MinGRo game engine

[SilverWarior]

Package systems I know forces a sequential access for files. I mean, you have to go file by file until you find the one you want (For example, TTarArchive.FindNext).

So why not use some different package/archive format instead of Tar which indeed does not support random read. You do know that Tar was initially developed to be used for storing data to magnetic tapes which by themselves also did not support random access.

I don't want to load all data at once but allow to load the data when it is needed, so direct access is desirable.

There are numerous package systems that do allow you to read any of the contained file individually at any time. It isn't even so hard to make a custom one by yourself.

Also, I need to bind the package with the Allegro file system so I can use Allegro to load data.

Wasn't there an extension for Allegro game library which added support for working with various packages? Or do I perhaps just remember some game developers to make one for their own game?

Finally, I like simple things and I find modern programming unnecessarily complex. IFF is simple, flexible and easy to parse. I think an IFF-based package system would be great.

Well the problem of the IFF is that it still requires sequential reading since the file is divided into multiple chunks of various sizes. And in order to determine the size of first chunk you need to read its "header". In order to read the size of the second chunk you first need to know where it starts in order to read its "header" and that means the need to read the size of the first chink first.

Now what you would want is a package which has some sort of map (like file allocation table on disk drive) from which you can quickly read where certain file data begins and how big it is.