As I posted before, the latest version will implement some modifications to the elements, in the mission data file, in order to make it more readable to the designer, but not shorter.
The first major element I re-designed is the Areas. This element will be called from now on: EVENTS, and under it we will create EventZone and AttachedEvent elements.
The AttachedEvent is a new element, so I'll not go through it now, but, the EventZone formaly names AreaZone has gone some re-construction.
Here is a snippet of the new EventZone element:
Here is a snippet of the OLD AreaZone element:
You can clearly see the difference between the two approaches.
The new approach splits attributes into sub elements, and make the reading/understanding of the Element, much simpler.
On the other hand, the length of the Element was not shorten.
The main reason to re-arrange the AreaZone element, came from the understanding that attributes were not distributed correctly in the main element, and there were many attributes that were not needed for certain "rules" or "types" of events, but they did not have appropriate representation in the XML mission file. More ever, most attributes where added as the plugin coding progressed, and that brought an unbalanced element representation.
The new arrangement of the attributes and sub-elements tried to address the following issues:
- Better attribute representation, based on rule/style of EventZone.
- Simpler and more focused element representation: Not all Elements are mandatory, and designer can ignore some of the subElements, like "Slope" if the style is other then slope or Elevation.
- Better Element arrangement. You can see that the EventZone element is divided into "Setting" element, that holds all condition logic and base EventZone info. "Global part", where you define Events, and "PostEventAction"[new] that will fire for certain rules and allow more flexibility in EventZone handling.
- Most measuring attributes are now using Feet and not Meter units.
There are other Elements that will have some changes and modification until this build will be completed, but the EventZone represent the most significant change in all older elements structure.
Until next time,
Snagar