Programming a game is fun.  It’s not every day that you get to work on algorithms for things like zombies, mechs, or aliens.  However, a zombie wouldn’t be very scary if you couldn’t load the mesh, textures, or sounds. 

There are some less glorious tasks required to make a game.  No one really wants to write a file manager.  But a good file manager will allow you to stream better content, load and manage bigger/more files, and generally have a better game. 

I often ask game developers “what do you want?”In other words, I really want to know what technologies game developers are interested in.  More to the point, I am interested in technologies that they wish someone else would helped implement. 

One common answer is “give me a file/memory manager… no one wants to write a file/memory manager.”  I’ll write another blog about the memory manager part ;) I am researching the needs of a good generic file manager for games.

Here is what I think is required:
  - Designed for games
  - Platform independent
  - Multithreaded
  - Open source
  - Support streaming content
  - Support archives 

There are some good articles about file systems on the internet. 
Michael Walter wrote a good article on FlipCode about virtual file systems: http://www.flipcode.com/archives/Programming_a_Virtual_File_System-Part_I.shtml

However, there is little about open source file systems and desired features for a file manager for games. 

I need your help.
What do you want?
Is there a good open/closed source project already in the works?
What features would make a great file system for games? 

Thanks!
Orion
[Senior Software Engineer
Intel -- Visual Computing Software Enabling.]