I build up a TinyXML serialization tree, then convert it over to my native representation recursively. It's incredibly slick, although I worry about performance hits and possible overflow conditions with recursively building very wide or deep trees.
Right now, I'm using this functionality to build me an animation set component from a filename -- it's very fast and it builds a nice, re-usable animation set that uses the minimum amount of VRAM. I'll have to take a look at it and see if I should be sharing animation components or if I can get by with a few hundred bytes of overhead for each actor.
It's all super-slick. I wish that I had something visual to show off, but this is one of the steps to getting things rendering on screen. Sexy screenshots will be sooner or later.
I also rigged up the last yard of the input system to accept the mouse and pivot the player actor towards it (as well as pitch the camera component's offset), which is also pretty cool. I'm heartened by what I'm going to be able to do here once actual gameplay starts being under development; I've already created a set of very nice tools I'd like to carry onto future endeavours.
Back to work tomorrow. [crying] I do so hate Mondays.
In other news, my constant indecision about buying a new or used Subaru has forced Imtiaz to go and test-drive a used 350Z. It's a sexy beast of a car, and I wouldn't mind it myself, although it would be undrivable in this climate considering we got a huge dump of snow today [rolleyes].
Also, from my GamerCard thingie up there, you will notice that I have spent enough time playing PGR4 to earn over a million Kudos, which I then exchanged for an exclusive gamer picture. PGR4 informs me that it is for the "gamer with more Kudos than sense." Regardless, it gave me an achievement so I went for it. Now I can't afford a Ferrari.
