Doomsday Manual

====== Lump assembly ======


As the name implies, a //lump assembly// is an assortment of [[lump]]s arranged into an assembly (inside a folder). It is also possible to include a hierarchy of folders inside a Lump Assembly (therefore puting [[lump]]s into "namespaces" where they can have a load order implied; see below). It is even possible to nest [[wad]]s inside an assembly.

The [[modding:auto_folders|automatic loading of data files]] can be utilised to load
directories that contain individual [[data_lump]]s.  This kind of a
directory is called a "lump assembly" and it can be used instead of a
[[wad]] file.  Note that a lump assembly can only be loaded via the
[[autoload]] mechanism (but it can be inside a [[pk3]] that is loaded
manually).

So what does that mean? In a nutshell: any folder's contents can be treated as a [[wad]] (this includes other [[doomsday]] [[wad]] features such as [[dd_direc]]) provided it is loaded by the auto loader.

The assembly can be built using a hierarchy of directories.  For
example the contents of a [[pk3]] might be:
  
  #assembly/
     data1.lmp
     data2.lmp
     powerplant.2/
        a-E2M3.lmp
        b-THINGS.lmp
     xyz.lmp


**#assembly** would be mapped to **Data\<Game>\Auto\assembly\**.


===== Lump loading order =====


By default, the contents of a lump assembly are loaded in alphabetical
order.  However, some kinds of data require that the lumps are in a
specific order (for instance map data).  You have two options if you
want to enforce a specific order:


  * You can put a [[wad]] inside the assembly.
  * You can use //name prefixes// that are used to sort the lumps but are ignored when the [[lump_name]]s are determined.  The length of the prefix can be 1–9 characters long.  You specify the length of the prefix by adding an extension to the name of the directory that contains the lumps.  An example that uses a prefix with 3 characters:
<code>
Data\Game\Auto\DirWithPrefix.3\01_LUMPNAME.lmp
</code>
The first three characters of the file name are ignored ("01_") and **LUMPNAME** becomes the name of the lump. 




===== Assembly loading order =====


The order in which assemblies are loaded is governed by the [[autoload]] mechanism. In short, all folders and files inside the Auto folder are loaded in alphabetical order. Note that this means that it makes no difference in which order the files containing the assemblies were loaded.


===== See also =====

  *  [[modding:automatic_file_mapping_in_pk3]]
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