[Hgengine-devs] XML Scene Graph

[Charles L. <lo...@um...>]

Devs,

1) I just added XML Scene Graph saving to the engine.  It appears I've 
brought all of the currently used nodes up to speed.  You can see how 
they operate.  Additionally, I made it so it saves the XML scene every 
frame.  It seems to take about .008s to save the entire scene every 
frame.  The scene can be tested by invoking mercury to try the new scene.

$ ./mercury -s test.xml

2) This brought up an issue in the Terrain, that I still haven't figured 
out.  It seems to portal the user over to a point in the terrain.  I.e. 
you pass in one point, however it ends up being a completely different 
point.  It does produce the right results transformed back.  I am not 
sure why the issue is only one way.

3) This did prompt a new idea - XML Scene Portaling.  I think it would 
be useful to have a node that could say "Import this XML node over in 
this other file here"  But, it would do so in a way that the scene graph 
would be aware of it, it would not transparently dump it on over.  This 
could also be useful when doing different themes, as it would enable 
users to make the node different depending on the theme.

Another side effect of this node is that it would be able to override 
the MercuryNode's XML Saving, like TextNode.  This would make it 
possible to /not/ write out all of that other file's XML in the save 
file.  Instead, with those sorts of nodes they are essentially marked 
"do not save."

Any ideas?