Token Update

It's been over a week, so it makes sense. What have I been up to?

Well, most of the time was spent working on a little tool that would restructure the database to my liking. So if I'm halfway through entering team data and suddenly find I'm missing a key field, I won't need to start writing code to load a database of one type and save it as another. Instead, this tool loads an entire database, I do my stuff, and it rejigs everything with no loss of data (unless I want to remove data, of course).

The other key aspect of this is that I can start editing with a very generous limit on the size of the database, and then trim it down when everything's finished to make the best use of memory.

That done, I've then been coding in database code for ranking competitions (such as UEFA's club coefficients) and Belts (such as the Unofficial World Championship, which suddenly reminds me that I need to throw in a field for "unofficial" to stop teams celebrating this clearly meaningless award).

I've a few more aspects to clean up on the data editor before I wander off and start coding GUIs, which are infinite fun. I'm looking to create a good, clean system that can take HTML-style files as input, allowing me to knock up a screen or a panel with ease. A system that supports links to move between pages is ideal for a game that will be absolutely flooded with data.

Another necessary feature of the GUI system is the ability to multitask, so that I can get the game to carry on with some hardcore processing whilst you browse the game world and do your thing. Outside of a match, the actual gameplay barely uses the processor at all. It's the under-the-hood workings that take time, so the more efficient the use of the CPU, the better.

And I haven't abandoned the idea of covering everything about the game. I just don't think it's too sensible to go nattering about things that haven't been done yet. Last thing I need is to turn into Peter Molyneux.

I look shit in turtlenecks.