Waypoint Viewer for all bots?

[stefanhendriks]

I remember that JoeBot has an external waypoint viewer. Perhaps Aspirine wants to help to develop it so that its a viewer for other bots? Perhaps you can even convert between formats this way? I'd give my file format away without any problems. It would be neat to have a waypoint viewer + converter in one. This way we can combine our data to create navigation files.

Another sollution would be to agree on a standard 'how to save' way.

[@$3.1415rin]

ok, then we'd first have to decide which information would be needed in the general structure - no matter if we want a std wp file, or some converter ...


maybe we could even put the waypoints into some xml format, just was visiting killaruna and saw that all that xml stuff isnt as complicated as it looks like

[botmeister]

Originally Posted by @$3.1415rin

ok, then we'd first have to decide which information would be needed in the general structure - no matter if we want a std wp file, or some converter ...


maybe we could even put the waypoints into some xml format, just was visiting killaruna and saw that all that xml stuff isnt as complicated as it looks like

I agree it would be best to have the format in text form, not binary if possible. I don't like XML since as much as I try, I cannot see the value in it. The extra overhead and unreadablilty becomes a disadvantage imo. If someone can ever point out the benifits of XML I'd change my mind.

Ypu want to make a program to convert the rb nodes files to joebot waypoints files for example?

A very interesting idea...
You could lcreate a new project on sourceforge...

xml has alot of plus points but alot of negative poitns to, i think the main plus point is that it doesnt have all the style and non-/false-value info that others do, infact thats probrelly the best point, and the only one i can think of,

get a xml book from the libary it will give u tons of tips on how to make good xml

[stefanhendriks]

personally i don't like xml too. It also looks to me like there is to much bs to make things clear (overhead).

As in the other topic we should first decide on a good format, but besides that a waypoint viewer would be just great. Even more great would be later if you could code your own path finder in it and let it simulate matches anyway, thats future talk.

Perhaps you could have an interface that allows not just viewing waypoints, but setting variables that determine importance / colour (highlighting); or allow the user to determine what kind of weapon is best used there and if its a good place to throw a grenade if an enemy is spotted (choke points) ???

[@$3.1415rin]

setting colors for different variables is a feature that has to be implemented then, but the other stuff looks too bot specific

[Onno Kreuzinger]

pro:
xml is nice if the format changes often, also it makes building a database easy and it can be parsed faster then flat files.

con:
it needs more work to define the structure and gives bigger files.

sum:
for waypoints only the database aspect could be of interesst, allthough far away, a (mega) database of waypoints sounds very nice and would boost usability of bots to a comercial grade level. but this would be a large project of it's own and can be done later anyways.
For other projects it worked perfectly to define a propietary format and offer open source c/c++ tools, this apllies to bots esp. since the dev. community is rather small.

i personaly think flat files are enough, loading speed is no issue on a server and having a common format is a big gain allready, open tools would open all possibilities, even the crazy database ...

Cheers