Get and Load methods, there are also extension methods for caching Raylib models, shaders, etc.

var something = Utility.LoadSomething();
ResourceCache.CacheResource("something", something);

// Using Basalt.Raylib extensions
Model cube = Raylib_cs.Raylib.LoadModelFromMesh(Raylib_cs.Raylib.GenMeshCube(1, 1, 1));
ResourceCache.Instance.CacheModel("coolcube", cube);