> Patrick Dughi > Sent: Monday, September 25, 2000 11:57 PM
>
> Re-re-revamping offline editor, I thought to myself, should I try,
> in any way whatsoever, to promote a more, well.. structured view of the
> data files in the world directory?
-- snip --
My approach to this problem is to store the definition of the 'world'
in a way that is easy to maintain and then use that definition to
generate the .zon, .wld, .mob, .obj, and .shp files and indexes.
The key to being 'easy to maintain' is:
1) each 'thingy' (technical term =P) is defined just once. For example,
'a spider' is defined once but can be assigned to any number rooms.
Yes, it will always have the same gold, xp, hp, etc in every zone. Same
thing with objects: 'a cup' is 'a cup' no matter where it is assigned.
2) relationships between 'thingies' are established. So, rooms are
assigned to zones, objects are assigned to rooms and mobs, etc.
The 'world definition' is then used to generate the 'world' files.
Optionally, a single zone can be generated. The .zon, .wld, etc files
are not edited by hand, instead, the 'world definition' is changed and
the world is re-generated.
I'm currently proto-typing this approach using Windows 98 tools Delphi
and Access97. But, the concept can be implemented on any platform.
Why am I going to all this trouble? Because I believe (to quote you),
"a more, well.. structured view of the data files in the world directory".
is a very good idea.
Steve
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