How can I let the user choose his own background image?

Question

Dear Stackoferflow Fourm I would like to have a function in my Android Game Programming that allows the user to choose his own background image (I would like to let the user change the plane image) Unfortunately I have no idea how I could do that. If someone knows how to do it I would be very happy.!

Answer 1

At it's most fundamental, you need to load an image into a texture and then apply that texture to a material. You can do that as follows:

 public void SetImage(string filePath) {
     // Create a variable to hold the texture
     Texture2D tex = null;
     byte[] fileData;
 
     // Check file exists
     if (File.Exists(filePath)) {
         // Read contents into a byte array
         fileData = File.ReadAllBytes(filePath);

         // Create a new texture and load the image data
         tex = new Texture2D(2, 2);
         tex.LoadImage(fileData);
     } else {
         Debug.LogWarningFormat("{0} not found", filePath);
     }
     // Set the main texture for the material on the current object's renderer
     this.GetComponent<Renderer>().material.mainTexture = tex;
 }

The more interesting part comes when you want to do this with a user-selected file.

First of all, you need to work out which platforms you want to support. A file browse dialog on Windows is radically different to one on Android.

Next, you need to decide how long this will persist. If it's just until the game closes, you're fine.

If, on the other hand, you want to persist across game restarts then you need to do one or two things:

• Pick/develop a mechanism to allow you to remember which file (the|each) user chose.
• Optionally make a "safe" copy of the image somewhere in your application's data directory, so that if the original is deleted, you can continue to show it in-game. [again, this will depend significantly on which platforms you support]