Chris here, invading what is traditionally John’s part of the diary. I’m not a programmer by trade, but I am by training. Ancient training that happened for a large part prior to (read in melodramatic voice) the year two thousand. My rusty C (no ++, # or any other modifier) that was already on the way out when I was taught it is not going to be a lot of direct help while creating Point of Descent, but shortly I will have the opportunity to put a little of what I learned then to use.
Recently, John began posting code blocks from what will be the level editor for Point of Descent. The reason for this is simple – while he’s got most of the programming talent on the team, he’s not as familiar with the bullet hell genre and Rick and I are. So he’s telling the monsters how to kill you, and we will be telling them where and when to do so. So feel free to blame me when you get shot by a creature with a duck head or one of the other critters we send at you; I welcome it.
While XML is not something that I’ve ever worked with, the format is very similar to something I have played with in the past – HTML. Unsurprising, since they’re both markup languages. I had my own homepage back when Geocities had URLs like /Tokyo/2687 (and, you know, existed) and was briefly webmaster for the Boston University fencing team. If you happen to remember a site full of tables and frames that basically copied The Official Nintendo Player’s Guide for Final Fantasy - that was me. Yeah, probably just as well I’m not doing that any more.
It took a few minutes to remind myself what was going on, but now that I understand what is happening, I’m really looking forward to getting my 0s and 1s dirty again. Once the level design toolkit is finalized, I get to write “Here Be Monsters” all over the code for Point of Descent, and hopefully bring a lot of enjoyment (and a little controller-throwing) into people’s lives.