Re: [DM-dev] Hierarchical/Flat model

[Stephan B. <ste...@ei...>]

On Wednesday 22 August 2001 03:05, you wrote:
> >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.

I knew you'd say that! ;)
Yes, it's absolutely true, but I'm trying to make an approach which means I 
don't have to implement yet another layer in QUB, which would use a 
hierarchical model. For example, when a user is drawing a dungeon, they 
shouldn't be restricted to one flat surface and a number of primitive 
objects. I want them to be able to place a wall inside a room in such a way 
that if they move the room,the wall goes with it. That's way too much work 
with a flat model, and the programmer would have to make assumptions about 
what's on the flat board (for example, there's no longer a room, there's just 
a series of marks which represent walls). In the hierarchical model it's as 
simple as room->move(....).

> 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.

Yup (if I had read that before I wrote the above paragraph I would have seen 
that you're already on the same wavelength ;)
To me it seems more work to move the flat-structured data around.

I agree completely that the flat and H models aren't mixing well. I really 
think I will nuke the H structure and go with something very, very flat. I 
won't kill me, it'll just wound my sense of architecture ;). Nothing fatal, 
certainly. ;)

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

Just for interactive design, mainly, and because QUB already has the code 
(XML stuff) for serializing and loading hierarchies of data, so I could store 
dungeons in XML format extremely easily this way. If I do a flat model I've 
got to use an intermediary format and encode/decode it along the way.

No biggie, though. I'm determined to get the file i/o finished and out of the 
way as soon as possible, so I'm shooting for this weekend. If that means I 
have to nuke the hierarchy, then that's what I'll do, I guess. I can always 
rewrite later with no harm done.

See ya!

----- stephan
Generic Universal Computer Guy
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