Re: [Algorithms] Complexity of new hardware

[Adrian B. <ad...@gm...>]

Hand coding incremental conversions is really easy.  Seems to me the
problem is how to flush out old versions so you don't end up with a
rats nest of compatibility code.  Fortunately, it's only a matter of
writing other code :).

Combining an easily editable source format (e.g. text) for your assets
with a translation application allows these sorts of rebuilds easily.
Layering incremental versioning on top is not hard.  There are
certainly trade offs: mergeability, better abstraction in some cases,
more code, more time to get to preview, etc.

Or, if you want to keep your source in a compiled format, providing
some form of mass translation mechanism should work.  E.g.
snapshotting version changes into a file which can be run across all
assets.  I haven't done this personally, and it comes with a different
sort of baggage, but seems doable all the same.

Pick your poison, but there are alternatives to brain dead simple
serialization that have better long term usability.  Also, unless you
have a baking step (hello translation), it feels like this would be
important for loading performance anyways.

Cheers,
Adrian

On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 3:17 AM, Jarkko Lempiainen <al...@gm...> wrote:
> Otherwise you would have to hand-code the conversion which
> could get quite a taunting task.