cincinnatus.c said:
"well, embedding text in scripts is fine for our little project...
Even this is amusing. You've spent enough time on our forums to understand that AoD will have lots of text. Really a lot, in dialogues, descriptions, etc, much more than your average mainstream RPG, a "big project". By this time logical thinking should have brought you to a conclusion that the format was chosen for many reason by people who know what they're doing and why. We know, you don't. And that's not an offense, that's just reality. But your thinking is driven and dominated by one idea: "I'm an awesome programmer, everyone else is idiot." Well, good luck with that attitude. Not that it changes something - you are who you are, and I am who I am - but that will just bring you more problems in future.
and - by the way - I think calling it 'hardcoded' is a bit unjust".
Well, I'd never say that, since it's not true. Maybe I'd lie if you were my friend, and I would want to protect your feelings, but, fortunately, it's not so. Calling it hardcoded isn't "a bit unjust", it's a plain mistake. Look even through this thread - by no definition mentioned it is hardcoded, even if you're crazy about definitions. It's easy to modify, it's exposed to users and the designer who has no programming experience handles this easily. In the case you'll keep bending your stubborn line - what, in your opinion, is "less hardcoded" than a plain text file?
Instead I was offered a mountain of defensive nonsense followed by a stream of insults.
You're such a victim, even registered at Codex just to complain, get your share of attention and help to derail another thread. Let's stay cool, though, and analyse.
You started behaving arrogantly after I corrected you on two points:
1) This is an array. See TorqueScript reference for details;
2) You can easily, without changing other bits, add new messages. That's what Vince usually does with that file.
Do you see an offense there? These are absolutely valid points, the only "offensive" part about them, is that they mean that you were mistaken in your judgment. How is that my fault?
So I called you arrogant and impudent, which describes your behavior precisely. That's all, but it's kinda hypocritical of you to play a role of victim, if you're replying with this to a neutral post:
Nick, I'm sorry, but you have no clue what you're talking about.
you check in google, what "compiler", "source code" and "hardcoded" mean. I can explain it to you myself, but it would have to wait, and I'm sure you can handle reading a couple of articles. Or ask Gareth.
This is told to a developer on a forum of his game by a person who just did a couple of mistakes in a row. Damaged vanity? Maybe. Trolling attempt? Quite probable. What else could be a reason to say what you said? Maybe you wanted me to find a definition you love, that would give you at least a semantic victory, if it didn't work out with facts? Sorry, just not interested. At the same time, if you'd have any respect to a person you're talking to, and basic understanding of human psychology, you'd know that your words made you look like megalomaniac, who considers everyone around him an idiot. What is the reason to be overly nice to you after that?
I'm not mentioning that childish stuff you've written about me right in this thread, though noone was talking to you, not saying about offending.
Kosmonaut said:
And returning to what started the debate in the ITS forums. You were talking about including the war barks in a config file right (like a INI or XML file)? If this was what you tried to say, I think that the benefit of this would be negligible.
Perhaps, but not entirely.
It would be counter-productive. Seriously. Not sure if you'll start arguing about this too, and what your argument will be based on (perhaps you'll start developing another TGE-based RPG, we all win in this case
), but I just wanted to let you know: it's a pure waste of time. Accept it or not, it is so.
see how suibhne (an intelligent person) is extending the list incorrectly? this would not happen with a simpler and more appropriate format.
First, suibhne is not a developer. My sister, who is an intelligent person, too, would probably pay no attention at those little numbers and have some duplicates in the end. But everyone who is going to edit it in purpose should have a skill to count to 10. Maybe to 20. Is this so hard? A little kid would handle it.
Second, suibhne obviously didn't care about indexes, his aim was to post his text lines.
2. and if you really need to have it in a source file, use sets, rather than plain arrays. otherwise you would still have to deal with indices, duplicates and so on
Depending on what implementation of set you're referring to, of course, but:
But given the nature of the game, and the kind of messages in the list of strings, I suppose that they want to randomize / shuffle the selected element, not selecting a specific one, so an array is a good choice.
You just have turn your imagination on.
That said, I absolutely agree it's not the most "ideologically correct" way to do it. Both you and obediah have a point here. "Horrible code", you say. However you just refuse / too lazy to think about other factors.
This game is in development for more than 5 years now. I was developing it alone from beginning till now. I always had a shitload of work to do, really important stuff. Someone always wants something RIGHT NOW. "Is that feature ready yet? What about now?". Between working on those important features I sometimes have a time to implement one or two little things. Like a script file which stores combat taunts in TorqueScript arrays. And you know what? It works perfectly. It does what it is supposed to do. It will never have 10000 lines, so some poor guy will never have hard time putting indexes. And that's enough, I won't waste time fixing stuff that is not broken. Because every little thing, from GUI callbacks to precise camera movement interpolation, could use some tweaking, optimizing or polishing. But as long as it works perfectly, I'm done there. I'll do it better way for the next game, if I'll consider it worth doing.
Do what you want with your software, if you're really a developer, don't tell me what to do with mine. Because there is a good chance I know without you. Also, please pay attention that I'm trying to reason with you after 4AM, which means I give you much more respect than I should, judging by your attitude.
If that was in vain... well, I'll learn another lesson. However, I was always overly optimistic about human nature, especially when it comes to ambitions and compromise. However, let's see.