It's funny how I have to fix the old school design yet to this day. I guess it was worse than I thought. I'm speaking of the terrain/object distinction. In the old model some terrain tiles were object-like and there were a lot of terrain tiles like that. In the new model objects and terrains are separated, leaving some basic terrain types. This doesn't sound too bad until you find out that every action routine must be rewritten, things like digging and kicking. I have found it hard to create a solid way to interact with the environment and limit the use of special case code.
This is where data-driven approach will help, but it doesn't happen by itself. Also, it can be possible that you start to refactor the data-driven implementation to achieve more detailed system. I think my plan with plants was too detailed and I need to stick to basic stuff to get something done in reasonable amount of time.
For a while I wasn't really sure what the hell I'm supposed to do next, but at least now I have this data-driven terrain system to create.
