Asset Database

The asset database is an in-memory index that SuperBLT keeps about all the game's assets. This allows it to quickly read game assets, regardless of whether or not they've been loaded by a package.

This is mostly used by the Wren asset loading system, but is also accessible from Lua.

Note: the name/type/language for these functions are strings, not Idstring objects. If you have the hash but don't know the original name, a 16-byte hex-encoded hash proceeded by a hash character is supported, same as the Wren asset functions. Hashes obtained in-game from Idstring objects need to be followed by an exclamation mark (!) for use with the asset database since they need to be converted to big endian.

Read a file

function string blt.asset_db.read_file(string name, string type, table or nil options {
  optional boolean optional -- If true, this function will return nil rather than raising an error if the file does not exist
  optional string language -- If set, the asset must have this language tag. Otherwise the asset must not have a language tag.
})

Reads all the bytes in an asset and returns them as a string.

This asset does not have to be loaded by the game, so you can use it to access any file.

Check if a file exists

function boolean blt.asset_db.has_file(string name, string type, table or nil options {
  optional string language -- If set, the asset must have this language tag. Otherwise the asset must not have a language tag.
})

Checks if read_file would succeed for the given parameters. This may seem redundant since DB:has exists, but there are a few differences:

• DB:has uses the game's current language while for reading a file you must specify it if the asset is localised
• read_file fails for assets loaded with DB:create_entry, while DB:has returns true for them.