Extending the Pipeline sample

[RecursiveCall]

It would be useful to see a sample demonstrating how to extend/override SharpDXTK's content pipeline.

If someone can provide a basic flow and key projects/code, I can give this a shot myself.

[ArtiomCiumac]

Currently I don't have time to implement a full sample, so you can try it yourself. For example, implement an example that will load content from a web service or a zip archive. As for custom content, you can implement a content reader that will read a list of geometric primitives which will be rendered together as a scene.

The related items are:

• IContentResolver - provides access to content data via streams. The current implementation is the FileSystemContentResolver. As an extension can be a resolver that reads content from a web service or from a zip archive. It can be registered with the following code: Content.Resolvers.Add(new WebResolver(<params here...>));
• IContentReader - reads the content data from the stream and returns the content instance. Current implementations are EffectContentReader, ModelContentReader, SpriteFontContentReader and TextureContentReader.
• ContentReaderAttribute - new content types should be marked with this attribute which provides information about what IContentReader implementation should be used to read that content type.

If you want to have some custom precompiled content - take a look at the SharpDX.Toolkit.Compiler assembly and its related classes.

[xoofx]

The only thing that is currently not really flexible is the extensibility of the Compiler part, as nothing was made for this (unlike in XNA with the content processors...etc.)

[RecursiveCall]

What are your rules around using non-original code. The sample I started with the is the XNA SpriteSheet sample (http://xbox.create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/sprite_sheet). I leave all copyright headers in the files intact when reusing code, but would this be acceptable in the SharpDX repo?

[ArtiomCiumac]

This can be done only if the original code and content license is compatible with the SharpDX MIT license. As an example would be the SpriteFont class which was ported from DirectXTk library.

[RecursiveCall]

Microsoft's CC samples are under MS-PL license. I looked into a number of threads on StackOverflow on its true meaning; answers are inconclusive.

I'll stick with a from-scratch sample.

[ArtiomCiumac]

The recently added Yaml support provides a good example on how the content pipeline can be extended. I'm closing this issue - feel free to reopen if you have something to add here.