I just committed a major change to the master branch of our git repository, which affects the development aspect of Andor's Trail profoundly.
You know that old resource format we used to use - with the excessive use of | signs everywhere, and the funky use of "{}" and "[]" everywhere. It's gone.
We now encode all our resources as json objects. I rewrote the parsers for the resourceloaders to parse json objects instead, and also updated the editor to import/export as json. (The editor can still import stuff from the old resource format though).
The reasoning behind this change is twofold:
- We can now use standardized tools to read and manipulate the resource files. Json is a versatile format, which most languages have native support for.
- By keeping the field names close to each object definition, we won't have to change all of the existing objects when introducing new fields.
So, what are your thoughts? What other clever things can we do, now that the resources can be loaded as json objects?
As a nudge to all developers, imagine what you could do by loading an url like this with jquery on a webpage:
http://andors-trail.googlecode.com/git/ ... _v068.json
(all game resources are available in similar files)
Oh, another thing. While updating the editor to support the new json format, the code was refactored it to use angular.js insted of jqueryui. Additionally, the content editor now has a lot of new nifty features:
- Editor can now import content from the git repository (available from the top right "import" button)
- Table-based editors for items and monsters (for power-users)
- Mouseover-hints for most labels in the editor.
- Exp calculation for monsters now take conditions into effect (thanks to Ian for reporting it!)
http://andors-trail.googlecode.com/git/ ... ditor.html
RIP home-grown resource format. Long live the json resource format!
Would love to hear the input from other developers!