Hi!!
First of all sorry for my bad english...
I'm currently working on a project like the RPG-Maker added with online features.
You can usw the maker to create Items, Spells, NPC's just by clicking (or with the help of LUA)...
I'm working with C#.
Now to my question. Currently I'm saving all the data per BinaryWriter in particular files so each spell has an own file. During the program runs there aren't any items in the memory space so the items just load if it is selected to edit.
But this method is a bit stressful to write each single int, string etc. with the BinaryWriter so is there a better way for such a maker? Should I use XML + Serializazion or better a database? There will be a second program which is the client (the game itself) which need to read all the data again.
Now a second question. Is it better to load the objects just then I need to edit it or to load all the items at the program start? There would be some advantages because some sort of objects can have dependancies (e.g. NPC's can drop Items). At the moment I have to save each names of the Objects in a name list to make for example the items for the NPC selectable. So which method is better? Would it be use too much memory to load ALL the content (except the maps)??.
How do you think they managed it all at the rpgmaker??
I hope someone understand my problem and can help me
mfg Apprauuuu