Per default, the AssetManager cannot work with Zip-Files. However, you can add this functionality yourself by extending the class. As luck would have it, the sample class below does just that.

• To extract the zip-files, I'm using nochump-ziplib, so you'll need to compile that and link it to your project (or simply copy the code to your project).
• The class expects that you've got one zip file per asset. Use a naming scheme like this: filename.extension.zip (the name of the zip-file is the name of the compressed file plus “.zip”).

import flash.utils.ByteArray;
 
import nochump.util.zip.ZipEntry;
import nochump.util.zip.ZipFile;
 
import starling.utils.AssetManager;
 
public class ZipAssetManager extends AssetManager
{
    private static var zipRegEx:RegExp = /\.zip$/;
 
    public function ZipAssetManager(scaleFactor:Number=1, useMipmaps:Boolean=false)
    {
        super(scaleFactor, useMipmaps);
    }
 
    override protected function getName(rawAsset:Object):String
    {
        if (rawAsset is String)
            return super.getName(removeZipExtension(rawAsset as String));
        else
            return super.getName(rawAsset);
    }
 
    override protected function getExtensionFromUrl(url:String):String
    {
        return super.getExtensionFromUrl(removeZipExtension(url));
    }
 
    override protected function transformData(data:ByteArray, url:String):ByteArray
    {
        if (url.match(zipRegEx) != null)
        {
            var zipFile:ZipFile = new ZipFile(data);
            var entry:ZipEntry = zipFile.entries[0];
            return zipFile.getInput(entry);
        }
        else return super.transformData(data, url);
    }
 
    // helpers
 
    private static function removeZipExtension(filename:String):String
    {
        return filename.replace(zipRegEx, "");
    }
}

As you can see, the class is actually rather simple: it overrides the methods that parse the asset name or the file extension, so that they are blind about the “.zip” ending. Then it transforms the zipped ByteArray so that the AssetManager continues its work with the uncompressed data.

There's one caveat, though: Starling 1.5 unfortunately has the method “getExtensionFromUrl” still declared as “private”. You have to change that to “protected” (or use the head revision of Starling). In Starling 1.6, this will be fixed, of course.

Now, happy zipping, everyone!