Thread: Program overall structure

Hello,

First messages in this forum. Coming from Actionscript, I migrated to Java especially because of better memory management and OpenGL libraries available.

After following all the basic tutorials I found, I am now trying to design a more "professional" (that I am not) application but I didn't find any good tip about the overall workflow of a program:

My app is based on an OpenGL window, fullscreen. But in order to display my window, I need to load different files in a sequencial way:

- a init.xml file which defines different behaviours for screen and navigation
- a engine.xml file with some tags related to OpenGL features
- a config.xml file which describes the structure of a dynamic tree in my program
- some .obj files (3D meshes) whose path are defined in the previous xml file
- I also need to perform some tests related to presence/absence of some specific connected devices

Here are my questions about this process:
- I have no idea what is the best practice for achieving this. I imagine that a lot of programs require such initialisation files but is xml the usual choice or method?
- Can I make the program opening a DOS window to see the loading progress and status of these loadings and then close it just before to run my OpenGL window? Or is it best to open a kind of splash screen with some labels/progressbars?

Any tip would greatly help me to move on from simple tutorials to the next level of programming.
Thanks in advance guys!

Hi Kevin

Thanks for your feedback. XML is nice to work with and I used to do this with FlashBuilder, so flexible. I'll probably continue with this and code a XMLLoaderManager on top for handling the sequencial process. I am pretty sure this already exists somewhere.

And yes, LWJGL is the libraries I am using already!