[jonas]

 cjakeman, on 18 April 2021 - 12:10 AM, said:

You can get to the plans from the website. They were also set out in the Trello Roadmap but the milestones there are no longer clearly visible because of all the many (and welcome) suggestions that have been submitted.

So it is high time that the plans were updated, clarified and perhaps made more prominent. That's something ORMT is currently working on.

Now that the port to Monogame is done (barring a performance issue for integrated graphics), the next step is the virtual file system which will help us organise our existing content better and provide a home for OR-specific content.

Chris, I see that the whole thing is really not an easy story and I know the content of some of the links you mention here.

But we have now landed here, where two (sorry) extortionate dialogues pop up before the activity starts.

Note the last line!




So in the future there will also be the same dialog boxes for turntable.dat? Then there would be a total of 4 dialog boxes before it starts.
And there are more external OR STF files than the clocks.dat or the turntable.dat. Where does this lead us?

[wacampbell]

We have had the JSON discussion before. To keep things friendly for content developers I think its important to consistently use just one format. I believe we now have STF, XML and JSON used in various places. Its ugly.

Some previous discussion on this here:

http://www.elvastowe...formats-in-json

and here:

http://www.elvastowe...dll-replacement

One thing of note were the speed tests that I ran. I converted my L&PS .t files to .json and modified openrails to read them. Sadly reading the .json files was ten times slower than the msts format. I think there are some fast JSON readers, ones that don't use code reflection, but some effort would have to be spent to choose one that's fast.

I like JSON and am not really against it, but I think previous discussion fizzled because no one could come up to a good reason to change away from STF.


Wayne

[Csantucci]

I don't expect turntable.dat should be also subject to conversion. I'ts there since long time in the official releases, and at least that one should have been created before the switch to JSON for new files was decided, so I expect it should remain as it is.

[wacampbell]

 Csantucci, on 18 April 2021 - 09:56 AM, said:

I don't expect turntable.dat should be also subject to conversion. I'ts there since long time in the official releases, and at least that one should have been created before the switch to JSON for new files was decided, so I expect it should remain as it is.

What format is turntable.dat?

[cjakeman]

 jonas, on 18 April 2021 - 07:03 AM, said:

But we have now landed here, where two (sorry) extortionate dialogues pop up before the activity starts.

Yes, but this process takes place only once. Next time you run the route, the file is in place so the dialogues are skipped.

Surely that's not too much of an imposition.

[Genma Saotome]

Q: Is it a .json requirement that there is a single fact per line? "Facts meaning brackets or name-colon-value-comma.

[Genma Saotome]

One solution to argument of "Who is this for?" is to leave users alone and write a conversion program that takes stf and turns it into .json. Yeah, some stf data would need the conversion program to insert the correct parameter name but that's life, somebody has to do it, why not get it done once instead of for every user for every damn file in existence?

Put that into the loader (at 1/10 the speed). If nobody complains then everyone should be happy.

Three alternatives:

• Tell everybody to do it on their own (and watch a large percentage of users go find some other hobby)
  
• Run a mixed environment where both formats are accepted and see almost no one bother with .json.
  
• See the loader suck enough cpu cycles to slow down the game (and watch a percentage of users go find some other hobby).

Pretty much as Jonas says, there is no apparent benefit to end users so it should not cost them anything to have it adopted.

[jonas]

 cjakeman, on 18 April 2021 - 10:28 AM, said:

Yes, but this process takes place only once. Next time you run the route, the file is in place so the dialogues are skipped.

Surely that's not too much of an imposition.

And in wich file the user then have to add further clocks? clocks.dat (STF) or animated.clocks-or (JSON)?

[Csantucci]

 wacampbell, on 18 April 2021 - 10:02 AM, said:

What format is turntable.dat?

STF

[cjakeman]

 Genma Saotome, on 18 April 2021 - 11:20 AM, said:

Q: Is it a .json requirement that there is a single fact per line? "Facts meaning brackets or name-colon-value-comma.

No. JSON is a free format, meaning that spaces and new lines are not required. Use them as suits you.