fantastic idea for se5

[Fyron]

Originally posted by dogscoff:

quote:

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Maybe use a good compression format, not the poor quality that is Zip...

I knew you'd bring that up. Zip is widely recognised and supported, and even on-technical ppl generally know how to handle zip file (I work in IT support, and I know this from experience). Also, zips are handled almost transparently in XP or by earlier Versions oif they install the right software.

For the sake of an extra few % compression is it really worth switching to something more obscure like .rar?

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Rars can be handled almost transparently with the right software installed as well. .rar archives are handled EXACTLY the same as .zip ones, except that you don't get the built-in XP support for zips, which is really meaningless overall because it just takes installing one program to get very similar functionality.

.rar is a hell of a lot more than a few % better than .zip, and it is nowhere near as obscure as you are making it out to be. .ace would be obscure.

[ May 12, 2004, 23:59: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[dogscoff]

[quote]
...

.rar is a hell of a lot more than a few % better than .zip, and it is nowhere near as obscure as you are making it out to be. .ace would be obscure.
/quote]

Fine fine fine, whatever you like. Dragging us back on topic, and assuming that se5 handles some kind of compression, is the idea (ie customisable and linkable planet details) a good one?

[Suicide Junkie]

Definitely.

Mods should be run from inside compressed archives too. You can get a ton of compression on text files, and the mod files aren't read very often after the initial load of SE4 so the decompression time won't factor in.

[Markavian]

I'm thinking SE5 should defintely have XML support for some areas. Writing a HTML parser for SE5 would be alot of work... but writing an XML parser : Aaron could make up his own rules. All that us websavvy designers would have to do is create a similar XML parser for use on the web, and the data planet data, weapons, news, etc. would be transparently portable.

Adding extra detail about planets, mini websites, news articles, sounds great!

What about an option to 'watch planet'... and at the end of each turn, a news article is generated and added to a news file specificly about that planet... but only for the planets you want to listen for news on.

[dogscoff]

'watch planet'

Good idea.

Nice to see you posting again Markavians- it seems like a long time since I saw you here.