Re: [Rails-devel] Tile Database API & route calculation

[John A. T. <ja...@ja...>]

Erik Vos wrote:

>>The tile code draws the entire city structure as one, and 
>>only needs the 
>>center point and orientation of the city structure.  For hit 
>>detection, 
>>I suggest that simply saving the calculated position is better than 
>>trying to store that in the XML data, espeially since zooming and 
>>panning is going to change where it is drawn.
>>    
>>
>Yes, but to drop tokens we need the slot center locations rather than the
>city location. 
>  
>
Yes, but how does that change my suggestion to calculate them based on 
the drawing of the tile rather than to store them in the XML and then 
have to back-calculate the center point of the city structure for 
drawing the tile? 

>That will work in many cases, but by far not all 
>(for instance the Y hexes in 18Scan, to name just one example).
>The subject of having/not having default upgrade rules has been
>discussed in 18xx-softdev a few years ago, and the conclusion then
>was, that it would be best to specify all upgrades explicitly.
>At that time I was the main dissenter, but I have converted myself since.
>Hence: the TileSet.xml files now specify all allowed upgrades.
>I would prefer to keep it that way.
>  
>
If you don't want to use the data, that is fine, but I really think 
there should be one authoritive database (replicated of course) for all 
the tiles in the 18xx world.  Otherwise, we wind up with problems like 
the way things are today, where different games reuse tile numbers or 
draw the same tiles differently.  As such, since my tile database and 
John Galt's and others all have the category data, I think it should be 
included.  Ideally, I would like to be able to generate the XML for a 
given game from an authoritive tile database.  Also ideally, the XML 
version of the tile database would be useful for multiple software 
packages (moderators, tile generation programs, PBeM map generators, 
etc) to avoid further duplication.

I find it useful to have default behavior even if it doesn't cover all 
cases -- in the exceptions, you can override the default behavior as needed.

>Yes, for route calculation, but does the exclude also affect drawing that
>tile?
>  
>
No, if special drawing instructuctions are required to achieve the 
desired effect rather than the default then they need to be included.

-- 
John A. Tamplin					ja...@ja...
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