[DM-dev] Hierarchical/Flat model

[Henningsen <al...@gl...>]

>I spent last night re-vamping the file output code. The DungeonElements 
>support a full hierarchical approach, but I've made a subclass, DMDungeon, 
>which enforces a flat approach, while hiding the data hierarchically.

This looks to me like you have code that is a hybrid of two distinct
approaches that cannot really coexist peacefully. As far as I'm concerned, I
have no use for the hierarchical part, and would therefore prefer a pure
flat approach for simplicity reasons. 

An advantage for the hierarchical model that I can see is in interactive
design, where you could easier move around a complicated nested structure
consisting of e.g. a room with several attached walls and Crawlers. But if
you can move flat structures around, moving things around in several steps
(once for the room, for each wall, etc) wouldn't be that much of a burden,
really. Not worth the complication in the code, anyway, IMO.

So have I missed something? What is the use of the hierarchical model for you?

Peter