Re: [Super-tux-devel] File format

[Ingo R. <gr...@gm...>]

ri...@ae... writes:

>  To implement tiles like the ones decribed in the development page, 
> I think we need to: 
> - create a config file with all the tiles and the information about
> them;
> - make tiles code flexible; 

Yep, tile-id to filename mapping and collision behaviour of a tile
should be configurable via file and not hardcoded as it is now, would
make it quite a bit easier to add new tiles.

>  My point is that we need a file format, since the level and 
> highscore ones should be more flexible and use a common system to 
> read them. 
>  In my opinion, we don't need a very complex file format, so I vote 
> for a kde/windows (.ini) like file format. 

.ini is as far as I know pretty much unstructured (beside the group
headings of course), its fine for simple name -> value mappings, but
for a level format a little bit more structure is needed. I vote for
.xml, s-expressions (aka lisp stuff) or something based on a scripting
language we use (ie a python list or something like that). In
Windstille my levels currently look kind of like this:

(windstille-level
 (properties
  (name "Hello World"))

 (scripts "level_script.scm")

 (objects
  (igel (pos 10 20)
        (direction left)))

 (tilemap
  (width 10) (height 20)
  (data 
   0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0
   0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0
   0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0
   ...
   8  8  8  8  8  8  8  8  8  8)))

My biggest complains about the current format are basically that
something like name=value looks a lot nicer then deriving the meaning
of a value simply by its position and that there is a simple character
to tile mapping, which limits the number of available tiles character
pretty much (something like 80 when one wants to use just printable
ASCII). It might not be a problem for the 0.1 release, but for later
versions it will become problematic. Currently I have already 44 tiles
and thats just one theme and without much background or variation in
the tiles, so the final number will easily be ten times larger.

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