[DM-dev] Data Management and new API

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

Let's continue our recent private discussion on the list. We were trying to
rethink from scratch what the DungeonMaker library is supposed to be able to
do... how it does its internal data management, and what API it offers to
users...

I've got this thought: As long as you (Stephan) commit to staying with the
project and helping people who want to work with your code, it should be OK
to me if I don't understand your data management code (just as you don't
understand some of the inner workings of the Crawler engine). What's really
important is the API. When I do my next programming session on the
DungeonMaker, I should just be able to call methods from the API you make
for data management, without neccessarily having to understand the internals.

I have anyway been thinking that when I extend the DungeonMaker to become
able to create lots of closed rooms, and then break them open (with doors or
openings), I'd like to write a new class that calls the DungeonMaker class,
generates a dungeon, and then makes changes to it - as opposed to changing
the DM class itself. In concrete terms I will change some wall tiles into
doors or open spaces. Whatever you do re data management has to allow that.
Other than that, I should be able to use whatever API you wrap the old DM
class into.

However, let's discuss the API first. What do you think it should include?

Peter