It'll be a long-term project, but the core areas I'll need help with are: I've looked at how DungeonForge stores its data, and I think using XML is probably going to be easier than coming up with some special format. I'm not an XML purist -- I'm not a czar of the DTD -- but I figure the data would be stored like so: 
<spell class="mage">
  <name>Sleep</name>
  <level>1</level>
  <message>%t is put to sleep</message>
  <sounds>
    <cast>DEFAULT</cast>
    <hit>enchanted.midi</cast>
  </sounds>
  <images>
    <cast>DEFAULT</cast>
    <hit>DEFAULT</hit>
  </images>
  <friendlyfire>0</friendlyfire>
  <combatonly>1</combatonly>
  <cumulative>1</cumulative>
  <castbyparty>1</castbyparty>
  <canscribe>1</canscribe>
  <autoscribe>0</autoscribe>
  <candispel>1</candispel>
  <throwvs>spell</throwvs>
  <throwresult></throwresult>
  <target type="square">
    <count dice="" sides="" bonus="" perlevel=""/>
    <range dice="" sides="" bonus="" perlevel=""/>
  </target>
  <duration units="">
    <length dice="" sides="" bonus="" perlevel=""/>
  </duration>
  <casttime></casttime>
  <abilities>
    <ability>sleep</ability>
  </abilities>
  <effect>
    <attr>ASLEEP</attr>
    <amount>1</amount>
    <units>absolute</units>
    <targeting>target</targeting>
    <cumul>1</cumul>
    <worksif>
      <true>$TARGET->hit_dice() < 5</true>
      <false>$TARGET->is_undead()</false>
    </worksif>
  </effect>
</spell>

[download]
Something like that.

My biggest stumbling block when it comes to XML is determining what should be an attribute of an element (like the "class" type in the spell element) and what should be the data of an element (like the name of the spell in the name element).

_____________________________________________________
Jeff japhy Pinyan, P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.: Perl, regex, and perl hacker
How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ Meister Eckhart

In reply to Re^2: CRPGs, Perl, Gtk2, and my vision by japhy
in thread CRPGs, Perl, Gtk2, and my vision by japhy

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