How do you keep track of your resources?

[J_C]

I've ran into a bit of a problem (more of an inconvience) lately. Thanks to the RPG maker community (you are awesome by the way) I've gathered a huge ammount of resources lately. The ReStaff resources, DLCs and other stuff are full of tilesets, iconsets, facesets, music which I saved on my computer. I just don't know how should I sort them and keep track of them. 


Right now they are in the author's directory, which also contain the terms of use (which is important obviously).


I thougth I copy every tileset into a different directory, same for facesets, music etc, but the problem with it is that I won't know which tileset belongs to which author, and I won't know who to credit if I use something.


It is not a terrible problem to keep everything in its original directory, but it is cumbersome to dig through every author's stuff one by one if I'm looking for a specific tileset.


So I thought maybe someone figured out a good way to keep track the hundreds (thousands?) of resources.

 

[Sinweaver]

For tilesets, I'd go about including artist name in the filename or include a notepad in the tileset folder with the artist name and tileset image name.


To make sure I stay on the clear about the resources I use, I will add the name of the person to credit into a notepad file right away as soon as I used something from that person.


Backtracking a little.. how many of those hundreds and thousands of resources are you going to end up using? Risk of having so many different resources in a project may include non-matching art styles, and other aesthetics issues. If I am in your position, I will have a folder for each artist and put every resources from the artist in their individual folder. Then I will go through each folder picking only the resources that I will be using and make sure they are all in matching styles, put them into a separate folder. Narrow down the list further removing anything that doesn't match what I am looking for, and then rename the remaining files to include its artist's name. By then I usually end up with a relatively few resources that I have to keep track of.


It is a little different when it comes to things like sprites and faceset, but the process I go through is generally the same.

 

[J_C]

For tilesets, I'd go about including artist name in the filename or include a notepad in the tileset folder with the artist name and tileset image name.


To make sure I stay on the clear about the resources I use, I will add the name of the person to credit into a notepad file right away as soon as I used something from that person.


Backtracking a little.. how many of those hundreds and thousands of resources are you going to end up using? Risk of having so many different resources in a project may include non-matching art styles, and other aesthetics issues. If I am in your position, I will have a folder for each artist and put every resources from the artist in their individual folder. Then I will go through each folder picking only the resources that I will be using and make sure they are all in matching styles, put them into a separate folder. Narrow down the list further removing anything that doesn't match what I am looking for, and then rename the remaining files to include its artist's name. By then I usually end up with a relatively few resources that I have to keep track of.


It is a little different when it comes to things like sprites and faceset, but the process I go through is generally the same.

Good idea. I won't use lots of different style resources in one project of course, I just want to sort everything out, so it will be easier to find them in the future. Because right now...I can spend hours looking in different folders which are choke full of all kinds of stuff.  


It's just so much busywork I guess. I'd rather work on my game, instead of coping and renaming all these resources. But I can't avoid it if I really want to sort this out haha.

 

[Phonantiphon]

You can use a spreadsheet as well.


(I will be sorting one out as my library grows, at the moment the only resources I am using that aren't mine are 1 piece of BGM and some scripts).


What I'll do though is knock up a spreadsheet with a tab for each asset type, then a column for what that asset is, when I got it, who it originally belonged to, and a path to the directory the file is in. Then a column doe whether or not I'm using that asset.


I reckon that should work quite well...

 

[Sixth]

I used to sort them this way:


Make a folder called "Raw Resources". Inside, make sub-folders called "Faces", "Characters", "Tilesets", and so on.


Inside these sub-folders, make separate folders for each authors. And finally, you can put the resources into their respective folder based on category and authors. 


Optionally, you can make another sub-folder set for each separate bigger resource packs, but this is really just for giving the mouse scroll a bit of breath time.


It takes a lot of time to sort out many resources at once like this, so if you managed to do that, make sure to do this for every new resource you get, put them in their correct folder the moment you get them.


Edited resources go into the "Reworked Resources" main folder, following the same layout.


It is a lot of folder with lotsa sub-folders, but I found it easy to navigate in them.


I used to do it like this, but nowadays I lost it. Now I just use the good old search bar in explorer to find what I need if I don't remember where I put it. It's because my old laptop said *poof* and I couldn't save all the resources I got from it, so I just stopped caring about organizing the resources I got.


Which reminds me, it is probably time to do a format C/D, the amount of garbage I got is getting out of control.


Ohh, and yeah, the terms of use should be in the author's folder for each resource which got a ToU noted. Back when I started to collect resources, I forgot to make a text file with the ToU for a lot of them, which resulted in me not being able to use them unless I search for them again, but I have no idea where I got some of them, it was around 5-6 years ago.
 


I like that spritesheet thing mentioned thou. Too bad I know I would never take the time to manage it properly. >.>

 

[AwesomeCool]

Used my programming skills to make a database for them (seriously).


...it is still hard to keep track of the all.