Re: Where did all the ...

From: lindahl@pbm.com (Greg Lindahl)

Date: Sat, 03 Jul 2004 04:04:03 +0000

In article <rb39e0d9d8ge28j4cenabcer3t7n5ppfnv@4ax.com>,
Lemming  <thiswillbounce@bumblbee.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>More specifically, the problem I'm wrestling with (and I'm losing
>miserably) is how to model locations, actors and containers in a
>generic way using a relational database.

This is a standard PBM programming problem. If a relational database
is the answer (usually people decide the answer in advance, so I won't
try to sway you on that one ;-), then "a generic way" isn't very
doable. What you end up doing is having a table LOCATIONS with 1 row
per location, and then a LOCATION_CONTENTS table with N rows per
location, containing the contents of all the locations. What, you have
several types of things that can be in a location? Well, the schema
for LOCATION_CONTENTS can either be really general, or it can mostly
point at other things, i.e. if there are 3 types of things that can be
inside a location, the schema can contain 3 different types of IDs per
row, only 1 of which will be non-NULL.

I'd advise looking at some code for existing games to see what you
like. Lots of games don't use relational databases; they use in-memory
data structures instead.

> A year or two
> ago this was a very active group, and I wondered if all the discussion
> had moved to a Yahoo group, a web forum, or "somewhere else".

You're wearing rose-colored glasses! Ah, well, I won't harm your
memories.

-- greg

References

Where did all the ...
Lemming <thiswillbounce@bumblbee.demon.co.uk>
Wed, 30 Jun 2004 22:26:01 +0000
Re: Where did all the ...
Hugh Bayer <hugh@bigspider.net>
Thu, 01 Jul 2004 05:29:14 +0000
Re: Where did all the ...
Lemming <thiswillbounce@bumblbee.demon.co.uk>
Thu, 01 Jul 2004 22:33:19 +0000

Referenced By

Where did all the ...
Lemming <thiswillbounce@bumblbee.demon.co.uk>
Wed, 30 Jun 2004 22:26:01 +0000
Re: Where did all the ...
Hugh Bayer <hugh@bigspider.net>
Thu, 01 Jul 2004 05:29:14 +0000
Re: Where did all the ...
Lemming <thiswillbounce@bumblbee.demon.co.uk>
Thu, 01 Jul 2004 22:33:19 +0000