On Wed, 30 Jul 1997, Desmond Daignault wrote:
> I have thought of doing this as well. By using tags, the world files
> would be "readable" and would put the bulk of the processing into a
> similiar funtion as the one used for player files. The only downfall I
> can see with this method is backwards compatability. (but can easily be
> solved by adding a -VERSION- tag to the front of all "new" world files.
> Then if the tag isn't there, treat it with the old parse_x functions. The
> number of strcmps and what not is irrevelant at this point in the code,
> because the mud is going through the bootup process. (no players on anyway
> so who cares how long it takes, unless you are doing the copyover thingy.
> then they might care. *shrug*).
I was planning on writing a standalone convertor to change existing files
over and add new ones from outside sources. It's gotta be done anyway,
and it's not a big job.
> One of my goals is to have a "standard" format for all of the files, rent,
> plr, mail, wld, shp, etc. This would allow me to reuse code much more
> effectively and by using ascii text, make it more portable between hosts.
Exactly. You can easily use the same object load/save code on rent, mail,
boards, and object prototypes (not to mention saving corpses/donation
items/houses/etc). And mob prototypes can use the pfiles routines. I
don't know much about shops, but I'd imagine they could use object code
with a few mods. All you've got left are rooms and resets, which are
fairly simple.
If you keep all the keywords unique, you could just have one huge
load/save routine that would be intelligent enough to realize what it's
looking at and parse all formats. Then you can throw entire zones into
one file if you like, or even throw all zones into a single file (sounds
like a great idea for booting, but fear the builder who saves every tiny
change).
The big thing I forgot to mention in my previous post was that I'd like to
eliminate most of the zone numbers in the prototype files. What I mean is
that rather than have an object file full of objects numbered 8500, 8501,
8502, etc, a good generic system might have a "Zone: 85" tag at the
beginning of a file, with objects numbered 0 through whatever. This would
make renumbering zones a snap.
> On the otherhand. Using a database scheme like Oracle or something like
> that has crossed my mind. But I am lazy and will wait to go that route
> when I find a db that is portable to dos and unix and is easy to use. heh.
I've seen a lot of site changes, so I lean heavily toward portability.
I also lean heavily toward easy since I'm lazy too :)
Sam
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