Access to multiple texture atlases via single skin builder

[Divelix]

Hi, I have ktx skin builder based on default uiskin.atlas + some of my styles (colors, Pixmap based textures, etc.). Until recently I used it to layout UI + separate textures for gameplay stuff, but now I grouped those gameplay stuff into 1 atlas and now want to access both (uiskin.atlas and gameplay.atlas) via Scene2DSkin.defaultSkin (which will let me not to pass AssetManager instance all over the gameplay code). How can I do that? Or even - am I thinking in right direction? What is the proper way to do such things?

P.S. I don't want to put ui and gameplay textures into 1 atlas because I plan to separate its loading process in time to speed up main menu loading on game startup.

[czyzby]

Skin has an addRegions method that allows you to add regions from another TextureAtlas. You have to be careful to avoid name clashes in the texture region file names, as this might override existing resources.

Basically, after your UI Skin is constructed, you can load your atlas and do this:

val skin: Skin = TODO()
val atlas: TextureAtlas = TODO()

skin.addRegions(atlas)

[Divelix]

That works, thanks. But, as I understand, it won't allow me to load ui assets to skin first, show menu, and just then load gameplay assets.

[czyzby]

@Divelix It will. You can use addRegions at any time.

If you need to define new styles after registering new atlas, you can do so with apply:

val uiAtlas = TODO()
// Create skin with basic styles:
val skin = skin(atlas = uiAtlas) {
  // Add common UI component styles here.
  button { TODO() }
}

// Go to the loading view, load game assets.

val gameAtlas = TODO("Load atlas")
skin.apply {
  addRegions(gameAtlas)

  // Define game-specific styles here.
  button { TODO() }
}

Just for the record, apply is not strictly necessary, as all style definitions are just extensions methods of Skin, but it will help you organize the styles into building blocks. I might add a new method such as register to make it more explicit.

EDIT: The KTX starting from 1.9.13-b1 allows to use skin.register instead of apply. Both approaches are similar, but register is annotated with the DSL annotation, so it provides some extra safety when nesting styles.