Editing Engine:CVAR base path (section)

== Details ==
Path to the base asset load location.

The path is either a full OS file system path to the library location, or a path relative to the launch location, which is the location of the executable for the engine.

In some configurations the path is relative to the current directory and not necessarily the actual engine start location. The 'data_path' will be used verbatim to resolve the final library load path.
 set lib_path './data/'
 with install in: d:\install\engine
 effective path: d:\install\engine\data\

Asset loading in the engine is a multi-tier system. This path provides the location of the base lowest tier set of files and archives. If a higher tier location or archive has a file with the same relative path, it will be chosen first. Each tier is either an OS file system location, or an archive.

And archive is any system, like maybe a zip file with assets inside, that is not an OS file system. A single archive could be made of multiple real files, that together form one virtual file system as one tier.

The relative file paths and names inside an archive or location, are the paths and names used to request an asset.
 data (tier 1)
    pak0.zip (tier 0)
       file.txt
       model
          file1.obj
    model
       file2.obj 
    file.txt

Default precedence:

By default, Engine tries to load a single archive file named 'pak0.zip' in the specified 'base_path'. This archive file will then be asset tier 0, the lowest. The 'base_path' itself will be asset tier 1.

For example, on startup Engine will look for a file named 'config.cfg', first in the file system at 'base_path', and then inside the 'pak0.zip' file loaded from 'base_path'. If neither are found, will load with static defaults.