Re: [tuxracer-devel] Creating new levels (was: (no subject))

[Jules B. <jm...@he...>]

On Fri, Mar 31, 2000 at 02:52:44AM -0600, Steve Baker wrote:
> Jasmin Patry wrote:
> I would use a separate text file containing something like:
> 
> filename X Y Z Heading
> 
> ...with the 'Y' component being optional to allow things to automatically
> sit exactly on the terrain at their local origin.
> 
> It's not as convenient as an image-based approach - but for objects
> of more complexity than a tree, I think you need a better positioning
> scheme.

Rather than inventing 'Yet Another' textual file format, can I suggest
you use an existing one?  My current two favourites are XML or Scheme
(the latter only makes sense if you planned to embed a scheme interp
anyway, but that *is* quite  good way of allowing scriptability -
e.g. abominable snowmen wondering around ;-)

The rationale for this is that parsers are moderately annoying to
write and debug (I've written a few) and any simple language you
design may later turn out not to have the power you need.  XML and
Scheme, due to their nested nature, are capable of representing
arbitrary information relatively compactly, and you can just link in a 
well-known stable lib to parse the file.

Jules

-- 
Jules Bean                          |        Any sufficiently advanced 
jules@{debian.org,jellybean.co.uk}  |  technology is indistinguishable
jm...@he...              |               from a perl script