Re: game development question:reading and writing game data to and from files

  • From: "Tyler Littlefield" <tyler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:14:53 -0600

I keep thinking of things, so I guess I'll keep replying.
I'd still like to find some bison resources; I'd rather not have to get my builders to learn c++ before they can build. It would be cool to have a proprietary sort of language though so that I wouldn't have to mess with the builders in c++ thing. I'd thought about making it work with python scripts, but that looks like more trouble than it's worth, and I don't know perl to use that.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Ken Perry" <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, July 12, 2009 12:04 PM
Subject: RE: game development question:reading and writing game data to and from files




I use Bison and Flex in my current mud engine which is still one of the few
commercial ones left.  I find it is too much work keeping up the grammar
though and I am slowly converting to an xml / mysql based file system.
Right now I have a full compiler that compiles the zone files and
proprietary functional language into a binary structure and a parser that
reads the player files but over the years I have come to find that it would
be much easier as a relational database that would allow much quicker look
up with less memory use.

I am not saying bison and flex is not a good choice if you really want to
get down and dirty but I am saying if your thinking of running your game
server on multi platforms like Windows and Linux it is easier to have
something like a relational database underneath than porting the file system
stuff over each operating system.

Now with that said if you must build everything from ground up I would
really look into Boost and the serialization library over writing a parser
with Bison and flex there are limitations to the type of parser you will get
out of bison but you won't find those till much later in your development.
A game like a mud is well fitted to a relational database and an xml
interface.  You could easily use xml to both interface with the players and
to create web page interfaces with the game like clan pages that could list
who was on and clan standings or quest hints and help pages.  Again you
could do this by creating your own file systems but you are then reinventing
a lot of code that has been done for you if you were to use something like
c++ bindings, mysql and php, python, or pearl as the mud languages for
scripting..

I can tell you when changes have been made to the g++ compiler over the
years I have spent more time fixing my bison grammar and c++ problems with
the file systems then I have actually adding to the game.  You want to make
the base code easy enough to upkeep that you will have time to add features
to the game for your users.  I just don't want to see you get to where I am
and have to re-engineer your game server while your players wait for those
features they have been asking for.


Ken


-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bill Cox
Sent: Sunday, July 12, 2009 12:49 PM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: game development question:reading and writing game data to and
from files

In general, for complex databases, I prefer to write custom
reader/writers using bison/flex.  An ASCII file that mirrors your
classes well has many advantages.  You can edit it easily, and it's
fairly simple to maintain backwards compatibility with previous
versions.

Bill

On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Tyler Littlefield<tyler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
hmm, so I would store the pointer to an int/string/double.
I need to be able to tell what it is though, no?

----- Original Message ----- From: "Sina Bahram" <sbahram@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, July 12, 2009 10:36 AM
Subject: RE: game development question:reading and writing game data to
and
from files


The map definitely handles this bro.

Just don't make it a map of primative to primative, make it a map of
primative to object. That object can be of any type you like.

Take care,
Sina

________________________________

From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tyler
Littlefield
Sent: Sunday, July 12, 2009 12:18 PM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: game development question:reading and writing game data to and
from
files


Hello all,
I've started work on a custom mud, and am trying to figure something out.
Each player will have a set of keys that will be stored, name, connect
time,
creation time, etc.
I was thinking of storing these in a map, but that requires that the map
hold multiple values; something which the c++ map doesn't do.
So, I'm trying to figure something out.
I'd like to be able to store player data, and a list of the player's
inventory so the objects can be recreated when the player connects
somehow.
I would need to store object type, name, etc etc.
I'm not quite sure how I could achieve this easily; I could possibly
itterate through the map once I've gotten the data type thing figured out
and do something like write key=value.
Then when I loaded it I could just strtok on the = and set that up, but
I'm
not quite sure how I'd handle inventory and that.
This is the only snag I'm having so far, and I'm not able to move on
without
it, as I'm to the point where I need to start saving player data, so help
would be really appriciated at this point. :)
Thanks,

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