31st January 2003, 8:34 PM
You and me both geoboy... There's really no excuse.
Anyway, ABF does have a good point. The tracks could all be designed point by point. However, on the other hand they could have done something like programming their own track editor and using that to make the tracks. Things like that save time and money, so they may have gone that way. It's similar to how Blizzard made a world editor for WC3 and used that instead of having to design all the worlds in a more primitive language. Blizzard just took some capabilities out of the WC3 editor and gave it to the people with WC3, which I really like. If my video card actually supported the mode the world editor wants to use :D, then I would be using a very powerful yet easy to use program for making WC3 levels. How much memory does a WC3 level take up? Well, I checked, and even the ones with millions of triggers (the sheep game) took up around 80 or so kilobytes. Of course, the triggers aren't that big a deal. The map isn't storing all the words used in the trigger data, just hte numbers and some bits of info used to link one thing to another thing. The "things" themselves are placed by the computer and the main game's programming. Now then, wouldn't you say that the WC3 levels are quite complex? It has to keep track of land placement to a very small degree, yet it's all stored in a very small file size. Maps really are quite small. Now then, that's all just without any kind of compression on Blizzard's part or worry of space consumption, and it still allows for plenty of maps on a 512 kilobyte (59 block) memory card. Well, okay about 5 :D, but you see my point. Now, a race track for F-Zero should store even less data. There will be multiple track links using the above suggestion of "what part it links to", and everything being reletive to the starting line block's placement, but that's all easy data to store. The actually computations of putting them together is done by the game's engine. All that's needed in the save file is "curve full-pipe piece linked to flat piece number 3 by top", which isn't stored like that, but more like this.
C (curved tunnel track piece)
3 (indicates track piece number)
8 (this number indicates style of connection)
You see? VERY small footprint. Of course, the fact that this will connect by making a hole in that kind of track isn't needed to be placed in the file. That's done by the game's code after reading what connects to what and by what method.
Anyway, ABF does have a good point. The tracks could all be designed point by point. However, on the other hand they could have done something like programming their own track editor and using that to make the tracks. Things like that save time and money, so they may have gone that way. It's similar to how Blizzard made a world editor for WC3 and used that instead of having to design all the worlds in a more primitive language. Blizzard just took some capabilities out of the WC3 editor and gave it to the people with WC3, which I really like. If my video card actually supported the mode the world editor wants to use :D, then I would be using a very powerful yet easy to use program for making WC3 levels. How much memory does a WC3 level take up? Well, I checked, and even the ones with millions of triggers (the sheep game) took up around 80 or so kilobytes. Of course, the triggers aren't that big a deal. The map isn't storing all the words used in the trigger data, just hte numbers and some bits of info used to link one thing to another thing. The "things" themselves are placed by the computer and the main game's programming. Now then, wouldn't you say that the WC3 levels are quite complex? It has to keep track of land placement to a very small degree, yet it's all stored in a very small file size. Maps really are quite small. Now then, that's all just without any kind of compression on Blizzard's part or worry of space consumption, and it still allows for plenty of maps on a 512 kilobyte (59 block) memory card. Well, okay about 5 :D, but you see my point. Now, a race track for F-Zero should store even less data. There will be multiple track links using the above suggestion of "what part it links to", and everything being reletive to the starting line block's placement, but that's all easy data to store. The actually computations of putting them together is done by the game's engine. All that's needed in the save file is "curve full-pipe piece linked to flat piece number 3 by top", which isn't stored like that, but more like this.
C (curved tunnel track piece)
3 (indicates track piece number)
8 (this number indicates style of connection)
You see? VERY small footprint. Of course, the fact that this will connect by making a hole in that kind of track isn't needed to be placed in the file. That's done by the game's code after reading what connects to what and by what method.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)