XNATools

Tomorrow, I’ll be posting the first release of OpenCP, the next iteration of the xnatools content processing toolset. Work on the OpenCP library was completed in November of 2010 (why does everything seem to get done in November?). There are quite a few major differences between OpenCP and previous iterations, not the least of which is that it is cross-platform, running on the Microsoft .NET Framework on Windows, and Mono on Linux and OS X. It still targets the .NET 2.0 runtime. Since it has absolutely nothing to do with XNA, I figured it’s time to drop the XNATools association.

Unlike previous releases, OpenCP provides only the foundation for a content pipeline. I realized that for the library to be useful, people are going to need to provide their own content definition formats and customize the build system to their workflow. OpenCP provides the basic content build framework, including dependency and reference tracking, minimal rebuilds, pluggable content conditioners, target platforms, and so on.

The biggest change is the the switch to focusing on a content database model. Upcoming posts will provide more information on the content database and how it is used by OpenCP and build systems. The major benefit is that a content database can be loaded and dependency, reference, input and output information can be used by a number of tools, which when combined make up the full content pipeline. For example, the content packaging process can now be implemented entirely independently of the content build process.

Edit: OpenCP 1.0.0 is now released. It is available at:
OpenCP-src-1.0.0.zip

To the extent possible under law, Russell Klenk has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to OpenCP. This work is published from: United States.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 29th, 2011 at 8:02 pm and is filed under Content Processing, OpenCP, Software Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.