Saturday 31 October 2009

Map issue

While the development is shifting from technical problems to content creation there is still plenty of things to do. One of them is maps, where in once again I notice I have been wrong. The current problem is that I have a map for objects that don't move (aka terrain objects). The map id is shared with all types of objects and it's basically duplicated data that has to be synchronized with current object lists. It's a problem, because I want to make it possible to add objects easily.

The current implementation has one base class for all maps, including routines that are needed in dungeon generation. Those routines are however not needed for objects like monsters or items, because they don't come in formations in general. What I now plan is three base classes for maps. The first one should remain a simple int-based map. It doesn't need any special routines for dungeon generation etc. The second one will be a map that has object pointers stored, so you could take the information directly from object type, such as retrieving the correct graphics frame, or even drawing it directly. The third map will be solely for terrain and dungeon generation, including all those complex generation routines.

I guess it's time for yet another refactoring moment. I'm not that worried, although it's going to be a big change for objects at least. It's also a big change in the way I used to think about maps. I wanted them to be just ints, but the experience with Teemu proved that object maps can be safe, if you don't try to do everything with them.

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