So, I often see assets being packaged in some sort of custom container format.
World of Warcraft uses a bunch of files called "data.xxx" where xxx is a number (but they used something like MPQ files in the past. Not sure about the extension).
Warhammer Online used MYP files.
GW2 just had a giant .dat file (I think) with literally everything in it. Like, the whole game is one executable and then a giant file and that's it.
But is there a benefit apart from encryption? The only thing I can think of is that I can give assets something like an identifier which the engine then looks up in some sort of index that contains size and offset and then it reads from a giant file.
A few examples: I load texture "skybox-dessert-world" and it loads the texture. I don't have to worry about the format or the path. I just convert to the format I want in my packager.
Maybe something that makes more sense: I reference textures and height maps in my terrain file format. Using identifiers, I can reduce the length of the file name. Especially if I'd have to use the same texture file multiple times.
Or maybe something like this: I have multiple version of a model for discrete level of detail and just loading "model-npc-elf-male" would load the appropriate models.
But is that worth it? Or am I making a big deal out of nothing and loading files straight from disk is just as good? I've heard it's a good thing in the context of encryption and compression but that's about it.
