Best way to load texture atlases with the same frame names - possible PR

[mattstyles]

So I have a number of texture atlases that describe different textures for what are basically the same object (they are basically textures that describe walls, each texture atlas describes a number of orientations/views for a particular material i.e. a wall texture atlas, a wood texture atlas, a decoration texture atlas etc etc). Each frame within the atlas represents an orientation/view (side-on, front-on etc etc) so they have the same frame names. Infact, apart from `meta.image` the atlases files are the same.

 

To load these in I naturally want to async them to get them loading as fast as possible. To add some complexity to this inquiry I've wrapped `PIXI.JsonLoader` into a promise, but the theory would be the same using callbacks.

 

The issue is that by the time the `loaded` event callback is fired for the quickest response you've already initiated several other requests. These additional requests will nuke the `frameID`s within `PIXI.TextureCache` which is used by both `PIXI.Texture.fromFrame` and `PIXI.Sprites.fromFrame`.

 

So, in my case, if I attempt to load stone, wood and metal textures (in that order) and create textures for each frame during the 'loaded' callback then all textures will be metal textures because `PIXI.TextureCache( frameID )' will return a frame that is linked to the filename of the metal textures.

 

The answer is to either rename frameID at my end (not a big ask really, just inconvenient and error prone if you allow users of your game to produce resource or texture packs) or queue requests so that all textures are created before processing the next atlas. The first option here is annoying whereas the 2nd is inefficient.

 

To my mind the TextureCache should be smarter to associate frameID's with filenames to try and better namespace the cache.

 

I guess my only question here is: is there another way of loading multiple texture atlases that I missing? or I can pursue the the route of 'fixing' texture cache namespacing and submitting a PR

[whizzkid]

Any info/developments on this yet?

 

This seems to me to be a key feature which is missing in PIXI..

 

would be very useful to be able to add an ID to loaded spritesheets or something.. especially if you have several skins in separate atlases for the same character.