Something in DataDownloader.java about mupen64plus-ae

[paulscode]

Pelya wrote this code, so I'll stop by his thread to see if there is any discussion about this (we might be outdated). Might be worthwhile to study the code and see what is being accomplished there. I'll take a look.

[littleguy77]

Yes DataDownloader may need a re-look. I think at the moment we are just using it to unzip files. Wonder if Android has any new utilities for this?

[lioncash]

If you want something to just unzip files, I made this a while ago when I was first learning file streams in java.

https://gist.github.com/cded7f100838ef4e3918

It extracts a zip file, given the path to the zip and the desired directory to extract them to. Maybe that can help somewhat ?

[littleguy77]

Taking a step back... What if we just put the uncompressed data in the assets folder? It will still get compressed in the APK, so it doesn't change APK size. The only difference is where the data gets stored on the user's filesystem. One benefit would be that we don't have to manually check versions and update the data if it ever changes... it simply gets overwritten when the user updates/installs the APK. We could get rid of the DataDownloader class and we wouldn't even need the splash screen (even though I love the graphic :). Would vastly simplify the logic in MainActivity.

But I'm guessing there's more to it than that?

[littleguy77]

Ok, should have known it's not this simple. Android keeps files in the assets directory compressed, and you can't access them using ordinary java.io.File methods. I'm guessing you already knew all that ;)

[paulscode]

Yes, that is the main reason (plus the nice splash image). Although the downloading functionality isn't currently being used, I like having it there for potential future expansion. For example it could be used for fun things like downloading box art, pulling from a community plug-in repository, grabbing hires texture packs, etc.