Posted February 17, 2017
Azrapse: Welcome!
Internally, XWVM will identify ships not by number but by ID. This ID will be a string. For example, the X-wing will have ID "xwing".
This removes any limitation and incompatibility and makes it future proof.
When reading the original mission files, we translate their format on the fly to our internal one, so it doesn't really matter much to how many different ships the original game was limited to.
We aren't limited by their file format in that sense.
Of course, if we eventually add a Mission Editor to the game, we cannot use the XWI/BRF original file formats, but our own (that will be probably XML or JSON based).
That means that in a possible future, XWVM will be able to read and "play" mission from X-Wing or from TIE Fighter, even when those formats were totally incompatible between each other and ships had different identifiers (for example, the B-wing is ship 18 in X-Wing, but ship 4 in TIE Fighter, and the Advanced TIE existed in X-Wing but not in TIE Fighter).
Apart from this, there are some "world settings" that are different between games, and that could be made also configurable depending on the mission loaded.
For example, laser and ion speeds in X-Wing are much slower than in TIE Fighter. When loading a XWI/BRF mission file, the XWVM engine would load the X-Wing world settings. However, when loading a TIE mission file, it would load the TIE Fighter world settings.
For custom XWVM-made missions, we would either let the creator choose between both (if you have player the Super Mario Maker game in WIi U or 3DS, you wil immediately understand this), or fine tune them to their taste.
Of course there's nothing stopping anyone from using one of the existing x-wing mission editors and making their own custom missions in that format, which could then be imported in XWVM and run without any trouble whatsoever - they'd just be limited to the exact same constraints that the original game had.Internally, XWVM will identify ships not by number but by ID. This ID will be a string. For example, the X-wing will have ID "xwing".
This removes any limitation and incompatibility and makes it future proof.
When reading the original mission files, we translate their format on the fly to our internal one, so it doesn't really matter much to how many different ships the original game was limited to.
We aren't limited by their file format in that sense.
Of course, if we eventually add a Mission Editor to the game, we cannot use the XWI/BRF original file formats, but our own (that will be probably XML or JSON based).
That means that in a possible future, XWVM will be able to read and "play" mission from X-Wing or from TIE Fighter, even when those formats were totally incompatible between each other and ships had different identifiers (for example, the B-wing is ship 18 in X-Wing, but ship 4 in TIE Fighter, and the Advanced TIE existed in X-Wing but not in TIE Fighter).
Apart from this, there are some "world settings" that are different between games, and that could be made also configurable depending on the mission loaded.
For example, laser and ion speeds in X-Wing are much slower than in TIE Fighter. When loading a XWI/BRF mission file, the XWVM engine would load the X-Wing world settings. However, when loading a TIE mission file, it would load the TIE Fighter world settings.
For custom XWVM-made missions, we would either let the creator choose between both (if you have player the Super Mario Maker game in WIi U or 3DS, you wil immediately understand this), or fine tune them to their taste.