My work at converting the dialogue system to sectors instead of records is complete! Now all incidental text for a given set of mobs is stored with the mobs themselves, and transaction text is with the transaction codes.<\/p>\n
Effectively, you only need three pieces of data and a sizable buffer space to do variable-length records in a sector system: The base sector to start in, an offset value in that first sector to start your data at, and a number of sectors to read. In my case, my VDP file buffer has a maximum size of 4K, which is 16 sectors. More than adequate for my needs, it fits neatly in a single page of AMS memory, and I can bit-pack the sector count as a nybble (4-bits) and use a single word to store both a base sector and sector count.<\/p>\n
I tested it on the hardware tonight and it was VERY fast… loading a map or transaction takes a few seconds, but after that it doesn’t have to refer to the disk at all and pretty much generates the text instantly.<\/p>\n
Onward with the bug fixing… At this point, I don’t think I’ll have combat ready in time for Fest West. But I think I can get most of travel and management done. We’ll see…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My work at converting the dialogue system to sectors instead of records is complete! Now all incidental text for a given set of mobs is stored with the mobs themselves, and transaction text is with the transaction codes. Effectively, you … Continue reading