Deck16

I didn’t get to work on Vox Venio as much as I’d liked this weekend. A minor cause of this was too much sleeping in. I slept so much even my dreams seemed to run out of original material. Ah — if only my bed weren’t so comfortable!

But in spite of, or perhaps because of, my extra slumbering I made some important progress in Vox Venio. You may remember that last time I was grumbling about deserialisation? Well… I bit the bullet and rewrote the lot. I’m now deserialising from XML. Much more elegant code, this way, with all the perks that brings (easier to maintain etc etc).

Sapient readers may recall I dismissed XML for being not-human-readable enough. But I came around. More on that in a minute.

Getting the XML is like making a mould. I temporarily hard-code a real level out of [Serializable] objects. Then I throw that real level into the moulding machine to get the XML mould of the level. Now I don’t need the hard-coded level anymore — I can make copies of my XML mould for all the levels I wish to create. (Which is exactly how we want it, because its easier and safer for a level designer to play with XML than go rummaging through my code.)

So take a look at the XML. I’ll admit it’s not as easy on the eye as the older stuff, but it is pretty damned close. On the plus side, it’s all in one file now.

Look at the XML, and then look at the picture above. You should be able to piece together much of how it’s working.

Isn’t it amazingly easy to create levels in Vox Venio? You don’t need programming experience, just imagination. I’m looking for a level designer to join the team… if you fancy being that person then please contact me.