4 ms·

This exists, it’s very common to have a human readable format for development and storage in version control that gets converted to a binary format for release.

This exists, it’s very common to have a human readable format for development and storage in version control that gets converted to a binary format for release. What doesn’t really exist is a common inter-engine format.

fla 9y ago
VRML ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML
- meheleventyone 9y ago
  Lots of common formats exist for scene data just very few of them are actually used by game engines in a manner that would make them somewhat interoperable. Probably most the most commonly shared is something like the Tiled TMX format for tilemaps.
pythonaut_16 9y ago
I guess Blender Python scripts come kind of close to this, but that's not really a markup language. (And 3D Modeling not a game scene file)
wlesieutre 9y ago
How about glTF? It's a JSON based scene description which uses inline data or references to external binary files, with an option for a single binary "glb" data file. https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF/tree/master/specification/2.0#glb-file-format-specification https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF/tree/master/specificati...
- meheleventyone 9y ago
  glTF is already gaining some traction as a model format. But it’s scene support is more what you’d see for modelling software than what you’d have for a game engine where the scene description is more about the game entities and the data glTF provides is usually abstracted out. glTF is a great idea for providing a sensible interchange format for models though. Even this data usually gets converted into a custom binary format for the runtime engine to consume depending on use. Although as you note glTF has its own binary format and I understand it’s going to be improved with support for compression like Basis so perhaps that will reduce the need for custom formats for all but the most optimised cases.

fla 9y ago

VRML ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML

meheleventyone 9y ago
Lots of common formats exist for scene data just very few of them are actually used by game engines in a manner that would make them somewhat interoperable. Probably most the most commonly shared is something like the Tiled TMX format for tilemaps.

pythonaut_16 9y ago

I guess Blender Python scripts come kind of close to this, but that's not really a markup language. (And 3D Modeling not a game scene file)

wlesieutre 9y ago

How about glTF? It's a JSON based scene description which uses inline data or references to external binary files, with an option for a single binary "glb" data file. https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF/tree/master/specification/2.0#glb-file-format-specification https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF/tree/master/specificati...

meheleventyone 9y ago
glTF is already gaining some traction as a model format. But it’s scene support is more what you’d see for modelling software than what you’d have for a game engine where the scene description is more about the game entities and the data glTF provides is usually abstracted out. glTF is a great idea for providing a sensible interchange format for models though. Even this data usually gets converted into a custom binary format for the runtime engine to consume depending on use. Although as you note glTF has its own binary format and I understand it’s going to be improved with support for compression like Basis so perhaps that will reduce the need for custom formats for all but the most optimised cases.