I'm developing a text based game and was wondering if there will be any issues if I were to just write all the text in the code instead of making something like a csv file to read the data from. It won't be as organised, but I was wondering if the game would take more memory or have worse performance if I were to put the game in code instead of a text document or csv file.
1 Answers
Some advantages and disadvantages:
In-a-file
- Easy to modify, easy to localize
- Not very secure, anyone can look at it and hack it
- Has to be parsed at runtime, what to do about errors if badly formed?
- Tiny performance hit on load (probably not worth worrying about)
In an embedded resource
- No separate file lying on the hard drive for your users to examine and hack (easily)
- Can localize fairly easily
In-code
- No need to parse the input file, syntax and structure is checked at compile time
- Can define your game resources using strongly-typed values, e.g.
Room cave = new Room("Cave", "Long description ..."). - Can define more complex relationships between objects without resorting to string-id references between them.
cave.ConnectsTo(passageway),cave.Contains(sword), ...
In terms of memory consumption it's a wash - the strings will be in memory in either case - unless you are writing a huge game in which case a database would be more appropriate with the ability to easily load individual areas of the map and eject ones no longer needed from memory.
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