XML for a map file?

[Tyn]

I'm getting together a tech demo and ( proving the point of a tech demo ) I ran into an interesting question. Should I use XML for creating and displaying maps? On the face of it to me it seems good, I am doing a tile based game and so I would need texture, items on specific tiles ( 40 x 40 map, each individual scene node ), model files for tiles when I do elevation etc. Having a built in XML reader seems perfect so I thought I'd try it.

So far I only put in texture file locations for every tile and the file is 100kb's
To me that means by the end the files are going to be storing a lot of information and I am worried that they could be very large. Is this the best I can hope for to get a map file down to ( they will be random, probably be able to save them and d/l them over the net, could be a lot of files on someone's computer ) or should I be looking at some other format?

[schick]

I would create a zip file with a specific extension ".rpg". Then put in a xml file that describes your scene and all the textures and other data which is needed for the scene.

[Tyn]

That sounds good, does you know if irrlicht is funny about ZIP extensions?

[Robomaniac]

Nope, that's the glory of irrlicht's zips, they can be any extension, as long as their compresseds as a zip file.

[disanti]

Irrlicht crashes when I use zips!
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Ford Motor Company Of New Zealand