Re: [Alephmodular-devel] Preserving/Restoring editor hooks?

[Br'fin <br...@ma...>]

On Jun 23, 2005, at 3:39 PM, Timothy Collett wrote:

> On Jun 22, 2005, at 12:13 PM, Br'fin wrote:
>> But in the process I've been hacking apart the functions that used  
>> to serve as a way for the editor to load a map into the in- 
>> application viewer. These functions were already corrupted by the  
>> hosting of serialization information.
>>
>> From what I can determine, the original editor sat as generally  
>> separate code and had it's own internal version of process_map_wad 
>> (). Where that function in game_wad.cpp handles loading a map from  
>> file to memory. The editor's version would already be working with  
>> an in memory copy.
>
> Hmm...I have no idea of the nature of these hooks, so...
>
> Would it be possible to ditch them now, and rebuild them in a more  
> elegant fashion later, once things stabilize a bit?  Or is the form  
> they're in the only form they could take?
>
> If they're becoming a hindrance to what AM is trying to be, then it  
> might be best to get rid of them.
>
> I could probably provide more coherent rambling if you could,  
> perhaps explain something of what form these hooks take?
>
> Timothy Collett

I will first comment that the code I've been adding in this section  
is hardly better or more elegant.  In other words, some of the way  
I've been managing things I'm unhappy about. It's better perhaps, but  
isn't necessarily clean or elegant.

Also, I only just connected the dots to see how load_points,  
load_sides, load_polygons and complete_loading_level connected the  
dots with the unreleased editor code.

In the current code all map loading is processed through  
process_map_wad. Which basically extracts data from tagged elements  
of the wad file, and then feeds them to other load functions most of  
the time. Extract map points from the wad, then feed that data to  
load_points.

load_points historically has two arguments, a pointer to an array of  
points, and a count of points. During serialization, not noticing  
that most of these load functions are exported to be called from  
editor code not included, this became somewhat corrupted. It gets  
those two arguments, then casts them back to a uint8* so that they  
can be deserialized. It's not pretty, but works for loading the map.  
But it means load_points doesn't do what it originally promised it  
would do.

Most of these elements might be pretty straightforward in shape. But  
there are some complex spots. For instance, the requests to scan and  
add platform data to platform polygons. And especially recalculating  
all the redundant map data. Also, since there doesn't seem to be an  
A1 or AM or even M2 specific map editor that works under a current  
operating system, it seems out of line to further cut off potential  
ties to an editor.

I agree that in the future a better way of splitting things out may  
very well be in order. But this seems to be an area of overlap  
between game_wad.cpp and map.h/.cpp that we are better served by  
repairing in the current code base rather than excising.

-Jeremy Parsons
http://alephmodular.sourceforge.net/