I like your macros idea, will begin adding macros to simplify many areas of IwGame.

XOML seems to be a great way to go, primarily because it allows a lot of things in a game to be added/changed/etc without recompiling any C++. This is good because 1. C++ is notoriously slow to compile. 2. It should make extra levels/expansion packs/etc much, much easier to create and distribute.

However, I find XML – and therefore XOML – to be excessively verbose. It would be fantastic to have something cleaner like SDL ( http://sdl.ikayzo.org/display/SDL/Language+Guide ) as an alternative. Of course, I can just make/use a tool to convert to XML, but true native support for a more succinct data language would be nice.

Also, the process of binding new classes to XOML by manually subclassing IIwGameXomlClassCreator strikes me as being more boilerplate than should really be necessary. Maybe I’m just spoiled from having spent the last few years with D, but can’t a simple macro or something be created to help automate the process? Something like:

REGISTER_XOML(MyCustomActor) // Basic “new MyCustomActor()” stuff

REGISTER_XOML_SPECIAL(ComplicatedActor, createComplicatedActor)
ComplicatedActor createComplicatedActor()
{
SomeObj o = new SomeObj();
actor = new ComplicatedActor(4, 17.32, o);
actor.foo();
return actor;
}