High Level Game Switching

High Level Game Switching

Brett208 16 Apr 2016 02:33

We have thrown out a lot of different game play options to include local multiplayer, networked multiplayer, coop, versus, and Pilot/Bombadier. It would probably be good to discuss the plan for switching through these modes. I wouldn't mind seeing a couple of high level enums that control how the game code is initialized.

I would also like to see this being set by a simple .txt document until/if the UI gets off the ground. Something like what is below. It could be .xml as well if that is easier to consume and write to.

If someone has better format ideas, would be happy to hear about them.

Example Config Text Document (config.txt or something)

PlayerMode: NetworkMultiplayer
GameMode: Campaign
IP4_Address: XXX.XX.XXX.X

PreviousIP4_Addresses:
XXX.XX.XXX.X
XXX.XX.XXX.X
XXX.XX.XXX.X

Example Enums

enum PlayerMode
{
    SinglePlayer,
    LocalMultiplayer,
    NetworkMultiplayer
}
 
enum GameMode
{
    Campaign, //Typical Single Player or Coop Multiplayer
    PilotAndBombadier,
    Versus
}

Re: High Level Game Switching

rbwhitaker 16 Apr 2016 04:12

I'd love it if we could pick a standardized format that we can read in without having to write a lot of parsing code ourselves. My vote for this kind of thing is always YAML, though there's not a default YAML file reader. We'll have to grab one from somewhere else if we go with that. Alternatively, I believe the .NET Framework has built in JSON and XML readers that we could use. I like those formats less, but I'm not opposed to them.

And it's not like the format that Brett posted would be all that hard to parse anyway. Split by line, key before the ":", value after it, trim the leading whitespace. Perhaps that's just about as good.

At any rate, I leave that in the capable hands of whoever volunteers to implement this. I'm OK with whatever.