On 7/19/05, Petr Machata <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I will begin with the most basic stuff possible. You can expect basic > usage long before work on any highlevel mumbo jumbo even begins.
Throwing down some floor, items, and stones within a user-defined rectangular section seems to be a good start - the ASCII-based input that ant.lua accepts is fairly popular for nearly-WYSIWYG editing - press save, toggle to Enigma and select the level again from the levels menu to load the changes - is the best available level editing from what comes directly with an Enigma install. So anything above that is gravy! > As for the XML debate... what good will XML bring, anyway? How will > reading it be simpler than just letting the (LUA) script run and setup > editor state programatically? (Presumably with functions like > add_filter, add_shape, etc.) Any editor would eventually write an Enigma-readable file so the level can be played. There's currently two choices. Pure LUA script (with or without the use of helper functions) and XML with a LUA tag area for scripted functions and additional details that the data-centric XML portion can not express. Why continue with the XML at all? Well, it's been developed this far to be functional to the degree that I've been creating levels with it. I believe there's two XML levels distributed with Enigma at this point. It has the advantage of being human-readable and machine-parsable; it's a better-known standard so external editor authors are much more likely to be familiar with it and have tools available to read and write XML. It still allows for LUA scripting for everything that can't be expressed in the more pure XML sections of the file. Also, I've created a few tools for doing transformations on rows and columns of XML-based levels. I'm certainly willing to throw away those tools for a graphical editor that can do the same - but that's part of the "highlevel mumbo jumbo" that hasn't begun yet. I'm willing to set aside a few dozen lines of script to do sectional transformations when it does happen. The two XML levels are simple enough that they can be remade, as well. This progress in XML and LUA within it need not end - it can eventually be the output format of an editor or remain parsable by Enigma. Intermediately, I don't care at all what format the up-coming editor may use. Furthermore, if the editor doesn't save in XML, I can adapt. If XML development isn't continued in Enigma, I can learn new things, re-write old things, and perhaps use a graphical editor exclusively to make Enigma levels. No consideration should be given to the fact that I'm hand-writing XML levels - The hand-scripted LUA levels were around long before I knew of Enigma. But I doubt they would be loadable into a new editor, however because XML is fairly strict about its format, the sections I've written in XML would be loadable. For the simple structural content, it seems that XML does currently have an advantage - the LUA sections make the current XML format extensible, and no editor should bother with the LUA scripted sections in the same way that no editor can read hand-scripted 100% LUA files. As for the XML debate... it should probably start by answering the question, "Why did Daniel move in this direction in the first place?" Karen "Pretzel" _______________________________________________ Enigma-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/enigma-devel
