RE: XML was RE: [GD-General] RE: A portable preferences library

[Gareth L. <GL...@cl...>]

Ok, I missed the following bit from your first email

-------------
The PlaneShift game (made with CS) has about 25 megabytes (uncompressed) 
of XML files (aggregated
in four big files) of level data. On my Linux system at home (an Athlon 
XP2000) the levels load
in about 16-20 seconds. That includes the following operations:
    - Extracting the XML data from the ZIP.
    - Parsing of XML.
    - Creation of all objects.
    - Loading of all textures used in the levels and preparing them for 
use with OpenGL.
    - Creation of the kdtree for the visibility culler.
    - Loading of the lightmap data for the 100000 polygons that are in 
those levels.
    - Creation of oriented bounding boxes for collision detection (this 
is the most
-------------

You write that as if it's a positive. Surely if the data was binary packed,
with the textures prepared for your renderer, the kdtree preproccesed, the
lightmap data stored with the polygons and the oriented bounding boxes
precalculated you could just do

----------
    - Extracting the data from the ZIP.
    - Loading of all textures used in the levels 
----------

None of those steps change without the level changing, so why waste all that
time. 16-20 seconds is a hell of a long for a level to load when you could
do 16(guestimate) of those seconds offline.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jorrit Tyberghein [mailto:Jor...@uz...]
> Sent: 16 December 2003 12:29
> To: gam...@li...
> Subject: Re: XML was RE: [GD-General] RE: A portable 
> preferences library
> 
> 
> Gareth Lewin wrote:
> 
> >Hopefully you aren't building a mesh from that at run time ? 
> >
> >XML is good, XML is great. But please tell me that you 
> aren't considering
> >having mullion polygon meshes in text format ready to be 
> parsed at runtime ?
> >  
> >
> Well they are parsed at load time. But it all goes very fast 
> (as my mail 
> below shows).
> We have no performance problems at all related to XML. The 
> XML parsing 
> is only a fraction
> of the total cost.
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> 
> 
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