From: "Al Amzeen (Alexandr Amzin)" <amzeen AT mtu-net DOT ru>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: maps with games
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 22:32:52 +0400
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To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

Greetings, Yannick Benoit <yannick DOT benoit AT dr DOT cgocable DOT ca>! You wrote:
> hey
>
> I mean those maps that i see in many games loading as .dat
>
> id like to know how do they make those?
Oh, that kind of stuff...

It's very simple. Any game is a system with relations between objects,
right? So, we can produce our description language to write it out: all the
objects, all maps, all relations. It would be our data storage formate. Our
_own_ data storage format, I mean.

So, for example, Quake uses kind of raw array with links which are
longfilenames\just\like\that\sentence up to 54 bytes in path len.

So, your task to build your own map is creating reorganized writing of your
system. After all that just dump it out to the file.

There are some hints, of course. You can concatenate a couple of files and
write length of each one. So you'll get 2 .dat files:all graphics and music
and maps and characters and plot in first and index in second. Very neat for
realisation on any language.

ps. but i'm afraid we are going to off-topic. Send me a private mail if you
got some questions on that topic.