This method was chosen because it avoids adding variable declarations to the global namespace which would have required a lot more work while polluting the grammar.
This way the global variables can be handled by a small bit of special coding in the struct generator.
This one was particularly nasty because Windows also defines a DWORD, but in Windows it is an unsigned long, not an unsigned int so changing types caused type conflicts and not all could be removed.
Those referring to the Windows type have to be kept, fortunately they are mostly in the Win32 directory, with a handful of exceptions elsewhere.
The manager class cannot be scriptified because it provides the internal implementation which may change at some point in the future. It also encapsulates all access to the file level because if that part is not protected, modders could write malware mods.
Now all actors have the same metaclass and therefore it will always be the same size which will finally allow some needed changes to the type system which couldn't be done because it was occasionally necessary to replace tentatively created classes due to size mismatches.
- disabled the Build map loader after finding out that it has been completely broken and nonfunctional for a long time. Since this has no real value it will probably removed entirely in an upcoming commit.
Two reasons for this:
1. if this has to be routed through the VM each recursion will cost 1000 bytes of stack space which simply is not good.
2. having the virtual function only care about the item itself but not the entire inventory chain is a lot less error prone for scripting.
Since the scripting interface needs a separate caller function anyway this seemed like a good time to change it. The same will be done for the other chained inventory handlers as well.
After testing with a savegame on ZDCMP2 which is probably the largest map in existence, timing both methods resulted in a speed difference of less than 40 ms (70 vs 110 ms for reading all sectory, linedefs, sidedefs and objects).
This compares to an overall restoration time, including reloading the level, precaching all textures and setting everything up, of approx. 1.2 s, meaning an increase of 3% of the entire reloading time.
That's simply not worth all the negative side effects that may happen with a method that highly depends on proper code construction.
On the other hand, using random access means that a savegame version change is only needed now when the semantics of a field change, but not if some get added or deleted.
- do not I_Error out in the serializer unless caused by a programming error.
It is better to let the serializer finish, collect all the errors and I_Error out when the game is known to be in a stable enough state to allow unwinding.
- always make the top level object randomaccess when opening a JSON file for reading. Some things won't work right if this is opened for sequential access.
This is so that PNGs can be written to memory, not just to an external file. stdio's FILE cannot be easily redirected but a C++ class can.
The writer is very simple and primitive right now, allowing no seeking, but for the job at hand it is sufficient.
Note that large parts of savegame creation have been disabled, because they are about to be rewritten and it makes no sense to adjust them all before.
- replaced some uses of FRACUNIT with OPAQUE when it was about translucency.
- simplified some overly complicated translucency multiplications in the SBARINFO code.
