Hey guys,

While working on a little project of mine, I came up with a design idiom that some other people here might find useful (or maybe it's already been done before).

I made a little relational database system. This system can aggregate and mutate objects in general (not just records on disk). I have a little scripting language that feeds into this, so that objects I've created and classified can be seen in various "tables" of the game database. Then I put an SQL front-end on this database, so that I can execute standard types of queries/commands against it.

For example, in a battlefield game I might add a button to the player's display that allows him to highlight all enemy trucks. The code for this button would be an SQL statement that could look like:

update visible-objects set highlight = 'blue' where type = 'truck' and loyalty = 'enemy'

What do you guys think?

Personally, I think its a great idea. For a long time now I've been expecting that someone would develop and release a game-related 'sql'-ish library since it seems there are just so many places where it'd be useful; particularly in larger projects. The type of example you've provided is a good one, but even at a lower level it'd be useful; like a database of 3d primitives on which one could run queries (based on properties or specific calculations.) These types of things are a bit of overkill for the scale of project I've generally worked on, but as games grow more complex I do think this kind of organization will become more common. Good stuff, keep us updated on how it works out in your project.

I thought these things are a little slow for games. Could you write something about your experience with this approach considering the performance?

OK, here's a little update. I've ironed out a lot of the kinks in this system and have made a demo program that has a database with a "windows" table containing several windows (which are created when the program starts up). I've made a brief little writeup on my website at http://www.kalanithielen.com/ (where the demo program can also be downloaded).

Here's a screenshot from the demo program:

http://www.kalanithielen.com/img/objsql_big.gif

I'll come back when I've got it working within a demo game.