Hey!
Thanks for your input.
in fact - proposals for a common BD format go back a long way.
its commonly called the BDCFF : BoulderDash Common File Format.
The last proposal to my knowledge is e.g. at
http://www.boulder-dash.nl/bdcff_doc.html
The problem is: this is solely a proposal for the BoulderDash objects, not all the EMC objects, let alone al the supaplex ones or any other BD-type game.
if you take that BDCFF format at
http://www.boulder-dash.nl/bdcff_doc.html and replace all the [] brackets with <> , you almost have a valid XML file.
As for working with binary files in flash.
Hmmm ... XML loading and parsing routines are built right into the core of the Flash player, and any other webtool for that matter.
loading and parsing XML is a breeze, and allthough working with binary files in flash is not impossible, its considerably more work and certainly not following any web-standards, so why not use the widely spread standard for passing around data on the web?
I'm thinking out loud here, but as example you could provide and RSS feed with new levels, and since the leveldata would be XML as well, you could include the level right into the RSS feed, no need for an enclosure link which would need a seperate download thread.
So you could build a player that would autoupdate the levels with standardised routines as RSS-feeds.
Since i'm on a rant allready - here are some more advantages of XML
- leveldata would be human readable, no need for extra level visualisation tools.
- leveldata and metadata would be editable with any text or XML editor. Offcourse a dedicated leveleditor would work better, but still ...
- XML is very extensible, a player could simply skip unknown metadata in a standard way.
- new objects would include a description of their behaviour, or a link to more info, so an editor wouldn't have to actually trace down a compatible player that knows the new object to get an understanding of what the object does.
Anyway ...
Don't you agree that throwing around ascii files around the web is far easier then binary files?
oh .. and by the way .. your file archive is HUGE and AWESOME !!!!!!
Thanks !!!!
(and thanks for reading all the way through ... sorry - I didn't mean to write that much or sound presumptuous)
Cheers
Steffest