Does anybody share my "On-Demand Update" Philosop in Design Philosophy

ID:265966
 
Jan 21 2010, 12:07 pm
It's a ***** to code in, but in my game, since it's a roleplay with an RPG system built in, i like to upgrade enemy databases, skills, equipment, buffs, and things like that on the go. I don't like it when I have to code in some new feature and reboot the server to disrupt the roleplay

Therefore I adopted the "On-Demand" Philosophy where i make it possible to update the various 'databases' in the game without requiring reboots. Things like equipment, enemies, skills, and even skill trees are editable in the server

Does anybody else share this philosophy, and if so, how do you go about executing it?
#1 Jan 21 2010, 9:34 pm
Mista-mage123 wrote:
Does anybody else share this philosophy, and if so, how do you go about executing it?

Have you heard about XML? See [link], and http://web.archive.org/web/20070523201137/http:// www.byondscape.com/ascape.dmb/Deadron.2003-0517/ for an archived copy of the article mentioned. (The link in the post is broken.) The "Making your games data-driven" section is fairly relevant here.

Note that Deadron's XML Library isn't the only one on the block; Popisfizzy made one, too.
#2 Jan 22 2010, 11:08 am
I could see this for enemies and equipment. And XML can be pretty nifty.

But how do you go about altering radically different skills and skill trees into one another? Don't you have to inevitably hard-code the super-complex spell effect or what have you? You could write an internal system of scripts for things that actually perform 'actions' as opposed to an item which is differentiated from the other items by its variables which are handled by the item system that's been hardcoded.
#3 Jan 22 2010, 3:30 pm
In response to EGUY (#2)

On an unrelated note: MySQL works for this also. I didn't spend the large amount of time to develop it for my own game, because I got frustrated enough and just said I'd hardcode monsters and items as-is. However, WoW (or at least the emulated version) makes use of a sql database structure for each and every item, mob, and every possible thing in the game.