On Tue, 25 Jul 1995, Ron Poulton wrote: > > Merc does this simply and easily. I've been looking at Merc 2.2 source. > > In a Merc pfile, which is text-based and parsed when loaded, has text > > labels for every field. It's a little wasteful, but you could use 3 > > letter identifiers in place of the long labels. The beauty of the setup > > is that the pfile entries can be in any order. The parser loads a line > > at a time and decides what to do with each one. > > > > Setting default values is easily accomplished. Initialize them just > > before the pfile is loaded. Then old pfiles are converted to new pfiles > > the next time the user connects. > > It's a method that's very easy to have a program automatically upgrade if > anything is added to the structure. This is exactly what I was talking > about. And I think the 'waste' is overcome if the file's not necessarily > a text file, but a binary file. > > Instead of, say: > > Name:Cromtiklorach > Class:3 > > I would prefer the structure as: > > <1>Cromtiklorach<0><2><3> > > <1> is ASCII 1, meaning "the next null-terminated string is the name", > then Cromtiklorach<0> is the string, then <2> means "the next numeric is > the class", etc. This method is what I was using rather than text files, > and it's very efficient if written properly. > > If an entire player file were read in as a block and then parsed, the MUD > wouldn't have to spend a lot of time chopping up a text file into > separate pieces. > > Yep. I've been playing with merc 2.2 and circle 3bpl8. Whichever one I eventually stick with, I plan on using a system like that. For right now, though, the merc text files are a real convenience during development. I s'pose I could throw a god-command in circle to text-save a player in merc format when I want to look at a pfile. Guess I'll put that on my big list of small projects ;) Sam
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