Unique ID description question

[Sigil]

The HL documentation states that the ID label can be only 10 characters long. But through the HL editor I was able to put in a label of at least 15 characters. Has the restriction on ID length been changed? If the ID length is still 10 character I was going to complain that makes giving meaningful ID names difficult. That brings me back to days of DOS's 8+3 file names. Hope I am missing somethng, because I foresee 10 character ID's being a nuisance. Already to obey the 10 character limit I have been using some bizzare ID names.


/Scott

[rob]

At 10:06 PM 3/14/2007, you wrote:

The HL documentation states that the ID label can be only 10 characters long. But through the HL editor I was able to put in a label of at least 15 characters. Has the restriction on ID length been changed? If the ID length is still 10 character I was going to complain that makes giving meaningful ID names difficult. That brings me back to days of DOS's 8+3 file names. Hope I am missing somethng, because I foresee 10 character ID's being a nuisance. Already to obey the 10 character limit I have been using some bizzare ID names.

IDs are only 10 characters in length. If the Editor allows longer, then that needs to be fixed in the Editor.

The reason that this limit is required is purely for performance. By limiting everything to only 10 characters, we can cram those characters down into a 64-bit value. That allows us to utilize INTEGERS (64-bit size) to identify all "records" in the run-time "database" that HL generates. The alternative would be to use strings as identifiers. The difference is probably well in excess of a ten-fold improvement in performance for using 64-bit integers. This makes it possible for us to easily do all the mouse-over information, efficiently evaluate thousands of small scripts, etc. In fact, the engine could still achieve fast performance even if the underlying database were to grow to 10 times the size it is now (e.g. with lots of proprietary WotC content).

Switching to using long strings would make naming things easy, but it would result in a signifant performance hit. If our minimum platform were a new, high-end machine, that would probably be passable. But our goal is to support older laptops, just like the type that numerous gamers are buying as inexpensive, dedicated tools to take to their games. So we opted to retain the performance.

If you want suggestions about how best to manage naming issues, don't hesitate to ask and we'll be happy to offer advice. With some solid conventions in place, it's really not all that hard. I make this assertion based on the fact that the team developing Army Builder data files for Warhammer 40K manages many thousands of unique ids with the exact same restrictions. They do it quite well, and they've been doing it for a number of years now. So a little forethought and planning can make a huge difference. :-)

Hope this adequately explains the design choice....

-Rob

[DannyBoy2k]

It DOES allow longer, as in, you can TYPE longr...but I think the editor 'cuts it off' all the same...leading to problems refering to that label, since it then looks for a label which isn't what you think it is...if that makes any sense?