XML : How much is too much?

Unity Engine
1

So i’m working on a TCG and i’m using XML for the card database. each card contains 25~30 variables of string/int/bool. in a set of 200 cards thats 5000 ~ 6000 variables in a single XML file. I’m concerned about loading speed if there is more than 1 set of cards are in the game(for example 3 sets = 600 cards = 18000 variables to load) should i separate the file to multiple ones? I just want to hear some comments and thoughts about this.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<CardCollection>
    <Name> CardSetName  </Name>
    <Cards>
  <Card id="1">
       ... bunch of card data
   </Card>
  <Card id="2">
       ... bunch of card data
   </Card>
  <Card id="3">
       ... bunch of card data
   </Card>

   ......

  <Card id="199">
      ... bunch of card data
   </Card>
  <Card id="200">
      ... bunch of card data
   </Card>
    </Cards>
</CardCollection>
2

If it’s a database why not use an actual database? There are pretty small and lightweight ones around that could be used for this.

That aside, I’d personally put each deck/collection in its own file if I were to use XML for this kind of thing, assuming that you don’t necessarily need all collections loaded at all times.

3

I agree that a database should be the most suitable solution. That said, if you assume each variable weighs, say, 10 bytes on average, this still won’t consume a lot of memory. It might make sense to just load the entire card database into memory at startup and store it in a map. When you load a deck, you could just get the card id numbers and fetch the card data from the array. Xml should be fine unless your database is ridicilously large.

4

@angrypenguin i’m not very familiar with other databases. all i know is MySQL which will be used for player username and account info. i dont see any reason to load the card database onto it.

@chjacobsen i thought about that too, loading the entire card database into memory at startup and when loading a deck just use card id numbers. I thought for now the first expansion/set of cards is around 200 cards which isnt really big and should load rather quickly. but what about later expansions? a few sets down the road would loading the cards at startup start causing issues?

5

If we assume each set is 6000 values, that each value equals 10 bytes and that you have a budget of, say, 1mb. Each set would use just below 60kb. You could add 15 expansions, or 3000 cards, with some margin to spare. I really doubt you are going to have a problem.

6

thanks alot for the comments and thoughts. i dont think i have any worries then.