It’s been a busy day and I have accomplished quite a lot. Yesterday I decided to start work on the task of modifying the Encounter Editor to accommodate the special needs of Le Morte D’Arthur. This involved changes in the data structures and the save and load routines. I wasted some hours trying to figure out how to convert the XML structures used in the Encounter Editor to the JSON structures that the JavaScript code on the web page will require. I have decided that the entire thing will exist on a single page, with imagery in a separate resource folder.
Halfway through screwing around with JSON definitions, I realized that there’s a much easier approach: there are tools for converting XML to JSON. Some are on the web; some are standalone applications. The problem, apparently, is that the big JSON files I’ll be generating (a few hundred K) will be too big for the converter programs to handle. Still, I think it worthwhile trying. Some of the reviews I have read of these programs refer to people using JSON files over a megabyte in size, so the problem should be at least addressable.
So I have begun transferring encounters from their current word processing format (Pages) to the EncounterList format. This involves copying and pasting masses of text. It’s tedious, but I can handle that.
In the meantime, you might appreciate one of the sources I’m using: a detailed map of Dark Ages Britain prepared by the UK Ordnance Survey. Here’s just a snippet from that map:
South Cadbury Castle, the site of Camelot in the opinion of some scholars, is in the upper center, slightly to the right. It’s marked with a blue circle with a vertical bar inside. This map covers most of the area that Arthur will operate in during the game.