Sword of Moonlight > Beginner and other Nonsense

The writing is on the wall for som_rt.exe

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Holey Moley:
I just had a glimpse of the future, and this is what I saw...

I saw that the end is nigh for som_rt.exe. I just can't see it being around for much longer.

I can't think of any reason to keep it around at this point anyway, but the reason I got this sinking feeling is its a lot of work making a map of SOM's programs for two different versions. In this case, som_db.exe, and som_rt.exe.

I am not sure what is required to just use som_db.exe, but I am sure it will work. The benefits are your game can run like a lightweight project, or a standalone game. And db.exe uses the mysterious .som file instead of the equally mysterious Project.DAT file. To my mind the way this works is just about backwards. Project.DAT looks like a file that should never appear in a final game, it even has project in its name! And .som is just a perfect file format for a finished game. In fact it would be ideal if you played the game with a media player that knows how to play .som files instead of a .exe file.

I've been meaning to overhaul SOM_EX.exe just to make it more presentable source code wise. That and because I accidentally built the last one with the debug version of the C runtime. But I think that will be a good time to see about removing som_rt.exe from the mix.

What this means for you? Well it shouldn't mean more than the .bin file in the EX folder of standalone games will use a renamed copy of som_db.exe instead. And the ugly project.dat file can be removed in favor of the .som file...

And for me it will mean discontinuing support for som_rt.exe. Having just a single image of SOM's program to worry about will help things along more swiftly with less confusion. Documenting the thing is certainly more attractive if you don't have to include addresses for both versions in every citation.

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