Need your advice: BuildingThemes config format

[boformer 3,169]

I'm still testing the new "Better Upgrade' feature of the Building Themes mod. It works quite well so far.

The mod creates duplicates of growable assets and assigns different wealth levels to them.

It also provides an upgrade mapping: Buildings will upgrade to a higher level duplicate if one is defined.

The current config format is quite simple:

<Building name="original asset name" min-level="1" max-level="3" upgrade="level 4 asset name" />

(The upgrade attribute determines the asset that the duplicate with the max. Level will upgrade to)

The mod automatically creates the duplicates and names them "original asset name#LevelX".

The thing is that this configuration format is quite limited when it comes to future extensions, like changing the zone type, density, the footprint size, spawn rate or the display of props of the duplicates.

That's why I thought about a more advanced configuration format that lists up every duplicate separately:

<Building name="myasset" upgrade="myasset#L2" />
<Building name="myasset#L2" level="2" duplicateof="myasset" upgrade="myasset#L3" />
<Building name="myasset#L3" level="3" duplicateof="myasset" />

The problem with this kind of configuration: It is harder to understand, and the manual naming might cause problems when 2 theme authors chose the same name for their duplicates. It also means that there might be multiple similar duplicates which raises the number of prefabs (there is a hardcoded prefab limit). On the other hand, it allows two themes to contain completely different variations of the original asset, with different color combinations and different props.

Question: Which config format should I implement?

  Edited July 13, 2015 by schmidtbochum  

[Dubai Skyscraper 129]

With my limited knowledge I can't say much about this matter but I don't think the 2nd version is any harder to understand. Just more text.

 

But I actually commented for this:

There is a mod (Mesh Info, I think) which displays the SteamID of each asset. So I assume you can access this information via the API. Using the ID instead of names makes it more cryptic, but you avoid the issue of double names which might happen sooner or later 

  Edited July 13, 2015 by Dubai Skyscraper  

[Shelltoe 15]

just curious. is it only possible to store data in attributes or is something like this possible?

 

<Building name="myasset#L2">

    <DuplicateOf>myasset</DuplicateOf>

    <UpgradesTo>myasset#L3</UpgradesTo>

    <AvailableLevels>

        <Level> 1</Level>

        <Level> 2</Level>

    </AvailableLevels>

    ...

</Building>

guess it will always be kinda limited using only one tag + attributes

  Edited July 13, 2015 by Shelltoe  

[boformer 3,169]

just curious. is it only possible to store data in attributes or is something like this possible?

 

<Building name="myasset#L2">

    <DuplicateOf>myasset</DuplicateOf>

    <UpgradesTo>myasset#L3</UpgradesTo>

    <AvailableLevels>

        <Level> 1</Level>

        <Level> 2</Level>

    </AvailableLevels>

    ...

</Building>

guess it will always be kinda limited using only one tag + attributes

It does not really matter if you use attributes or child elements. Both is possible.

Here is a mix of both. It was the initial format I developed:

The only problem with the initial format: First of all, it introduces an additional "Variation" element, which increases the complexity of the code.

The other problem is that it forces the original asset to be a part of the theme.

[Shelltoe 15]

hm using elements you'll probably have a lot more flexibility and extensibility in the future as attributes can't store multible values.

of course it requires some extra code but it makes it more readable too. i would not suggest to use attributes where multible values could be possible in the future but this depends on your plans i guess

 

as i'm not to sure if i got your initial format:

first Terraced House1#L2 (a actual workshop item with id / the base asset will allways have an workshop id right?) gets loaded.

 then #L3-#L5 will be created using #L2 as a base, renaming it and changing its level.

 

 

<Building active="False">
    <WorkshopId>123123312</WorkshopID>
    <AssetName>myasset</AssetName>
    <UpgradesTo>myasset#L2</UpgradesTo>
    <AvailableLevels>
        <Level>1</Level>
    </AvailableLevels>
    ...
</Building>
<Building>
    <AssetName>myasset#L2</AssetName>
    <DuplicateOf>123123312</DuplicateOf>
    <UpgradesTo>myasset#L3</UpgradesTo>
    <AvailableLevels>
        <Level>2</Level>
    </AvailableLevels>
    ...
</Building>
<Building>
    <AssetName>myasset#L3</AssetName>
    <DuplicateOf>123123312</DuplicateOf>
    <AvailableLevels>
        <Level>3</Level>
    </AvailableLevels>
    ...
</Building>

 

### Pseudocode:

 foreach Building {

    if active {

        if !isLoaded(this.DuplicateOf) {

         createBase(this.DuplicateOf)

        } else {

         loadBase(this.DuplicateOf)

       }

    }

}

this should work shouldn't it? i might be totally wrong though, i have no clue what your sourcecode looks like.

you could even fix the 2 authors / 1 asset name problem by attaching the orignal workshop id to all variation assetnames while generating them.

  Edited July 13, 2015 by Shelltoe  

[boformer 3,169]

 

you could even fix the 2 authors / 1 asset name problem by attaching the orignal workshop id to all variation assetnames while generating them.

I think I will append the theme name to the asset to fix that problem.

I'm taking care of properties which contain multiple arguments. Right now there are none, so using attributes is fine.

This is my current plan how the format will look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<Configuration xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">

<Themes>

<Theme name="Edinburgh">

<Buildings>

<Building name="455335791.ERHL1A_Data" upgradeto="ERHL1A#L2"/> <-- the original (L1) asset

<Building name="ERHL1A#L2" level="2" duplicateof="455335791.ERHL1A_Data" upgradeto="ERHL1A#L3"/> <-- L2 duplicate

<Building name="ERHL1A#L3" level="3" duplicateof="455335791.ERHL1A_Data" upgradeto="ERHL1A#L4"/> <-- L3 duplicate

...

</Buildings>

</Theme>

</Themes>

</Configuration>