John,

My custom shipyard game and web companion interface over at Rogue Galaxy depend on the data files having that consistent format that you were gracious enough to explain to me years ago. The method by which I extract the data was actually reading the raw binary data using Java, so I get real-time data out from the files. I then enter that info into a MySQL database which provides a queryable datastore for my companion website. I guess my question is, are the following files going to have new file formats? If so, would you be willing to once again give me a rundown of the layout? Feel free to PM me or I can PM you my email address if that works better.

twCorp.dat
twplan.dat
twport.dat
twsect.dat
twship.dat
twuser.dat
TWINDEX.DAT

Thanks John - I am very glad to see you putting time into this great game again.

Hey, Orion, good to hear from you.

The only major change in format is the mail file. It's a completely different system, replacing a single file with a directory that contains one file (mailbox) per player. Other than that, no major changes are planned. If I was to change things that significantly, I'd consider it a new major version.

At this point, I have made some changes to the Users record format. So you will probably need to take that into account. I needed to add a few fields there to support some player options (any new feature has to be optional at this point), and since I'm making a change, I wanted to add some breathing room to the file so that future changes won't require a data conversion. I've doubled the size of the user flag field from 16 flags to 32, and I've added 64 bytes of unused space to the end, just prior to the dynamic NavRec data block. Email me and I'll send you the updated structure once this is ready to release. I am thinking that I'll go ahead and expand some of the other files like Ship, Planet, etc, to give me some room to grow without a data conversion. I want to avoid that as much as I can, and since space is hardly a concern these days, there's no reason these files can't be padded a bit with unused space. I'm expecting to be making some changes in the near future as I try to find ways for gameops to create more traditional games that cannot be dominated by modern scripting tools.

The TWINDEX.NDX file should not change. At least, it would be a major pain in the neck to change it, so I'll need a VERY good reason to do it. I could actually replace the whole index system with SQL at this point, but again I feel like doing something like that would be a major version change and there are so many other things I'd do along with that. I already have the foundation for a new version that includes all SQL data transactions, so any "new version" would be a completely new engine, not just more hacking on this old behemoth.

If I don't have your shipyard and web companion in the TW museum yet, I'd love to get that in there. Give me some info so I can add it.

Thanks for the quick reply and the info John, could you PM me your active email account? It has been a long time since I have sent you a message and I have changed email clients. There is some info about my custom shipyard and web companion on the roguegalaxy.com website. I will look more closely at the TW Museum to see what kind of write ups people are doing and try to fit that mold with some info for mine.

The future changes you discuss all seem to make sense and if you ever do go all SQL, I think that would be great too.

Thanks again.

Orion