I was just thinking... when I start tearing into the .mpx files it will be very interesting to see how the "map optimization" works. I'm sure once I figure it out I could generate a better optimization regime / re-optimizer. It might even be interesting to have a tool for tweaking problem areas by hand, or even manually optimizing certain areas if that makes sense.
I did not say so before, but my plan is I think for detecting the map tiles, instead of trying to automatically dissect them, it will probably make more sense to scan the .mpx files as Som opens them. Originally (before I realized it might be possible to autodetect them on the fly) I was going to slap together a tool for generating the keys Ex uses from the .mpx files, but it's more simple to just scan them in at runtime (or maptime) I think, and more in keeping with the way the key system works so far.
Offtopic: while digging thru debugger output today I noticed some of the messages that som_db.exe spits out. One of them referred to an "Event Leaf" literally with the word Lifu phonetically spelled in katakana. I'm guessing John never saw that, or forgot he did... it would've been a very strong argument anyway back when we were arguing the best words for some terms. I still prefer Stage to Event Leaf ... but I'd rather stick to the original language... especially where English lone words are involved.
Still the computer scientist in me... technically the events don't branch, so they can't have leaves. Though John pointed out a book can have leaves, though that's pretty damn archaic usage I think
