We won't be able to make it fully self-descriptive (looking at you
MAP-chunks), but anything else can. With this framework, we can
add headers for each chunk explaining how each chunk looks like
in detail.
They also will all be tables, making it a lot easier to read in
external tooling, and opening the way to consider a database
(like SQLite) to use as savegame format.
Lastly, with the headers in the savegame, you can freely add
fields without needing a savegame version bump; older versions
of OpenTTD will simply ignore the new field. This also means
we can remove all the SLE_CONDNULL, as they are irrelevant.
The next few commits will start using this framework.
This makes it easier to spot chunks that have a save_proc that
is a nullptr, but also prevents confusion, where it looks like
the CH_ type of a chunk has influence on how it is being read.
It is not, it is only used for saving.
This wasn't consistently done, and often variables were used that
were read by an earlier blob. By moving it next to the struct
itself, the code becomes a bit more self-contained and easier to
read.
Additionally, this allows for external tooling to know how many
structs to expect, instead of having to know where to find the
length-field or a hard-coded value that can change at any moment.
There was a lot of code duplication for no real reason. Now with
SLEG_STRUCT support, we can just re-use the code, hopefully making
it easier for future-us to make changes to this, without breaking
everything for old games.
With the new SLEG_STRUCT it is much easier to embed a struct
in a struct, where the sub-struct has limitations on when it is
being used.
This makes both the code easier to read (less magic) and avoids
the SaveLoad needing to know all these things about Stations
and Vehicles.
You can easily mistake SlList / SL_LST to be a list of SL_VAR, but
it is a list of SL_REF. With this rename, it hopefully saves a few
people from "wtf?" moments.
Basically, this changes "SaveLoad *" to either:
1) "SaveLoadTable" if a list of SaveLoads was meant
2) "SaveLoad &" if a single entry was meant
As added bonus, this removes SL_END / SLE_END / SLEG_END. This
also adds core/span.hpp, a "std::span"-lite.
Rubidium