Fred,
I got the voice mail.
I've written several converters from Mirai to various formats. I favor a
binary chunk ("iff") based format. This can be read with standard tools.
At this point, using the code I've developed, I can write a converter to
a new format in a week. I would expect another week for qa, and
modifications. This includes everything: animation, texture mapping, and
custom features.
After this is done, the artist just pushes a single hotkey, and the
level is exported to a single, easily parsed file.
Might as well add a week to the time, for safety.
Chunks can be added later, as needed, without changing the downstream
code. Backward and forward compatibility is easily accomplished.
Adding data to export is easily done.
Brandon has written a gl based viewer for the intermediate format we are
using here. Back at Sony, I made a hotkey that called the viewer, so the
artist could export, and then use another hotkey to view the exported
file, using something very close to the game engine. This is great for
quick checks.
Anyway, that's the way we do it here.
mlf